Plenary, 21 Apr 2004
Meeting date: Wednesday, April 21, 2004
Official Report
417KB pdf
Time for Reflection
Our leader for time for reflection today is Sandra Holt, national assessor for the Church of Scotland's ministry selection process.
Sandra Holt (National Assessor for the Church of Scotland's Ministry Selection Process):
The decisions that we make, as individuals or communities, do not just say something about the kind of people we are: the decisions that we make, make us.
My three teenagers measure their freedom by the number of decisions that they make for themselves, but experience teaches us all that there is more to it than that. Freedom, it turns out, is about the quality of our choices as much as it is about their quantity or scope, and making good decisions—the kind that go on delivering what they promise—is a complex business. Young and old, we want to be decent people who contribute to a just society, but we want other things too, and it can be difficult to make sense of the multitude of powerful motives that are charging around inside us.
Christian discernment suggests three guidelines to help us sift our desires. First, do your homework—good decisions are informed decisions. Freedom requires knowledge and openness to all the possibilities. Secondly, stay balanced, inclining neither this way nor that, while you consider all the options. Identify the weightier arguments and allow the best option to emerge from honest and rigorous reflection on those priorities. Thirdly, know your goal. For Christians, that goal is God's greater glory, but the God whom many know is a demanding dictator. Measuring up to the demands, real or imaginary, that religious folk think God makes on them can spell disaster.
Whatever your ultimate goal, do not give in to the demands that it seems to make; respond only to the demands of your own integrity. The end never justifies the means and no legitimate end needs to try. To strive to give more to a task than we have the passion for eventually leads us to feel guilty or resentful. Far from increasing our energy for the cause, uneasy obedience makes it diminish.
Applying those guidelines in a Parliament may mean working to identify the common cause that unites all, giving it priority over group interests. That sounds like a new way of doing politics to me. We should beware, however. Often the problem is not in knowing the right thing to do, but in having the courage to do it. When we lie on our death bed, courage will not be our problem, but regret may be, so a useful way to cut through prejudice, fear and fantasy is to imagine yourself there already and to ponder what decision you would want to have made, then make it—and God bless.