Our response to Covid shows human life is valuable. But why?

If we can take any positives out of the events of the last year, it’s the value that our world places on human life. It’s not universal of course – some have acted in ways that have put their own lives, or the lives of others, in danger. Yet convinced by the value of human life, no Western government has hesitated to believe that it should act to prevent death at the hands of this epidemic. Of course, it could be argued that such an intense focus on Covid has meant that lives have been lost in other ways – missed cancer diagnoses, delayed operations, and suicide as a result of job loss and lack of human interaction. But what unites those on both sides of the argument is the belief that human life matters.

But if over the past year we’ve answered the question as to whether human life is valuable with a firm ‘Yes’, we seem to be a lot less sure about two other questions: Why is it valuable? And what makes life worth living? Indeed, Health Secretary Matt Hancock acknowledged in an interview earlier this month that the UK government got it wrong during the first lockdown by banning things like funerals. Hancock said that following a discussion with the Archbishop of York, he realised that ‘you have got to stay human’. Indeed, Scotland is currently the only part of the UK that isn’t allowing churches to meet for communal worship – governments in the other three nations are leaving it up to individual churches to decide.

Here in Stranraer, we voluntarily took the decision to switch to a livestream rather than meeting in person before the latest lockdown was announced. We made the decision in light of the outbreak of the new variant here which has left us, as the headline of this paper put it last week, ‘Scotland’s Covid Capital’. Particularly given those circumstances, I decided not to get involved in a legal challenge that a group of Scottish church leaders launched last week, arguing that the current ban is in breach of the Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights (a claim also made by Sir Edward Leigh, MP, Chairman of the Catholic Union of Great Britain).

However, as cases and hospitalisations fall, it is to be hoped that the Scottish government prioritise the reopening of churches. Of course, those involved in all kinds of businesses and organisations can make plausible arguments as to why their particular sphere should be near the top of the list to re-open when it’s safe to do so. Why should churches be unique?

Some will argue that churches should be a top priority because of mental health concerns. When people are starved of human contact and loneliness is a bigger problem than ever, taking away the opportunity for them to be together even in church surely has to be a last resort. However, churches are about – or should be about – more than that. Covid has shown us that the version of the good life we have been sold in the West, where self-fulfilment is supposed to be what life is about, and individual consumption of sex, possessions and entertainment is supposed to be all that we need, is a lie. Lockdowns have left us with those things, while stripping away everything else; and made it abundantly clear that they are not what human life is about.

That brings us back to the why question; why is human life valuable? The fact that nations around the world have prioritised human life is a stark contrast with the ancient world. In the pre-Christian, classical world, the philosophers knew there was something undeniably special about human life. However, that belief coexisted with the dehumanising treatment of large portions of the human race. Into that world, Christianity brought a message that human beings are special because we are made in the image of God. We have failed in our task as image-bearers – which explains why the world’s in the mess that it’s in – but human life is still uniquely valuable. Jesus Christ came into this world, yes to show us what we were made to be, but also to make us what we should be – by taking the punishment we deserve, and then equipping us to live the lives we were created to live. 

As a community and a nation we have demonstrated that we believe human life is valuable. Let’s not miss this unique opportunity to start asking why.

Published in the Stranraer & Wigtownshire Free Press, 21st January 2021.
Inspired by this article from Matthew Roberts in The Critic.

Attributes of God: resources for kids and adults

We’ve just begun a new sermon series entitled ‘Behold Your God’ - focusing in on what are known as the ‘Attributes’ of God. Below is a list of books on God’s attributes, compiled by Rev. Robert McCollum (Lisburn RPC).

The books by Charnock (a massive Puritan treatise) and Pink (more accessible) are available online for free. Interestingly, former Stranraer minister William Symington wrote a biographical introduction to Charnock for one edition of Existence and Attributes, which you can read on our website here.

The video below gives a more detailed introduction to The Attributes of God for Kids - additional resources for it can be downloaded here. We will email parents with worksheets on each attribute prior to the sermon on it.

