Phill Sacre

Category: In the news

  • Is the risk of lockdown being ignored?

    Is the risk of lockdown being ignored?

    What I want to look at in this piece is the way politicians and the media are talking about risk in relation to the lockdown. We are constantly being told of the risk that covid poses and the need for more lockdown. What is often sidelined or ignored completely is the risk that a lockdown poses in itself.

    Let’s start with Keir Starmer’s press conference yesterday:

    The number of Covid cases has quadrupled in the last three weeks. Cases may be doubling as quickly as every seven to eight days. There are now more people in hospital with Covid than on 23 March when we went into national lockdown. And while the number of cases is rising more sharply in some areas it is increasing across all regions of the UK and in all age groups.

    We know from bitter experience and great personal loss where all this leads. Three things are now clear: the Government has not got a credible plan to slow infections. It has lost control of the virus. And it’s no longer following the scientific advice.

    The SAGE minutes from 21 September – published yesterday – underline this. They warn that: ‘A package’ of ‘stringent interventions’ is now urgently needed. SAGE also says that: ‘not acting now… will result in a very large epidemic with catastrophic consequences.’

    Focussing on what might happen

    The first thing I notice is that the focus is based on predictions of what is going to happen in the future. He says “we know … where all this leads”. If we don’t act now, according to SAGE, it will result in a “very large epidemic with catastrophic consequences”. It’s as if his prediction of the future is a foregone conclusion.

    This is the kind of language I see all the time. It’s the primary reason why many people are against a herd immunity strategy. For example, as this New Scientist blog published today says, “We don’t yet know whether natural immunity to SARS-CoV-2 (or the experimental vaccines) will halt transmission. Until we do, assuming that herd immunity will automatically appear is unscientific and, frankly, irresponsible.”

    So a herd immunity strategy is “irresponsible”, because we don’t know if it will happen or not. We don’t know – so let’s play it on the safe side. Let’s be safe and not take the risk. This is the message which we are hearing all the time from the government, from scientists, from the media. “Better safe than sorry”.

    The problem with ‘better safe than sorry’

    I think “better safe than sorry” is generally good advice. But, like a lot of good advice, you can go too far with it. There’s a funny scene at the start of the film Ratatouille.

    An old lady spots a rat, and so she decides to deal with it in a perfectly proportionate way… with a shotgun. She ends up basically destroying her house! The action she took ended up doing far more damage than the danger.

    You could think of many other examples. If you take the principle to its logical conclusion, you’d never do anything risky. In fact, you’d probably never leave the house – but wait, staying in the house carries an element of risk! And that’s the point: being alive carries an element of risk with it. We can mitigate against some risks, but there has to come a point at which we say “well, that’s a risk we’re just going to have to take”.

    I know that driving is risky, for example. But I weigh up the risks and, in general, decide that the risks are pretty low and that it’s of more value to me personally to get somewhere quickly. Everyone has to accept a measure of risk in everything, but in general most of us don’t think about the risks too much. And we survive!

    There’s more than one kind of risk

    Add to that the fact that risk applies in more than one way. Let’s go back to the example of driving. Driving a car carries a risk. But then, what if I decide to walk? Walking carries a risk too – in fact there might be a greater risk of being run over. If I decide to cycle, again – there are risks involved. But think about it more deeply: if I drive everywhere, maybe I’ll become obese. Maybe I’ll die early of heart disease. Cycling or walking may be a bit more risky, but I’ll get more healthy.

    The point is that there are risks in every area of life – no matter which course of action we take. We have to balance those risks every day. Most of us are pretty good at it – we decide what level of risk is appropriate for us, and we act accordingly. But the point is that we all have to balance risk no matter what we do.

    So this brings us onto the question of the lockdown. In the speech I quoted at the start, Keir Starmer said a ‘circuit breaker’ lockdown would avert one risk – of people dying from covid. However, what he didn’t say is that there will be risks of another lockdown. I think we should consider those risks.

    Also – just to re-iterate: the risks of not locking down are a “maybe”. We’ll think a little about the actual chances of that happening below. But we can see the risks of lockdowns right now.

    Risks of another lockdown

    The Economy

    The UK has plunged into the largest recession on record since the start of the lockdown. There could be over 700,000 redundancies in the autumn alone – bringing the total for 2020 to over one million. I don’t know anyone personally who has died of covid – I do know several people who have either lost jobs or face extreme uncertainty about whether they’ll be going back to jobs.

