A Bad Job

It's been a bad couple of weeks for the Stranraer economy. Last week's Free Press headline was about the "hammer blow" of the proposed closure of the Gentex Factory. This week it's been confirmed that McDonalds have scrapped plans to build a restaurant in Cairnryan. Someone commented on Facebook: "Will the last person out of here please turn off the lights".

It was a stark contrast to someone who had phoned in to the Jeremy Vine Show a week or two before. The 3-minute phone call went viral, with over half a million people having watched it on social media platform X. According to the caller, a man named Peter: "It's a very Puritan concept that work is good for you. Work is punishing and horrible and I don't want to work". Peter himself was "independent on benefits".

Some have written it off as a spoof, but Peter no doubt speaks for many. On the individual level we may complain about work, and fondly imagine what life would be like if we didn't have to do it. And yet we also know — or can imagine — how we feel when our jobs are threatened. We know instinctively that the closure of a factory in a town, as well as the withdrawal of the 120 proposed McDonalds jobs, is not good news. It's bad news not just for the economy, but on an individual level. Various studies highlight what we might already suspect: unemployment is associated with a substantially higher risk of mental health problems.

And yet although they might not come out and say it as starkly as the phone-in caller, many would choose not to work if they could. Be careful what you wish for however: it might not be the idyllic existence we imagine. Peter is right that it's a Puritan concept that work is good for you. But the Puritans got it from the Bible. Perhaps the biggest misconception about work, even among Christians, is that it's part of God's curse on this world. We assume that in a perfect world, no-one would have needed to work. And yet work existed before sin came into the world. The second chapter of the Bible tells us: "The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it". And that was BEFORE everything went wrong in chapter 3! It's true that work is much harder now in a sin-cursed world — "by the sweat of your face you shall eat bread" — but work itself was part of God's original manifesto. And so work isn't simply a Puritan concept — our Creator tells us it's good for us. Indeed, the New Testament's message to Peter would be: "If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat"! (2 Thessalonians 3:10) Yes, there are those who would love to work and can't. And certainly not all valuable work is paid work. But an unwillingness to work isn't a virtue according to Scripture.

The Bible also gives a dignity to the type of jobs many would look down on. It was the return to the Bible during the sixteenth-century Reformation that abolished the divide between "sacred" and "secular" work. The German Reformer, Martin Luther, wrote that the work of monks and priests did "not differ one whit in the sight of God from the works of the rustic labourer in the field or the woman going about her household tasks, but all works are measured before God by faith alone".

As with anything, it's possible to go to one of two extremes. Some seek to avoid work at all costs; others become workaholics. Indeed, some would lay the blame for overwork at the door of the "Protestant work ethic". And yet in the churches of the Reformation, a major emphasis was on Sabbath rest: a weekly day of ceasing from all unnecessary work in order to worship.

We could sum it up by saying that work is a gift, but it is not God. Whether we are currently employed or not, it’s important for us to remember that our work doesn’t define us. The Bible defines us all as people made in the image of God. The big danger of placing our identity in work or family or anything that can be taken away from us is that once it’s gone, our identity has been so tied up with it that we don’t know who we are anymore. Rather, we have a dignity and value that can’t be taken away from us, no matter what outward changes take place in our lives.

The Bible's view of work is as something to be valued, but not worshipped. It's not ultimate, but we reject it at our peril.

Published in the Stranraer & Wigtownshire Free Press, 12th November 2026

Watered Down

In October 2015, 64 people were killed in Bucharest when fireworks ignited a nightclub fire in the Romanian capital. The majority of those died in hospital, many as a result of preventable infections. The resulting scandal brought down the health minister and revealed a multimillion-euro medical fraud. At the heart of it was watered-down disinfectant.

It turned out that Hexi Pharmacy, one of Romania's major disinfectant suppliers, had been watering down its disinfectant, sometimes to only 10% of its advertised strength. The Guardian reported that one ingredient, which was meant to make up 25% of a surgical hand wash, was diluted down to 0.01% instead.

Hexi Pharmacy's owner died the day before he was due to face fraud charges when his car hit a tree, a death later ruled to be suicide. The death toll caused by his company's watered-down products could easily be in the thousands.

I first heard this tragic story from a missionary in France. The reason he shared it was to point out that a similar thing has happened in churches, with even greater consequences. In this case it's not disinfectant that's been watered down — it's the Bible's teaching.

When the Hexi Pharmacy scandal broke, devastated doctors spoke to the media about people who'd died under their watch — because they trusted that the operating theatres in which they were working had been disinfected properly. If they had turned up for work and been told that there was no disinfectant, they wouldn't have operated. But as it was, they went ahead, because they trusted that what it said on the bottle was true.

In a similar way, if the Bible had simply been removed from Scottish churches 100 or 150 years ago, people would have been up in arms. They wouldn't have stood for it. Why would anyone go to a church where there was no Bible?

But instead, while the Bible was kept around, its teaching was watered down. As in the days of Jeremiah, it could have been — and still can be said in many places: "the prophets prophecy falsely" (5:31). “They have spoken falsely of the LORD and have said, ‘He will do nothing’” (5:12). In particular, "They have healed the wound of my people lightly, saying 'Peace, peace,' when there is no peace" (6:14). Did those in the pew not realise? Many didn't. Some trusted in the professionals. "The minister says it", so it must be true. Between June 2010 and May 2016 Hexi Pharma sold watered-down biocides to 340 healthcare institutions, including most of Romania’s large hospitals. They were trusted; but those who trusted in them were badly let down and faced terrible consequences. Even when those in the pew had a sense that what they were hearing diverged from traditional Christian orthodoxy, it could often be added, as Jeremiah does: "my people love to have it so".

The legacy of this is seen today. What the Bible says about who can preach, who can be an elder, who can be a church member, who can be baptised, and how we are to live is routinely ignored. Worst of all, the gospel message has been distorted. Jesus is no longer proclaimed as the only way to God. Churchgoers don't hear Jesus' call to repent and believe the gospel. The message that funeral-goers are invariably left with is that everyone will get to heaven in the end. A man visited our church one Sunday evening and said: "My elders never talk to me about the Bible." It's no surprise — its authority has long since been rejected, in favour of a watered-down message.

But a watered-down gospel is no use to anyone. Jeremiah goes on to ask: "what will you do when the end comes?". One day Jesus is coming back, and there will be no hope for those who have trusted in a watered-down gospel. On that day they will be as alarmed as Felix was, when the Apostle Paul began to speak about "righteousness and self-control and the coming judgement" (Acts 24:25).

It doesn't have to be that way. And yet the story of many human catastrophes is the story of warnings being ignored. Romanian health officials had been repeatedly warned about high levels of hospital-acquired infection, and a parliamentary commission even established that the health ministry had been alerted to the rogue disinfectants. Yet they closed their eyes to reality until it was too late.

Better not to use disinfectant at all, than use a watered-down product and think you're safe. Better to have churches close than them continue to utter an "indistinct sound" (1 Cor. 14:8).

When it comes to matters of life and death, watered-down alternatives are deadly.

Published in the Stranraer & Wigtownshire Free Press, 8th October 2026

GO Relief Team

GO Relief Teams are organised by the RP Church of Ireland and do practical work in various parts of the world. After plans for a team to Kenya this summer were cancelled due to the ebola crisis, a team came to Stranraer for 3 and a half days at the end of August instead. Despite the short notice, we were delighted to have 16 people come across, including two cooks. We are so grateful for all the work the team did at both the church and the manse.