Phill Sacre

Category: Politics

  • Why be “political?” – Defending Sacred Musings

    Why be “political?” – Defending Sacred Musings

    In my latest podcast, I mentioned that I had recently come under some criticism for the way that Sacred Musings is getting political. In particular, some friends who had been supporting me for the last year or so stopped their support because they believed me to be moving towards a divisive political ideology.

    I suspect they would not be the only ones to think that Sacred Musings is divisive. I mean, politics is kind of divisive by definition, isn’t it? So why get involved in it, when it might put people off hearing about Jesus? I have previously argued that Christians are not politically left or right, and also that Christians should be very careful about getting involved. So, why have I now decided to get involved?

    My aim in this post is to spell out why I think Sacred Musings is important and why I believe it is right to be ‘political’ in the way that I do.

    Jesus is political

    The first thing to say is that you can’t say “Jesus is Lord” without making a political statement. We’ve lost some of the force of this in the 21st century, but in the early days of the church this was a dangerous thing to say: in the days of the Roman empire, they used to say “Caesar is Lord”. Saying “Jesus is Lord” means that Caesar is not Lord – and not every worldly authority takes kindly to that kind of thing. (Try saying it in North Korea, for example).

    Saying “Jesus is Lord” means that everything in the world needs to be submitted to Christ’s Lordship. Abraham Kuyper famously said: “There is not one square inch of the entire creation about which Jesus does not cry out, ‘This is mine!’” (Interestingly, Kuyper was Prime Minister of the Netherlands from 1901-1905, as well as being a theologian.)

    What this means is that Christ has something to say about everything in our lives, not just the spiritual stuff: he cares about government policies as well as personal morality. This is not to say we can manufacture utopia by right government policy, but that Christians can and indeed should have something to say about government policies.

    A few months ago I wrote about what John Stott said about these things, and I think his words are completely true:

    It should be plain from these quotations that the One we preach is not Christ-in-a-vacuum, nor a mystical Christ unrelated to the real world, nor even only the Jesus of ancient history, but rather the contemporary Christ who once lived and died, and now lives to meet human need in all its variety today. To encounter Christ is to touch reality and experience transcendence.

    John Stott

    So, Jesus is relevant to everything. That’s the theological reason to be ‘political’. But there is another more practical reason why it’s important to get involved in politics.

    Everything is political

    The second reason to be political is that it’s impossible to avoid at the moment: everything has become politicised now. Even football – footballers have been ‘taking the knee’ before games, and England football managers have been preaching about racism!

    Politics is no longer about the best way to run a country. It has become as much about values as anything, and the use of power to effect positive change. In fact, it’s become very religious in nature: it wants to save us from our ‘sins’ – be that racism, or carbon emissions, or any number of other issues. Politics has become preachy. And I believe it is my duty, and that of every Christian, to ensure that the messages being preached are right – we need to judge it by what the Bible says. (As I hope people do with my preaching).

    Politics is no longer about whether you believe in big government or small government, or the welfare state, or free healthcare, or anything like that. It’s nothing like traditional Conservative vs traditional Labour arguments of old. The new, modern politics is there in every sphere of life, preaching its values to us. Whether we like it or not, Christians need to analyse what is being said to see whether it is in accord with the Scriptures and Christian teaching.

    To say nothing is to say something

    Let me quote once again from John Stott:

    What is certain is that the pulpit has political influence, even if nothing remotely connected with politics is ever uttered from it. For then the preacher’s silence endorses the contemporary socio-political conditions, and instead of helping to change society and make it more pleasing to God, the pulpit becomes a mirror which reflects contemporary society, and the Church conforms to the world. The neutrality of the pulpit is impossible.

    That last sentence is a killer: “the neutrality of the pulpit is impossible”. As we started out with, saying “Jesus is Lord” is a political statement. You can’t say “Jesus is Lord” without saying anything about the problems in society. If you don’t ever relate the Bible to what’s happening in society, you are doing people a disservice!