Three new members

Last month we were delighted to welcome James and Katie (and Thomas and Luke), and Ian, into church membership.

James and Katie transferred their membership from the RP Church in Glasgow, having moved to Stranraer earlier in the year. Ian joined upon profession of faith.

In what has been a difficult year for churches, this was undoubtedly one of the highlights. We are thankful to God for his goodness.

Can we save Christmas?

One of the big themes of recent weeks has been the need to ‘save Christmas’. In the build-up to the announcement of Christmas ‘bubbles’, more than one newspaper headline declared ‘Two weeks to save Christmas’! When the announcement did come – three-household bubbles for five days, combined with the reopening of shops in many places – it was enthusiastically greeted as Christmas being ‘saved’. However, our political leaders continue to warn us not to get carried away, and news in recent days of a new strain of coronavirus has dampened enthusiasm. For a completely normal Christmas, we’ll have to wait till 2021 – if God spares us.. But still – the message remains that our actions over these days will be what saves Christmas this year.

Yet surely it’s all a bit ironic? Cast your mind back to the Christmas story and it couldn’t be more different. There was a ruler and a crisis summit, but King Herod had no intention of ‘saving Christmas’. In fact, it was the opposite; he did his level best to put the baby Jesus to death. The wise men were sent to Bethlehem under instructions to come back and tell him where Jesus was – ostensibly in order that he could worship him, but really so that he could kill him. So the idea of a government ‘saving Christmas’ is somewhat amusing since the government of Jesus’ day did everything it could to stop it before it started.

Now, as a Christian, I have to admit that the Bible doesn’t tell us to celebrate Jesus’ birth. The idea of doing so didn’t occur to Jesus’ followers until hundreds of years after Mary and Joseph arrived in Bethlehem. Charles Dickens may not quite be ‘The Man Who Invented Christmas’ as the title of an enjoyable 2017 film declares, but many of the supposedly age-old traditions we associate with Christmas are newer than we realise. ‘Jingle Bells’ was originally written for the American holiday of Thanksgiving, carols are Christianised Victorian pub songs, and it is very unlikely that Jesus was born in December (the shepherds and their sheep would not have been outside!).

In fact, if you need an inexpensive stocking filler, I would recommend a cracking little book called A Christmas Cornucopia by Sunday Times bestselling author Mark Forsyth, which aims to uncover the hidden stories behind our Yuletide traditions. An endorsement on the front cover by Matthew Parris sums it up: ‘Everything we thought about Christmas is wrong! Great stuff!’

In light of the evidence, it’s too simplistic to write Christmas off as either ‘Victorian’ or ‘Pagan’. But it also a bit much to talk about ‘Getting back to the real meaning of Christmas’, ‘the commercialisation of Christmas’ or indeed ‘Putting Christ back into Christmas’. Many have a desire to ‘get back to’ something that never really existed in the first place.

One of my favourite quotes from the book reads as follows: ‘Once upon a time, there was no such thing as Christmas And then Jesus was born in Bethlehem, and after that there was still no such thing as Christmas. For hundreds of years’.

And yet the birth of Jesus Christ in Bethlehem is still the most significant birth that has ever taken place. And if we take ‘Christmas’ as shorthand for Jesus coming into the world, then there is an even greater irony in the calls for us to ‘save Christmas’. Any time a leader tells us to “do our bit to save Christmas”, they unwittingly get things back to front.

Before Jesus’ birth, the angel told an apprehensive Joseph that ‘he will save his people from their sins’ (Matthew 1:21). As Jesus grew up, he lived the life of perfect obedience that we have so dismally failed to achieve, as a precursor to something even more significant than his birth. Bethlehem’s joy culminated in Jerusalem’s sorrow as Jesus faced the agonies of the cross and the perfect justice of God was carried out. The manger was just a step along the path leading to the one who was without sin becoming sin for us.