    And we should say that a strong economy has health benefits: where does the money for the NHS come from? From the taxpayer. If the government are spending more money for people who are unemployed, and collecting less tax, the NHS is going to suffer. A recession is not going to help public health.

    Health in other areas

    The lockdown has meant that many people who would (and should) have been treated for other conditions have been staying away from hospital. For example, Prof Karol Sikora warned that cancer was the next big crisis facing the NHS, because of the number of people who had not received a diagnosis. The Sun reported that hundreds of stroke and heart attacks have gone untreated.

    This is what a registered nurse had to say:

    The hospital had speciality wards for medical emergencies such as strokes, which were always full (before Covid). An emergency episode like a stroke can be easily diagnosed and treated with thrombolytic therapy, a hugely vital service preventing death and worsening brain injuries. The stroke ward was virtually empty. … It makes me shudder to think that these people, mainly the elderly again, collapsed and likely died at home as coming into hospital for treatment no longer seemed an option for them.

    I nursed a 50-year-old lady last week who was diagnosed in January with aggressive breast cancer. Her mastectomy was planned for early March but was then cancelled. She had no contact with the Oncology Team and only just had her mastectomy 3 weeks ago. When I met her, she was waiting on the results of her recent MRI to see if her cancer had spread anywhere else. She has really experienced a lot of fear this year.

    I have heard anecdotally from people I’ve spoken to that these experiences are not uncommon. Someone I know from the school gate says a friend has been delayed treatment due to covid. People are being discouraged from visiting GPs. I’ve read reports of nearly-empty GP surgeries. Where are all the people who would normally be there? Surely illnesses are not simply going away?

    Mental Health

    I think mental health is quite possibly the biggest risk which is not being talked about. I think there is a massive issue bubbling away under the surface. The ONS, for example, reported on 9th October:

    Average anxiety scores for adults have increased to their highest level since April at 4.3 this week, according to the latest Opinions and Lifestyle Survey (OPN).

    Of those who reported that their wellbeing has been affected by the coronavirus pandemic, 63% said they felt stressed or anxious, while 64% said they felt worried about the future.

    Over 60% of people are feeling stressed and anxious. Now that’s an epidemic – a mental health epidemic. Similarly, ONS data from June says:

    Almost one in five adults (19.2%) were likely to be experiencing some form of depression during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic in June 2020; this had almost doubled from around 1 in 10 (9.7%) before the pandemic (July 2019 to March 2020).

    One in eight adults (12.9%) developed moderate to severe depressive symptoms during the pandemic, while a further 6.2% of the population continued to experience this level of depressive symptoms; around 1 in 25 adults (3.5%) saw an improvement over this period.

    Many British people right now are feeling anxious and depressed. I can testify to this from my own experience! But I’m particularly worried about the effect this is having on a younger generation. For example, one of my wife’s co-workers said her daughter’s class (primary school age) are all really anxious at the moment. Someone at church said before the summer, her granddaughter refused to go back to school when she had the opportunity (she was in year six) because she was so terrified.

    The lockdown directly impacts our mental health. I know of several people who are really struggling at the moment. Another lockdown would compound the mental health problem. We shouldn’t be surprised about this given that a lockdown essentially prevents us from doing what human beings are supposed to do.

    Is the risk worth it?

    This is the million dollar question, so to speak. I wouldn’t like to be a politician at the moment, to have to balance these kind of things. Personally, I don’t think the risk of another lockdown is worth the benefit of maybe saving lives. I say maybe because, as I said at the start, the ‘circuit breaker’ lockdown is based on a prediction of the future. This is a complicated subject, and it’s one I’m not a specialist in. But I think there are a few reasons to be optimistic.

    The death rate is nothing like it was at the peak

    This graph shows the number of weekly deaths which name covid on the death certificate. As you can see, it climbs very sharply at the beginning of April, and then in the middle of April things begin to fall off again. As you can see on the graph, deaths are beginning to climb a little but it’s nothing like what we saw in April. There’s a similar picture in other countries, too, such as France and Spain.

    Graph to show number of weekly deaths from Covid
    Graph to show number of weekly deaths from Covid

    In fact, some people say that the peak actually happened before the full lockdown restrictions were introduced (if you take into account the typical time between infection and death).