    Politics has become very contentious today. But if Christians and especially Christian preachers do not speak on contentious issues, people will think those issues are either neutral (i.e. the Bible doesn’t have anything to say about them), or – worse – think that the Bible is on their side. Because politics is all about values today, so many people believe they are on the side of goodness – it’s those bad people over there who are the immoral ones. If Christian ministers do not speak into that situation, we will not challenge people in the areas they need to be challenged.

    When the church looks like the world…

    In my latest podcast, I summarised Mike Ovey’s address from GAFCON II, which I think is a hugely insightful deconstruction of the root problem of the Western world. He talked about how the church doesn’t talk any more about repentance, except for certain sins:

    Now I want to be careful as I say that, because Western churches do repent of some sins, the legacy of racism, the history of colonialism, sins of social injustice within their cultures. But what fascinates me is that these are sins that the world recognises as sins in Western culture. It’s very safe in Western culture to say that racism is a sin. Very safe to repent of it. It even wins a certain admiration from the world.

    It’s always difficult to be sure about people’s motives, but when western churches repent of the history of colonialism and the murder of indigenous peoples, are we doing it because it is offensive to God or because it is – rightly – offensive to the world? I think the acid test of whether our repentance is really towards God is when God and the world disagree. If the benchmark of what counts as sin and requires repentance is really God’s will, then we will repent ourselves and call for repentance when God has said something is sinful, and will do so even when the world says otherwise. I very much fear that we fail this acid test, because I’m afraid that where we do repent, we repent of the things that the world finds offensive. As we all know too painfully, things that the Western world doesn’t find offensive, like sexual sins, the Western churches are increasingly disinclined to condemn. Repentance like that: is it really turning to God, or acknowledging the world?

    Mike observed that, when the church publicly repents, it repents of things which are offensive to the world. In fact, he even says that repenting of certain sins wins you a certain admiration from the world. It makes me think of Jesus’ words from Luke 6:26: “Woe to you when everyone speaks well of you, for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets.” When the world is congratulating you for the sins you are repenting of, one has to wonder what is going on. Especially when one is not saying anything about issues which the world does not think of as sins.

    This brings me to the bishops of the Church of England.

    Bishops and politics

    Recently, the entire house of bishops wrote an open letter to the government condemning the plan to process asylum seekers in Rwanda. They said: “this policy should shame us as a nation… This immoral policy shames Britain”. Rarely have the bishops spoken with one voice for an ethical matter like this! They didn’t speak like that against same-sex marriage, which is much more simple and straightforward in the Bible. They don’t speak like that against abortion, or about victims of grooming gangs. Only the Rwanda plan caused them to come together to talk about morality.

    So why should the bishops think it appropriate to speak on this issue, but not the others?

    What’s interesting is that the friends I mentioned who contacted me were proud of the bishops for speaking out about the Rwanda plan. I wonder by what measure the bishops were to be commended for speaking out, whereas I was to be condemned for speaking out on other issues in Sacred Musings. Why was this issue acceptable, whereas the issues I speak about unacceptable?

    CofE bishops certainly don’t shrink back from being political: over the last few years they’ve talked about Brexit, climate change, arms dealing, raising taxes to help the poor, institutional racism, and so on. All of which are political issues, and even divisive to some extent. In the case of the Rwanda plan, according to polls I believe it was about 50-50 support / oppose. We know that Brexit has been hugely divisive, but Justin Welby didn’t mind nailing his colours to the mast: he once said the EU was “the greatest dream realised for human beings since the fall of the Western Roman Empire”.

    It seems to me the root problem here is that the issues I speak out about go against the grain: they are not the kind of issues which will get you a pat on the back from the media, or make front page news. In particular, I often speak against ‘experts’, which makes me appear like a loony to a culture where ‘experts’ are idolised. The issues the bishops speak out on are never the kind of issues which you’re not allowed to speak about.

    I think many Christians today think that whatever the Guardian thinks, or whatever the general left-liberal viewpoint, is basic Christian common sense. This is why bishops speak out about issues which might be approved by the Guardian, but not on traditional Christian issues like abortion or same-sex marriage. The church has simply baptised the secular morality of the age without question.