Strip away all the traditions, and the angel’s message to Joseph is at the heart of the Christmas story. That is why the idea of us ‘saving Christmas’ is so back to front. We can’t save Christmas; Christmas saves us.

Published in the Stranraer & Wigtownshire Free Press, 17th December 2020

Vaccines: A great gift, but not our salvation

After a year of bad news, some recent good news on the coronavirus front has been the successful stage 3 trials of vaccines from Pfizer, Moderna and Oxford University/AstraZeneca, with the first two claiming to be around 95% effective in protecting people from contracting Covid-19.

Of course, this news has not been universally welcomed. There is a growing anti-vaccination movement, with various strands to it. The figure of Andrew Wakefield still looms large – author of a fraudulent 1998 study which falsely claimed a link between the MMR vaccine and autism. Even though Wakefield was found to have falsified data for personal profit and his research has been totally discredited, the old saying rings true – ‘a lie travels halfway around the world while the truth is putting its shoes on’.

Opposition to vaccination is nothing new, however. Edward Jenner, the father of vaccination, who was a Christian, said to a friend a few days before his death: ‘I am not surprised that men are not grateful to me; but I wonder that they are not grateful to God for the good which He has made me the instrument of conveying to my fellow creatures’. In the words of Johannes Kepler, a key figure in the seventeenth-century scientific revolution, science is about thinking God’s thoughts after him. As someone has put it: ‘The science of medicine (and other technologies) is about approaching a universe of pain, knowing that it is pregnant with possible remedies placed there by our kind and gracious God’.

While there is an eccentric streak in some streams of Christianity that want to deny pain relief or medical remedies – and simply tell the patient to have more faith – this has, thankfully, always been confined to a small minority. Responsible Christian ministers will warn people against purveyors of false hope – those who prey on the vulnerable, and try and get them to swap proven medical remedies for ‘non-toxic therapies’. One of my fellow pastors in the RP Church of North America has been fighting leukaemia for seven years. He has a PhD in microbiology and taught at university level for 22 years before becoming a minister. He puts it like this: ‘Please, do not deprive yourself of the gift of scientific medicine that God has given us!’ While a lot of people who get cancer will not be successfully treated, and while a time may come when it’s no longer worth fighting, modern medicine has made some cancers highly treatable and highly survivable. As my friend put it: ‘If I had tried to treat myself or if I had opted for an alternative therapy, I would not be here today’.

Gratefully receiving the benefits of modern medicine is not in conflict with relying on God – it’s simply a recognition that while God can heal directly, he usually works through means (like doctors and medicine) to achieve his purposes.

But while we should thank God for vaccines and other medical advances, I worry that many are looking upon them as their salvation. While I understand, and to a large extent share, the desire to get back to normal – are there no lessons that we can learn from 2020? Back in April, a few weeks into lockdown, Matthew Parris wrote an article for The Times entitled: ‘We say everything will change but it won’t’. Talking about claims that Covid would bring about new levels of community spirit, and a greater appreciation of nature, he said: ‘Experience suggests that after much handclapping for the NHS, and unbearable levels of self-righteousness, we will gently slip back into our bad old ways’.

That has proved to be the case. Talk that ‘everything will change’ has been replaced by the question ‘When can we get back to normal?’. And yet in many ways 2020 has been God’s gift to us – we’ve been confronted with our own mortality as never before and been given time to think about where our lives are heading. We might blame 2020 for increased levels of fear, anxiety, bitterness and anger – but what if the events of this year have simply revealed what was already in our hearts?

According to his friend and biographer, Edward Jenner was ‘grateful to God for the signal mercies which He had given to man through him’. However for Jenner, although vaccination was a great gift, it wasn’t the great hope for mankind. In his own words, that could only be found in ‘The Sacred Scriptures’ – and the Saviour they are all about – ‘the only pillow on which the soul can find repose and refreshment’.

Published in the Stranraer & Wigtownshire Free Press, 26th November 2020