    Lockdowns don’t work

    Recently the WHO Covid-19 envoy David Nabarro said they did not recommend lockdowns apart from a short measure to ease pressure on health services. Some scientists are now saying that there is little to no evidence that lockdowns actually work:

    In a National Bureau of Economic Research paper published last month, UCLA economist Andrew Atkeson and two other researchers, after looking at COVID-19 trends in 23 countries and 25 U.S. states that had seen more than 1,000 deaths from the disease by late July, found little evidence that variations in policy explain the course of the epidemic in different places.

    There are other voices saying the same thing. There’s very little correlation between the way a country has responded to the virus and the number of deaths.

    Even in the UK, there is some doubt as to whether local lockdowns have done anything to actually slow the spread of the virus.

    There are many other angles we could talk about here, such as the fact that the average age of death from covid is about 82 (average life expectancy in the UK is about 82). We could go on – but let’s leave it there.

    Let’s wrap this up

    One of the problems with a lockdown is that it’s a blunt instrument. It’s like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut: you might crack the nut, but you might break a few other things in the process. My feeling is that many of our politicians and the media are keen to use the sledgehammer of lockdown without considering the risks of that strategy. I think this is doubly the case given that it’s unclear how much benefit lockdowns actually bring. Is it actually possible to control the virus?

    Would a better strategy be something such as what the Great Barrington Declaration says? I’ll leave you to make your own mind up.

  • Another scandal. We desperately need spiritual reformation

    Another scandal. We desperately need spiritual reformation

    What can we learn after yet another prominent Christian leader falls to sexual temptation? Is there a problem in the way we preach the gospel? Here I argue that the church desperately needs another spiritual reformation.

    The preacher and evangelist Ravi Zacharias died recently. It didn’t take long after his death for reports of sexual misconduct to come up. One example is that he sexually harassed some women working at one of the spas he co-owned. According to the article:

    “He would expose himself every time, and he would touch himself every time,” one of the women told CT. “It was where he went to get what he wanted sexually.”

    Zacharias masturbated in front of one of the women more than 50 times, according to her recollection. He told her he was burdened by the demands of the ministry, and he needed this “therapy.” He also asked her to have sex with him twice, she said, and requested explicit photos of her.

    These deeply sad and troubling accusations are happening hard on the heels of revelations about Jonathan Fletcher last year. It seems that we’ve had a string lately of high-profile Christian leaders who have been embroiled in sexual scandals. I think this should trouble us as the church, particularly evangelicals: why is it that so many leaders have fallen this way?

    Christian Leaders do not belong on a pedestal

    One lesson that it’s very important to learn is that leaders are people, just like everyone else. Everyone has the same temptations – leaders are not immune from them. Christians should not put anyone on a pedestal, except for Jesus. Only he is sinless!

    One of the problems with our society today is that we are very ‘celebrity’ obsessed. I think the modern media, especially social media, exacerbates this problem. We tend to flock around people who we like to listen to. The Christian world is far from immune. I can recognise it in myself: when I go on Christian conferences or teaching days, I like to recognise the names of the people who’ll be speaking. In itself I don’t think this is necessarily a problem – but the problem comes when we expect people gifted to teach and lead to be perfect. The Messiah complex!

    So, let’s remember that Christian leaders are Christians. They can fall, and they need our prayers. As a Christian leader myself, albeit in a much smaller capacity than Ravi Zacharias – I hugely value people praying for me.

    So, all Christians are liable to fall to temptation, and it’s good to remember that. But I think there is a deeper issue here. Does the fact that so many Christian leaders have fallen in this way suggest that there is a problem with the gospel being preached?

    Is there a gospel issue?

    I wonder if part of the problem is that many evangelical churches have come to reduce the definition of the gospel. I wrote about this before, and again recently when I wrote about grace. This is what I wrote back in July of last year:

    One of the ways I think evangelical churches (including, and perhaps especially, conservative evangelical churches) subtly distort the gospel is by portraying the Christian life like this: it’s all about avoiding sin.

    It’s a bit like one of those car-racing video games – every time you see a pothole or an obstacle coming, you have to move so you don’t hit it. I think we often unconsciously visualise the Christian life in this way: we live our lives day-to-day, trying our hardest to avoid sinning, and asking God for forgiveness when we fail and the help not to sin again. I call this view ‘almost the gospel’ – it’s so close, and yet not quite there.

    This applies to sex and sexuality. Our culture says that our happiness will be found when we are most sexually fulfilled. But God says we will be most happy when we submit our sexuality to him. Only he can fill our deepest longings. This is something which I think a lot of churches don’t really focus on. Or at least, they may talk about it intellectually but it hasn’t really hit home emotionally.