    Bringing it into the open

    What I’m trying to do with Sacred Musings is not put myself six feet above contradiction. In fact, I saw on Twitter earlier that someone who had different political views to me had been engaging with the podcast – something I welcome.

    The point is, by exposing your ideas to scrutiny, you can debate them and refine them. By making them open, and in particular trying to base them on the Bible, we can come to the truth together. This does require bravery, because it means talking about things we don’t always want to talk about. At the same time, it will be good for all of us because I believe when we discuss and debate these things openly, our ideas improve.

    In fact, this is exactly what it says in the book of Proverbs:

    As iron sharpens iron,
    so one person sharpens another.

    Proverbs 27:17

    I found it telling that in the original message, my friends did not actually deal in any of the arguments that I made. They did not show where I was wrong from the Bible, or even where I had made logical / factual errors. (I’m sure I have made some). If they had, we could have talked about it.

    And this is the problem: when you don’t submit your own opinions to the Bible, you end up thinking your opinions are basic, common-sense, ‘correct’ opinions, whereas other people are being divisive. “We are simply following common-sense Christian views… your opinions are the divisive ones.”

    This is why I feel compelled to continue with Sacred Musings. I feel that we have lost our way as a society, we have largely lost our Christian instincts, and even Christians have succumbed to secular thinking. As Harry Blamires lamented way back in the 1960s:

    ‘The Christian mind has succumbed to the secular drift with a degree of weakness and nervelessness unmatched in Christian history … As a thinking being the modern Christian has succumbed to secularization.’

    I want to help us rebuild a Christian mind. And if that means coming to conclusions which some people think are ideologically offensive, then so be it. I only ask that, if you disagree, you make a better argument rather than simply calling me wrong.

  • Why the government needs accountability

    Why the government needs accountability

    Last week I started thinking about some principles of government. This time I focus on the issue of accountability: why do we need it, and where has it been over the last 12 months or so?

    Links mentioned in the video:

    The funeral of our craven, spineless media by James Delingpole

    Why has Google censored the Great Barrington Declaration?

  • What is the government there for?

    What is the government there for?

    Last time we thought about how it feels like we’re in an abusive relationship with the government. So what should the government be like instead? Let’s take it back to first principles. Romans 13:1-5 is one of the few Bible passages which deal directly with the government. Let’s see which principles we can draw out.

  • On experts and being too optimistic

    On experts and being too optimistic

    A few days ago, the Irreverend Podcast discussed my previous article about lockdown and the end of “experts”. I enjoyed the episode and I thought the discussion was helpful. It’s nice to find like-minded clergy who don’t buy into the typical Guardian worldview! Anyway, the conversation did provoke me to think about what I wrote – in particular, whether I am being a little too optimistic in thinking that this could be the end of Experts.

    On the podcast, they took a more pessimistic approach: I think the general mood was that it could take many years before the truth really comes out about lockdowns, and that it’s very unlikely we’ll see the end of Experts any time soon. I would like to explain why I wrote a more optimistic post.

    The short version is, I’m optimistic because of what I believe about the wider political context. Lockdowns, as I said last time, are a manifestation of a bigger problem – hence the discussion about Brexit. You could also throw into the mix climate change, wokeness, and various other related issues such as transgender (some of which I talked about in my post about political truth). I also believe that God is at work amongst all this mess.

    Let’s go back to the problem which has been developing over the last 30 years or so.

    Somewheres and Anywheres

    David Goodhart - The Road to Somewhere

    A few years ago I read David Goodhart’s excellent book, The Road to Somewhere. I thought it was a really helpful analysis of where we are and why, when the country voted to leave the EU in 2016, many of our politicians and media class simply couldn’t understand it. If you haven’t read the book, that link will introduce the main idea.

    What really struck me then, which has only increased over the last few years, is that there is now a huge disconnect between the views of most politicians and the media and most working class people. It’s a problem which cuts across the whole political spectrum – left and right. Labour, the party which used to be known for advocating for workers rights, has moved onto a more ‘progressive’ ideology. Paul Embery recently wrote about this in his book Despised (subtitle: “Why the modern left loathes the work class”).

