Meeting of the Parliament
Meeting date: Wednesday, June 27, 2012
Official Report
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Time for Reflection
Good morning. The first item of business is time for reflection. Our time for reflection leader is the Rev Gordon Craig, the United Kingdom oil and gas industry chaplain.
The Rev Gordon Craig (UK Oil and Gas Chaplain)
Good morning. I am being inducted into the role of chaplain to the UK oil and gas industry. Technically speaking, I am a Royal Air Force chaplain who is undergoing a civilian workplace attachment as part of my resettlement to civilian life following 24 years in a military environment, so my life is a little complicated as my ministry progresses to its next stage.
A few weeks ago, I was reading for a sermon that I was due to deliver when I came across a quote from George Bernard Shaw:
“Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people.”
According to Shaw, you have to be unreasonable if you are to make progress, because progress demands disagreeing with what everyone else thinks; it means disturbing people; it means annoying people. Being unreasonable means asking questions about what everyone else takes for granted; it means being prepared to say what no one else has so far said; it means being prepared to go where no one else has been prepared to go. Politics, invention, and science: each demanded unreasonable people to make progress. Being unreasonable is also at the heart of the history of Christianity because, for the most part, Christianity sits uneasily with how our world understands matters.
However, here is the thing. If you are unreasonable just for the sake of it, surely you cross the boundary to ignorance. When I arrived in Aberdeen last week it came as a bit of a surprise to find that the oil and gas industry did some things better than the Royal Air Force. I tried, in Shaw’s terms, to be reasonable about that, and I kept quiet about how the RAF might have tackled similar situations. Being unreasonable over those matters would have displayed ignorance.
You and me are in the business of serving people. During your summer recess, you will be busy and your mind will whir away at some point to develop ways of progressing your plans and your policies. This morning, I leave you with a challenge. When it comes to doing the best for the people of Scotland, how will you identify what is reasonable and what is unreasonable? All progress depends on unreasonable people. That is an interesting thought, but one that assumes that everyone else is, of course, wrong.
May God bless you in your efforts to do the right thing for the people whom you serve.