    I wonder if this is the problem when it comes to Christian leaders falling sexually. I mean, the things they’re accused of doing are not little slips. It’s not like accidentally switching on an adult channel in a hotel late at night. It’s directly abusive of others. It reminds me of 1 Corinthians 5v1: “It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that even pagans do not tolerate”. The kinds of things RZ and JF have done, or been accused of doing, would not be tolerated in our secular society.

    We need spiritual reformation

    Christian leaders are sinners, but they should be mature Christians. They should have a knowledge that God’s ways are best, that God alone can satisfy. I just can’t conceive of someone doing the kinds of things that Ravi Zacharias or Jonathan Fletcher are accused of doing without understanding that it’s deeply wrong and sinful. Someone who slips up and sins out of weakness is one thing. Someone who has an established pattern of sin over the course of several months or years – that’s another level.

    I honestly think the real need of the church at the moment is for spiritual reformation. We need to learn deeply the truth of these words:

    Taste and see that the Lord is good;
    blessed is the one who takes refuge in him.
    Fear the Lord, you his holy people,
    for those who fear him lack nothing.
    The lions may grow weak and hungry,
    but those who seek the Lord lack no good thing.

    Psalm 34:8-10

    Over the last few months and years, I’ve begun to realise the truth of this Psalm in a way that I don’t think I’ve ever been taught before. God is not some kind of arbitrary rule giver, who gives us rules to stop us being happy. One of the reasons we are so tempted by sexual temptation is because it promises us happiness beyond what we think God would give. But the truth is the exact opposite: only God’s ways can give us true happiness, in every area.

    Is the reason that we keep on falling this way is because much of the church simply does not recognise the goodness of God?

    This is vital for the health of the church

    A few days ago I read a helpful article by Jay Stringer about Ravi Zacharias. In that post he said:

    When a man will not engage his sexual brokenness, the inevitable outcome is a system that heavily polices cross gender relationships.  We don’t honor women by refusing to extend relationship or leadership to them. We honor women by doing everything possible to locate the sexual brokenness and manipulation that exists within. Being like Jesus means that we learn how to have close relationships with female friends in a way that is marked with humility, honor, and delight. The image of God is both male and female (Genesis 1:27). If you want to know who God is, but you want to “protect” yourself from women, you’re excluding a whole lot of God.

    I think this is spot on. We live in a society which is going made about sex and sexuality. I just think so many people, especially young people, don’t know which was is up any more. What the world doesn’t need right now is the church failing in exactly the same area! In fact, we as the church should be like a city on a hill – showing the world the light and life that comes from knowing Christ.

    We should be transformed by the renewing of our minds (Romans 12:1). We should start treating each other like family, as that is in fact what we are. And we should be walking in step with the Spirit (Galatians 5:16), rather than trying to use our own personal version of the Billy Graham rule to stay pure. This means men and women treating each other like brothers and sisters, like true friends. God has the power to overcome the idols of our society and remake us in his image.

    Can men and women be friends after all?

    A couple of years ago, Aimee Byrd wrote a book called “Why can’t we be friends?” Subtitled – “avoidance is not purity”. This sums it up for me: I think many churches teach a kind of ‘avoidance’ strategy when it comes to purity. This isn’t going to work, and I think this is why too many Christian leaders have fallen.

    If you think of the Christian life primarily as being about avoiding sin, then your greatest enemy is temptation. It’s only a matter of time before you fall – even more so for Christian leaders. This is a particular problem when our society seems to be so sex-obsessed. One effect means that we will only see members of the opposite sex in terms of temptation.

    If, on the other hand, we see the Christian life as being about seeking after the Lord, his goodness and his ways, then it will be a different story. We can start to see others as people made in God’s image, given his beauty. We can start relating to them with the love given by the Spirit, beyond merely human love.

    I believe we in the Western church right now need to seek after the Lord like we haven’t done in a long time. It’s time to stop talking about doctrine and instead to start believing it.

    Lord, please send a spiritual reformation upon your people.

  • The Social Dilemma: Why I’m not deleting my Facebook account (yet)

    The Social Dilemma: Why I’m not deleting my Facebook account (yet)

    In the last week, I’ve seen two friends announce they watched the Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma and are deleting their social media accounts. I understand the sentiment. I’ve thought about deleting my social media accounts on several occasions! But I still haven’t quite been pushed over the edge just yet. The positives have always (just about) outweighed the negatives. So – was The Social Dilemma enough to convince me?