    It does seem to me that the ordinary, working-class British people do not have a voice advocating for them in politics at the moment. They are simply seen as a problem to be solved (by re-educating them to be less racist, for example). They are only convenient when politicians want to score votes in traditional working-class areas.

    Sadly, that distinction even applies in the church: I think the church has failed the working-class community. The church has become too middle-class and out of touch, and it tends to only reflect middle-class concerns and not God’s. I’ve been in meetings of clergy where it was virtually assumed that everyone shared the same Guardian-reading worldview. A few years ago, in one of my final curacy meetings, a curate colleague of mine said to someone who was moving overseas: “Remember us on this island… with the Tories.” She said it without any embarrassment or irony whatsoever. That strikes me as perfectly summing up the attitude of a majority of the CofE.

    Lockdown and the working class

    One of the points which I’ve seen several people make about lockdowns is the way that it’s a very middle-class concern. The people who can work from home are generally middle-class professionals. Most working-class people have been out working through most of the last year. J.J. Charlesworth said on Twitter:

    Now obviously there are problems when trying to define ‘working class’ and ‘middle class’. The boundaries are very blurred. But I think there’s more than a grain of truth in this.

    The people running the country tend to be people who are in comfortable jobs. They tend to be living in nice houses with gardens. In general they don’t have to deal with living in a one-bedroom flat with four children who are trying to share one laptop for home schooling.

    Most of the people I know who are most pro-lockdown are fairly comfortably off. By contrast, the people I know who have been working through the lockdown tend to be a bit more blase about it. (I guess you’d have to be!). Before Christmas we had an electrician come round. We chatted a bit, and he said something like “I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but…” This isn’t an isolated occurrence by any means. I’ve spoken to several people, e.g. at the school gates, who have many reservations about the lockdowns.

    Back to Brexit: a reason for optimism?

    I’ve mentioned Brexit a few times now. I think Brexit is fascinating because it exposed the divide that was there in society (e.g. somewheres / anywheres). It had been there for a long time, but didn’t really come to the fore until 2016.

    But here’s the thing: Brexit happened. It happened against all the odds – despite the fact that the establishment thought it was a stupid idea. Despite the fact that powerful people sought to use just about every trick in the book to undermine it. The Conservatives won a huge majority in the last election, largely on the promise that they would “get Brexit done”. Labour’s second-referendum idea turned out not to be a vote winner, neither was the Lib Dems “bollocks to Brexit” slogan.

    The "Bollocks to Brexit" bus

    When the people of this country were given a choice, they voted for Brexit.

    I think that this fact alone should give us hope that people can and will turn against the lockdowns. But there are a few other reasons for confidence.

    Other reasons to be optimistic

    • The Daily Mail has run some fantastic skeptical articles over the past few months (and it has people like Peter Hitchens writing for the Mail on Sunday, who has been staunchly anti-lockdown since the beginning). The Mail has just about the biggest circulation and reach of any newspaper, so this is not a trivial thing.
    • The lockdowns have had a massive effect on our lives which we’ll be feeling for some time to come. This is unlike something like the Iraq war. That was something which happened a long way away and hasn’t had so much of an impact on us. By contrast, we will each be feeling the impact of lockdown for decades – economically of course, but also in terms of mental health, social anxiety, people who died due to delayed treatment / screening etc. Every day we will be confronted with the enormous cost of lockdown. I think this will be a huge incentive not to simply brush it under the carpet but to hold those responsible to account.
    • There are various new political movements rising up against what’s been happening. The one I am particularly interested in is Laurence Fox’s Reclaim Party (interestingly, Laurence Fox announced today that he was running for Mayor of London). He is standing up not just against lockdowns but against the woke takeover of society. (I wrote about Laurence Fox last year). It seems that what has happened with lockdowns has actually galvanised a political reaction.

    Finally, I think there is a theological angle to all this, which I will finish with.

