Meeting of the Parliament

Meeting date: Tuesday, October 8, 2013

Official Report 792KB pdf

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Time for Reflection

Good afternoon. The first item of business is time for reflection, for which our leader is the Rev John K Collard, interim minister at Brucefield church in Whitburn.

The invitation to lead this time for reflection arrived in my inbox on 18 September—a date with some significance in this place. That day, I had spent a considerable time talking with somebody about the way she sees herself in relation to others. I believe that that person’s negative life experience had contributed to a skewed view of herself, and she often felt that others were looking down on her and judging her. The result was that she could easily become prickly and judgmental towards other people.

As I thought about that conversation and this invitation, I wondered whether there was a connection. Perhaps the connection is identity. Psychologists suggest that, in the early years of life, we begin to answer the following four questions about our identity. Who am I? What am I doing here? Who are all these other people? What happens to someone like me? The answers that we arrive at shape the life script that we follow. Those answers become the map of our identity.

For the person I was talking about, the answers have shaped a largely negative script. Who am I? Someone that others disapprove of. Who are the other people? Those who are criticising me. What happens to someone like me? I have to stand up and fight in order not to be bullied. That is her script and her identity.

Issues of identity can play a large part in how the population of Scotland think and vote. For some, identity might be more important than economics.

The Bible has some interesting things to say about identity. In one of Paul’s letters in the New Testament, he says:

“If anyone is in Christ, they are a new creation. The old has gone, the new has come.”

That implies that our identity—as fundamental as it is—is not set in stone and that, under the influence of religious and perhaps even political conversion, identity can shift.

Perhaps you and I—politicians and priests—have this in common: we believe that the identity that we promote is good and maybe even the best. That leaves us with a question. What is the effect of the identity that we seek for ourselves and promote to others and will it bless our friends and enrich our society?