    In a word, no. Let me give a few reasons why I’m not going to be deleting my social media accounts yet.

    There was no new information

    A year or two ago, I watched a documentary on the BBC about social media. Almost every point made by The Social Dilemma had already been made in that documentary. In fact, for that reason I felt The Social Dilemma felt a little outdated already. It felt 3-4 years old, which is probably not surprising given that most of the people who were interviewed for it left the big social media companies a few years ago.

    This is not to say that their warnings do not apply today, but I do feel that social media companies have started to make changes. For example, I think Facebook has become aware of being a political echo chamber – lately I’ve seen more posts on my news feed which I disagree with. (Actually that’s why I blogged about hiding political memes).

    You can mitigate against some of the problems

    As I said, all of the issues raised by The Social Dilemma I was already aware of. In fact, it actually inspired me to created a couple of videos about smartphone addiction. This one below, and another one looking at a more Biblical angle.

    That video was recorded a year ago, and I think even since then things have changed: Facebook and Twitter are becoming more and more annoying. The ads are getting in the way more and more. It’s becoming less easy to simply connect with other people, which is its main selling point. In other words, these days I find myself much less tempted to use it.

    And for me personally, I found it really helpful to think about it from their perspective. When I knew that they were deliberately trying to get me to stay on their site for as long as possible, all the annoying things made sense. And I stopped giving into it so much… maybe it’s because I’m a contrarian, but that knowledge was very helpful.

    The problems were all human problems

    A long time ago, I was involved in an internet discussion forum for DJs. One day the owner of the forum basically packed up and decided to go on a year-long trip round the world. He didn’t let anyone know before he went, and the forum moderators didn’t have very much power to keep order. As you can imagine, things went a bit crazy – I remember people falling out, accusing each other of things, all that sort of thing. When he returned, after things settled down, the blame game started: was he to blame, for leaving the forum without giving appropriate power to the moderators? Or were the people to blame who’d actually done the things they shouldn’t have done?

    I argued then, as I would now, that – at the end of the day – circumstances do not cause people to do wrong. They may be a contributory factor. But we all face the choice of doing right or wrong – human beings have dignity and responsibility (as I argued last time).

    I think it’s exactly the same with social media. The fact that social media may be an echo chamber doesn’t mean that we have to hate people who have different views. That’s something which is not the fault of social media – even if social media exacerbates the problem, it doesn’t cause it. Social media has been designed to be addictive – but the weakness lies within human beings.

    And this is the key point: social media only has as much power as we give it. It doesn’t have to become all-consuming or divisive. It only will if we let it.

    There are still positives

    There are still a few positives to social media. It’s nice to be able to see photos of what other people have been up to, especially if they’re friends or family who don’t live nearby. I also appreciate the Facebook groups – I’m in a couple of groups which are really useful. And the nice thing about groups is, it doesn’t suffer so much from the algorithm problem – Facebook doesn’t hide posts which it thinks I will disagree with.

    I also find Twitter a helpful resource – if you use an app like Tweetdeck rather than the standard Twitter app, it won’t prioritise tweets it thinks you will like. You’ll just be able to see your “vanilla” feed, without promoted tweets etc. Twitter is still a really good resource to find articles and pieces which I wouldn’t see otherwise.

    So I think social media still has its uses, even if there are real issues with it to contend with.

    It’s important to be a witness

    As a Christian, I think it’s important to be salt and light in the world. Basically what this means is, I think it’s important for Christians to try and show the world the right way of doing things – however imperfectly. We need to try to love each other, even our enemies. I don’t think social media is so irredeemably broken at the moment that it cannot be used in the right way. I think Christians should use it, but try to use it in a right and godly way.

    For example: not calling someone names if they disagree with you or even are rude to you. Not getting into fights about trivial issues. Trying to seek the truth rather than post fake news.

    At the moment, I think it’s possible to use social media in a good and godly way. If it becomes impossible, I think that would be the moment to leave.

    It’s where people are

    The final thing I wanted to say is, it’s just where people are at the moment. A lot of people do spend a lot of their time online.

    As a Christian minister, I think it’s important to be with people where they are. That’s what Jesus did: he didn’t stay in the synagogues and preach there. He went into the towns and villages. His most famous sermon is the Sermon on the Mount – because it was preached outside! Where would the equivalent location be today? I don’t know, but I think social media would be part of it.