    The theological angle

    Over the last few years I’ve really got stuck into the Psalms. I try to recommend everyone to read a Psalm every day (I did a video about this a while back). Last year I went through the Psalms from the start, and Psalm 12 really jumped out at me:

    1 Help, Lord, for no one is faithful any more;
    those who are loyal have vanished from the human race.
2 Everyone lies to their neighbour;
    they flatter with their lips
    but harbour deception in their hearts.
3 May the Lord silence all flattering lips
    and every boastful tongue –
4 those who say,
    ‘By our tongues we will prevail;
    our own lips will defend us – who is lord over us?’
5 ‘Because the poor are plundered and the needy groan,
    I will now arise,’ says the Lord.
    ‘I will protect them from those who malign them.’
6 And the words of the Lord are flawless,
    like silver purified in a crucible,
    like gold refined seven times.
7 You, Lord, will keep the needy safe
    and will protect us for ever from the wicked,
8 who freely strut about
    when what is vile is honoured by the human race.

    My own feeling is that we are living in a Psalm 12 moment. We are living in days when ‘everyone lies’ – lies are the stock-in-trade of our media and political class. (I’ve talked about this in my post about truth). They have no fear of God, they don’t believe in any absolutes – exactly as Francis Schaeffer foretold.

    And what we are seeing is the poor plundered and the needy groan: I think the government are actually inflicting great harm upon our society, especially the poorest and most needy. People who are living in one-bedroom flats with four children, people living in care homes who are unable to see visitors, people who have lost jobs and livelihoods. This was happening to an extent before the lockdown, but the lockdown has exposed it for what it is.

    For a while now I’ve been thinking and praying for a new reformation – we need root and branch reform of the church, politics, and society in general. (Interestingly, the late principal of my theological college was praying towards a new reformation of the church). I think the Lord may be answering that prayer with these lockdowns.

    I think the technocrats have stepped over a red line, they have inflicted great harm upon people they have been entrusted with. But the Lord sees and he is not silent. We have been governed by fools for long enough (a fool in the Biblical sense – that is, someone who rejects the Lord and his ways). I believe the Lord is coming to raise up a government and a society which does honour him.

    I’ll finish with some words from Ezekiel 34, where the Lord speaks against shepherds who have not cared for the sheep:

    ‘“Therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the Lord: as surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, because my flock lacks a shepherd and so has been plundered and has become food for all the wild animals, and because my shepherds did not search for my flock but cared for themselves rather than for my flock, therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the Lord: this is what the Sovereign Lord says: I am against the shepherds and will hold them accountable for my flock. I will remove them from tending the flock so that the shepherds can no longer feed themselves. I will rescue my flock from their mouths, and it will no longer be food for them.

  • Will Lockdown be the end of “experts”?

    Will Lockdown be the end of “experts”?

    A few years ago Michael Gove made his infamous statement: “people in this country have had enough of experts”. At the time I think I found it vaguely amusing – at the time, there were a lot of experts who had been weighing in about the EU. But over the last few months it’s come back to me more and more. It does seem like the last year of our lives has been government by experts. The proper word for it is technocracy.

    What is technocracy? This is how Wikipedia puts it:

    Technocracy is a system of government in which a decision-maker or makers are elected by the population or appointed on the basis of their expertise in a given area of responsibility, particularly with regard to scientific or technical knowledge.

    So a technocracy is government by scientific or technical experts, rather than democratic representatives. Perhaps over the last few months, the thought has popped into your mind (as it has mine): “When did we elect SAGE to govern us?”

    But this is not a new problem. We’ve been living in a kind of technocracy for a while now. The roots of it go back decades. But, for people of my generation, the EU is maybe the biggest symbol of technocracy.

    Technocracy and Brexit

    Michael Gove’s original comments about “experts” were made in the context of Brexit. Looking back now, it’s fascinating how almost the whole of the establishment were against Brexit. Politicians, the media, even the Archbishop of Canterbury, all spoke out against Brexit. They said that leaving the EU would be bad for us as a country, that there would be terrible consequences.

    Brexit was generally considered a Bad Idea by the movers and shakers in the world. The people who know things. You know… the Experts. The economists were telling us how terrible things would happen. Terrifying predictions were made about job losses, about how companies would simply up and leave the UK. World War Three would break out. (Not exaggerating – I seem to remember David Cameron saying something to that effect).

