Plenary, 25 Feb 2009

Meeting date: Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Official Report 434KB pdf

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Time for Reflection

Good afternoon and welcome back. As always, the first item of business is time for reflection. Our time for reflection leader today is Father Noel Colford from Holy Cross, Brodick, on the Isle of Arran.

We could begin this afternoon by pausing for a few moments in sympathy and respect for David Cameron and his wife Samantha on the loss of their son Ivan.

Barack Obama says that his mother was

"the most spiritually awakened person"

he has ever met. She had an "unswerving instinct for kindness" and an "abiding sense of wonder". She was brought up without belief in God and her religious scepticism was reinforced by the Christians she encountered in her youth, especially the

"sanctimonious preachers who would dismiss three-quarters of the world's people as ignorant heathens doomed to spend the afterlife in eternal damnation."

Christians should acknowledge that there are passages in the New Testament that can lead to this kind of narrow-minded bigotry. Unfortunately, the great passage in the gospels that shows that this bigotry is against the mind of Christ is not often fully appreciated. The parable of the Good Samaritan is well known, but the point of the story is usually missed. The Jewish people were intensely hostile towards the Samaritans on religious and political grounds. The Samaritan is made the hero of the story to show that the people whom we may think of as our enemies may actually be better people than ourselves, and to teach us that to love our neighbour means not simply to care for him, but to respect him whatever his race, religion or political persuasion.

Appropriately enough, the only person whom I have heard explain the parable in this way is not a Christian but a Sikh: Indigit Singh, who recently pointed out that he himself could come under one dictionary's definition of heathen.

The Scottish Government's campaign against sectarianism is one that all Christians—and, indeed, everyone—should support. If the Scottish Parliament wishes the people of Scotland to treat one another with respect, it should lead by example. The present political situation, in which parties have to co-operate, requires respect and compromise.

Barack Obama says that there was

"a golden age in Washington"

after world war two when, regardless of the party in power,

"civility reigned and government worked"

and when there was a trust and respect between politicians that helped them work through their differences and get things done. Respect for one another not only oils the wheels of government, it powers them—it gets things done.