    My other site Understand the Bible started life as a YouTube channel. I wanted to make videos that would reach people where they were. These days I also upload videos to Facebook. Social media is actually a good platform for sharing the gospel – it allows a lot more people to see and interact with Christian content.

    A few weeks ago I read an article where someone was talking about the Reformation. They mentioned that the printing press was a key part of the Reformation. I think social media could be something foundational for a new, 21st-century reformation: Lord knows we need one! Social media means the gospel can get into people’s homes, onto every computer and smartphone. Who wouldn’t want that opportunity?

    As Paul says in Ephesians 5:

    Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil.

  • A Christian case for freedom

    A Christian case for freedom

    A case for why Christians should care about freedom and liberty – including free speech.

    This is a blog which has been brewing for some weeks now. I’m involved in various different formal and informal Christian networks. Over the last few months, I’ve seen a lot of information from Christian groups advising us about how to comply with government regulations about the lockdown. For example, John Stevens has been doing good work on advising what the new guidelines mean for churches as things change.

    However, I’ve seen very few Christian leaders pushing back at all on the restrictions. Earlier this week, in a Christian group on Facebook, someone posted a link to this article by Archbishop Cranmer (where he argues that with the ‘rule of six’ we are being deprived of our liberty). Someone responded saying it was a political matter, not a theological one.

    I would beg to differ – I think this actually has a lot of big theological issues. I believe liberty is deeply theological and goes to the heart of what it means to be human beings. What I am going to do here is outline a few theological and practical reasons why I believe Christians should be concerned about freedom. I’ll start with the theological.

    Theological reasons to care about freedom

    1. The dignity of human beings

    The Bible gives human beings a dignity unlike any other created beings. We are described as being made “in God’s image” (Genesis 1:27). Psalm 8 says God made human beings and “crowned them with glory and honour”. We have a special, God-given dignity as human beings. We have been made as beings with responsibilities, God’s vice-regents, who are to look after and rule over creation as his agents. And so, we are made to be free. Freedom is a part of being made in God’s image. It is also, as the apostle Paul tells us, what Christ has accomplished for us in setting us free from sin (Galatians 5:1).

    There’s a lovely prayer in the Book of Common Prayer, based on Augustine’s words, which captures it beautifully:

    O God, who art the author of peace and lover of concord, in knowledge of whom standeth our eternal life, whose service is perfect freedom…

    So by implication, when you take away people’s liberty, you are taking away their dignity as human beings. In some cases this is right and appropriate, e.g. prison inmates forfeit some of their liberties as a punishment. And we all accept certain limits on our freedom, e.g. in the UK I’m not free to drive on the right hand side of the road. And, in fact, if anyone tried driving on the wrong side of the road, they’d find out pretty soon it was anything but freedom!

    Another aspect of human dignity is responsibility. A responsible person can judge risk for themselves and then make a decision based on that risk. Give someone the facts, then allow them to make up their minds. Some people will err on the side of caution, some will not. That is their choice. Freedom involves having the right to make that choice. As it says in Psalm 32:9:

    Do not be like the horse or the mule,
    which have no understanding
    but must be controlled by bit and bridle
    or they will not come to you.

    Human beings have been given the dignity of making responsible choices under God. Freedom is a Biblical principle, rooted in our dignity as God’s image-bearers.

    2. The command to love God and one another

    Jesus gave a very clear instruction: “A new command I give you: love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (John 13:34-35). We don’t have time to go into it all now, but the whole of the way God wants us to live could be summed up by “love”: firstly, love God; secondly, love each other.

    What does this look like? Love for God involves many things – dedicating our lives to serving him, praising him, doing all things to his glory (1 Corinthians 10:31). Similarly, loving each other has many facets. One of the most overlooked commands in the Bible is “greet one another with a holy kiss”. We should not be strangers but literally family (Mark 3:35).

    How do we show that love? It is shown to each other by meeting together, in a thousand different ways. Home groups meet each week to study the Bible and pray for each other. A community cafe opens every Friday to welcome people in. A weekly toddler group is much valued by local parents. And all of these things are aspects of the church’s core mission – to love.

    One of the things I’ve realised during the lockdown is that it’s really hard to love and care for each other at a distance. In fact in many cases it’s impossible. And I’ve realised how the groups that we have are not simply “nice to have” extras to mostly private lives, but fundamental to who we are as people. When we can’t do them, we are – quite literally – unable to be the people who God made us to be.