    The experts were united: leaving the European Union was a Bad Idea, and how DARE the silly little people vote the wrong way. How dare the people disregard the wisdom of the Experts! Some of the papers hardly even bothered to disguise their contempt for Brexit voters (something I’ve written about before). “Did these people not know what would happen if we voted to leave? Didn’t they hear all the terrible doom-laden predictions of the Experts?”

    Every time there was some Brexit-related bad news, many of the media class would roll their eyes and say “I told you so! I told you it would be a catastrophe!” Almost as if they wanted it to fail simply so they could be proved right.

    These predictions of doom seem not to have come to pass, not yet anyway. In fact, yesterday I read an astonishing article in the Guardian (the same Guardian which has been pretty much anti-Brexit since the beginning): “I hate to say it, but Britain’s doing OK. Even Germany envies us…” Things seem to be going far better than even most Brexiteers could have hoped for. How could that be, when the Experts told us the opposite would be the case?

    Vaccine rollout has not been an EU success story.

    Technocracy and Lockdown

    It does seem to me there are a lot of parallels between what happened around Brexit and what has happened over the last year about lockdown:

    • The Experts are constantly terrifying the government, not to mention the public, with doom-laden predictions about what might happen unless we take a particular path. The most recent example is the government ditching plans to lift the lockdown before Easter because Sage modelling predicted 55,000 more deaths if they did.
    • At every point the government have made clear that they are following or being guided by “the science”, which really means the particular group of Experts they have on Sage.
    • Almost the entirety of the establishment are behind the Experts.
    • There does seem to be a high correlation between the people who were most vehemently anti-Brexit and the people who are most strongly pro-lockdown.

    Of course there are some differences. A lot of people who were pro-Brexit are also pro-lockdown, in my opinion largely because they’ve been terrified by the government’s fear campaign. But I think the similarities are striking. We in the UK now live in a technocracy.

    So, what’s wrong with that? Surely it’s best to let the people with particular expertise make the decisions? They may get it wrong sometimes, but isn’t it best to listen to them? To answer that question, let’s think about technocracy from a Christian perspective.

    A Christian response to technocracy

    Are the technocrats trustworthy?

    Neil Ferguson

    One of the problems with technocracy from a Christian perspective is that the Experts are as flawed as the rest of us. In my previous post I talked about Francis Schaeffer’s book The Church at the End of the Twentieth Century. This is exactly the point that Schaeffer makes – a man may wear a white coat, but he is still a fallen man. Science may make claims to objectivity but, sadly, in the real world it is still subject to social pressure and bias.

    I think this is what we’ve seen over the past few months. For example, Neil Ferguson (who became known as ‘professor lockdown’ because his modelling team at Imperial College was instrumental in the government’s decision to lockdown) was unable to keep lockdown rules himself. He resigned from Sage after breaking quarantine rules to have an affair. (Although he appears to be back on Sage, let’s leave that for the moment).

    We’ve seen numerous examples of this: experts who call for tough measures have themselves not been able to keep to those measures. But I think there is an even deeper issues with technocracy.

    An alternative saviour

    C.S. Lewis was, in my opinion, one of the most insightful men of the twentieth century. He, along with Francis Schaeffer, have predicted much of what has gone on to happen. Let me quote you some of his 1958 essay Is Progress Possible?

    On just the same ground I dread government in the name of science. That is how tyrannies come in. In every age the men who want us under their thumb, if they have any sense, will put forward the particular pretension which the hopes and fears of that age render most potent. They ‘cash in’. It has been magic, it has been Christianity. Now it will certainly be science.

    Lewis says that government in the name of science is tyranny. Why? Let’s think about it: one of our society’s greatest fears is death. It’s got to the point where we just try to brush it under the carpet as much as possible. We all know that everybody dies, yet we pretend that it’s not the case. In a society like that, what happens when a scientist comes along who tells you you can save thousands of lives simply by following a particular course of action? If people are genuinely scared of death, the power of the scientists will be almost unlimited. There will be nothing people won’t do in the name of the science, as long as it saves them from death.

    And, as the old maxim goes, “absolute power corrupts absolutely”. A scientist who starts out with the best possible intentions can be corrupted by the power. Imagine them thinking “just how many lives could be saved if we just did…?” If the only goal is extending the duration of our lives, this is probably scientifically possible in ways which are highly dubious and unethical. This is what happens when you hand over control to science.

    Science is a great tool but a terrible master.

    What about values?

    And this brings me to the final point. Let me quote once again from C.S. Lewis’ essay:

    Again, the new oligarchy must more and more base its claim to plan us on its claim to knowledge. If we are to be mothered, mother must know best. This means they must increasingly rely on the advice of scientists, till in the end the politicians proper become merely the scientists’ puppets. Technocracy is the form to which a planned society must tend. Now I dread specialists in power because they are specialists speaking outside their special subjects. Let scientists tell us about sciences. But government involves questions about the good for man, and justice, and what things are worth having at what price; and on these a scientific training gives a man’s opinion no added value. Let the doctor tell me I shall die unless I do so-and-so; but whether life is worth having on those terms is no more a question for him than for any other man. [My emphasis]

    That last sentence I think is the clincher.

    Let’s say a special life support machine was designed. It could keep a human being alive for 200 years. The only snag is, it could only keep you that long in a comatose state. You’d be technically alive, but unable to actually live. Would that be the kind of life worth living?

    As C.S. Lewis says, that’s not a question for science. It’s a quality of life question, which can’t be answered by purely scientific means. Scientists can tell us what may lengthen or shorten our lives, but whether it’s worth doing on those terms is simply not a question they can (or should) answer.

    Over the last twelve months, in order to keep us safe, we as a country have been under various legal restrictions as to who we can see. At the time of writing, it’s still illegal to meet someone – even outside (unless you’re going for a walk). Parents and grandparents have been forbidden from seeing their children and grandchildren. People have been unable to see elderly relatives in care homes. Young children and babies have been unable to enjoy cuddles with their families and all the social interaction they need at that age.

    The government have effectively decided, following the science (as they always make clear) that our safety from a particular virus is of more value than our mental health and wellbeing, than businesses, than our normal lives. Is that the correct decision? Well, it’s certainly not one that scientists can answer. I for one am angry that the decision was made on our behalf to keep us safe, when in many ways it has done anything but.

    The end of Experts?

    All this is rather depressing. But I think there are signs of hope. As lockdown goes on, I think people are beginning to ask more questions. People are beginning to ask whether the lockdowns are really worth it. For example, a lot of people are looking over to other countries who have had less restrictive lockdowns and seeing that they haven’t fared any worse:

    There is a growing body of scientific evidence (see also here and here) that lockdowns do very little except cause unconscionable harms.

    People are also beginning to ask questions about the number of deaths. Slowly but surely, people are waking up to the fact that maybe the Experts are not infallible.

    As I said before:

    My suspicion is, when all is said and done, that the government (aided and abetted by the media) will have done nothing but make things worse. Lockdowns, masks, closing down businesses, everything. Of course, at the moment we can’t know for sure.

    My hunch is that the next few months and years will see the whole government strategy over the past 12 months taken apart, piece by piece. I suspect we will see at every point how the measures taken were not made on a sound scientific basis but from panic and a desire to be seen to be doing something.

    I sincerely hope and pray that the Experts will be shown up for what they are. I also hope those people who gave the Experts unquestioning loyalty will do some serious soul searching.

    The government we need

    The government we need is a government who knows what is truly important. A government with principles – not just Experts. I believe a government with principles would have stood up against the lockdown and gone with something more like the UK’s previous pandemic plan (which was ditched in March 2020. The previous plan didn’t include lockdowns). Perhaps a government with principles might have been more loath to trust a strategy from the Chinese Communist Party – not known for its good record of human rights.

    At the end of the day, as Francis Schaeffer says, there has to be some absolute. If you don’t have an absolute, there can be no true knowledge. The Bible says:

    The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge,
    but fools despise wisdom and instruction.

    Proverbs 1:7

    The fount of all expertise is the fear of the Lord. That’s the primary kind of expertise that the government needs: not an expertise in science, or technology, or politics – but an expertise in the fear of the Lord. If we get that right, everything else will follow.