    And even the things that we can do, for example church services, are not the same. It really struck me when our midweek service restarted how empty it felt without tea & coffee afterwards. The after-service chat is a core part of what we should be about!

    Christians are not isolated individuals who live their own lives and occasionally meet up. God, in Christ, didn’t create a ‘team of individuals’ – he created a whole new society. The church isn’t somewhere you go on a Sunday. For Christians, it should be our new family. We have a duty and an obligation to meet together. These are things which cannot be done fully without freedom.

    Practical reasons to care about freedom

    More briefly, let’s think about a couple of more pragmatic reasons why Christians should care about freedom.

    1. Free speech is under threat

    Free speech is under threat in our society to the point that Toby Young felt it necessary to start the Free Speech Union. Those of us who hold conservative Christian views have been feeling the pinch for a while now – something I wrote a little about a few years ago. I think Christians should be standing up for free speech – not least because Christian views are being targeted. Even if we don’t personally feel the heat, I think we should stand up for freedom.

    2. Free speech aids the gospel

    Think about the number of street preachers who have been arrested over the last few years for ‘hate speech’. There are some in our society who would like nothing better than to silence Christian views being aired. I do appreciate that ultimately God is sovereign over these things, and that ultimately suppression of freedom will work to serve the gospel in the long run. But I still think it’s right to try to defend freedom, even while trusting that God will use whatever situation we find ourselves in for good.

    I think this is behind Paul’s instruction in 1 Timothy 2:

    I urge, then, first of all, that petitions, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for all people – for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness.

    1 Timothy 2:1-2

    How should we respond?

    The government have taken away a fair degree of our freedom at the moment – in particular, not being able to meet or socialise beyond six people (including children). There are other things as well e.g. mandatory mask wearing, not being able to sing hymns together, and so on. Our freedoms are curtailed.

    I said at the start that sometimes restricting freedom is the right thing to do. If there was no pandemic, what the government have done would be oppressive. However, the government’s measures have been taken to protect society. Are the government’s measures proportionate and reasonable? Some people believe the government’s reaction has been a massive overreaction, e.g. Professor Karol Sikora or SAGE member Mark Woolhouse. Personally I think I am with them.

    However, I hope that – whatever our position on the lockdown – we can agree that freedoms being curtailed is a bad thing. What I’d like to see now, especially from church leaders, is this:

    1. A greater pushback on the restriction of our freedoms. I don’t mean disobedience, but I do feel most church leaders have been focussed on the ways we should be obeying the government – rather than challenging them. If our freedoms are going to be taken away like this, I think it’s right for us to keep the government accountable by challenging them to provide evidence and reasoning. I don’t really see that happening.
    2. Thinking through if and when it would be appropriate to disobey. In Acts 5:29, Peter and the apostles say: “We must obey God rather than human beings!” This is an important principle – Christians have a higher law than the law of the land. If the state’s restriction of our freedom is restricting our ability to obey God (and I believe it is) – at what stage do we disobey? Again, I’d like to see people – especially Christian leaders – helping people to think through these issues.

    I’m not arguing here that disobedience to the government is the right response, necessarily. We do live in a democracy and there are appropriate channels if we want to see change. (I am hoping to write to my MP shortly!) But it seems to me that we have been slow to engage with the issue of government restriction of freedom, perhaps because in our lifetimes the UK has been a reasonably free place. But if we don’t stand up for freedom now, I worry about what might be coming round the corner.

    If freedom is worth standing up for, it’s worth standing up for now, even and especially at a time such as this.

  • Justice must be justice for all

    Justice must be justice for all

    The righteous care about justice for the poor, but the wicked have no such concern.

    Proverbs 29:7

    I’ve just watched this Triggernometry interview with Dr Ella Hill. She is a medical doctor and a grooming gang survivor. I think it’s a hugely important interview and I wish everyone would watch it, or at least the first part of it.

    A few weeks ago I wrote about Black Lives Matter and consistency, and in that post I mentioned the victims of these grooming gangs. In the video here they make the very same point: why is it that most of the ‘woke’ social media crowd are up in arms about systemic racism in society, pulling down statues etc, and yet are doing precious little about the 500,000 victims of grooming gangs in the UK?

    As Ella Hill pointed out in the video, the crimes committed against her were racially and religiously motivated. Her abusers constantly made reference to her whiteness. Grooming gangs function because they see white women as easy prey and justify what they do because these women do not have moral standards (‘if they are not covered head-to-toe they are asking to be raped’).

    Why is it that people will ‘take the knee’ publicly in support of BLM, even the Archbishop of Canterbury (plus many other bishops and clergy) will talk about the need for deep repentance when it comes to racism (or rather, a particular kind of racism), but when it comes to these girls who have been raped – nothing?

    Justice should be justice for all

    This seems to me a matter of basic justice. It shouldn’t be a matter of identity politics. Where are the people in power standing up for those who have been abused? Where are the cries for justice for them?

    In a similar vein, when a Islamist man killed three people at a park in Reading last month, where was the public outcry? Why is it that it’s only certain kinds of terror attacks that get the Twitter crowd going – when it’s the ‘right’ kind of perpetrator?

    This, at the heart, is my problem with ‘woke’-ness and this kind of identity politics. They may claim to be “social justice warriors” but they don’t really care about justice – or at least, they don’t care about it enough. Justice, if it is to be proper justice, is to be justice for all. Justice for some is not justice. It reminds me of the famous quote from George Orwell’s Animal Farm: “all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.” Equality, fairness, and justice must mean treating all people equally.

    Of course, we can’t fight every battle, and I wouldn’t expect everyone to. But our society at the moment – even the church – will consistently fight particular battles but not others. Our bishops will queue up to criticise Dominic Cummings for breaking Lockdown rules (for example), but will make absolutely no noise when an amendment is tabled to the domestic abuse bill to relax controls on abortion.

    Stephen Cottrell, my former diocesan bishop (recently made Archbishop of York), recently said Jesus was black. He talks about racial inequality – and I’m sure certain sections of the media will applaud him for saying it – but he doesn’t talk about this particular inequality.

    Christianity and Justice

    It seems clear to me: we should stand up for truth and justice wherever they need to be stood for. even if it’s not ‘politically correct’ or convenient. The book of Proverbs has a lot to say about righteousness and justice, I quoted it at the start: “The righteous care about justice for the poor, but the wicked have no such concern.” (Proverbs 29:7).

    If we only care about justice for people who it’s fashionable to care about (e.g. BLM), then we don’t really care about justice. There’s a slogan which is popular among certain crowds at the moment: “Silence is violence”. I think there is a grain of truth in it. If we don’t speak up for those who can’t speak up for themselves, who will? As the Bible says:

    The Lord works righteousness
    and justice for all the oppressed.

    Psalm 103:6

    ALL the oppressed. Not just the ones it’s fashionable to show your support for.

    Overcoming evil with good

    What impressed me about the interview was Ella’s Christian faith. She quoted Jesus “Love your enemies” (strangely enough, also quoted by Laurence Fox in his Triggernometry Interview) and said she loved those who had abused her.

    Earlier on today I happened across this verse from Romans 12: “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” And this is the solution, the only solution, to the problem.

    The government seems to think that telling the truth will lead to an outbreak in anti-Muslim hate crimes. I think that’s why this is being hushed up, apparently a report is due which was supposed to be published but wasn’t. It seems to me that the reality is that hushing the truth up only feeds the far-right. There are those whose response will be hate – but hushing things up will not help, and in fact the ones who want to hate already do.

    By contrast, what we need to do is expose the truth. Justice, as we have seen already, must be done! But, at the end of the day, as Christians we have weapons which work at a far deeper level than the ‘woke’, who can only point, accuse, and ‘cancel’. We must never overcome evil with evil; rather, we must overcome evil with love.

    That’s the only thing which will actually work. More and more I come back to this when I see the terrible injustices happening in our society. The only thing which ultimately will make a difference and heal us – both as individuals but as a society as well – is the grace of God in Christ Jesus.

    At the cross, we see justice done: Christ died on the cross for our sins. The wrath of God was satisfied, the price was paid. And yet, we also see mercy: Christ dying in place of sinners. Stuart Townend’s song “How Deep the Father’s Love” puts it like this:

    It was my sin that held Him there
    Until it was accomplished;
    His dying breath has brought me life –
    I know that it is finished.

    Why should I gain from His reward?
    I cannot give an answer;
    But this I know with all my heart –
    His wounds have paid my ransom.

    There is a hope for our society, there is a hope for justice, and it ultimately it is found on an ancient hill outside Jerusalem.