Author: Graham Charkham

“Is lockdown punishing too many for the greater good?”

January 18, 2021 /

The title for this blog is a quotation from the BBC’s ‘Big Quotations’ programme in which Lord Jonathon Sumption said:

“All lives are not of equal value. The older you are, the less the value of your life because there is less of it left” ‘The Big Questions’, Series 14, Episode 1, @10 mins, 28 seconds[1]

Lord Sumption has a formidable intellect and is one of the pre-eminent law and history scholars alive today. These qualities do not amount to wisdom. Even allowing for the fact that Lord Sumption was constrained by the limitations of a TV appearance which does not permit nuanced development of arguments, at best it would have been wiser had he expressed himself differently, and at worst he appears to be inviting us to venture down a very dangerous path.

Sumption believes the government’s lockdown laws are disproportionate and unjustified. He believes the government should have taken into account that ‘all lives are not of equal value’ –in particular that the old are worth less than the young. Such arguments are horribly reminiscent of those of eugenicists and the Nazi argument that some lives are “not worthy of life”. (See also “War against the Weak: Eugenics and America’s Campaign to Create a Master Race” by Edwin Black). It is here that Sumption’s eminence as a lawyer does not assist him and may even count against him. Commercial lawyers are trained to develop the skill of making very fine distinctions and to hold in tension arguments which are subtly different from each other and then to tease out those differences to distinguish them from each other as if they were as separate as night and day. This is a difficult skill and one in which the best commercial lawyers excel. Sumption was one of the very best. In the rarefied atmosphere of a court this skill is priceless because it fits the forensic demands of the common law process which demands a minute examination of precedent. Outside the Courtroom the skill can become a hindrance where, for example, it blinds one to connections between arguments that one is holding separate in one’s mind. The BBC’s audience instinctively sensed that Sumption’s argument that “All lives are not of equal value” cannot be quarantined from policies which end in a very dark place.

If circumstances force us to make decisions which we know will result in the death of some and the survival of others, what criteria should we apply? That is a hard question and I have no neat answer. Of this I am sure: preferential treatment should not be given to a category of people on the basis that someone, even someone as eminent as Lord Sumption, regards them as ‘more valuable’ than others and treatment should not be withheld on the basis that some people are regarded as ‘less valuable’ than others[2].

I am a Christian and this informs my views on the issues raised in the BBC programme. To me, the crux of the matter is that all of us are of equal value to God, our creator and He places very great value on each and every one of us without distinction. I am reminded of the story Jesus told to a lawyer (Luke 10:25-37) about a half-dead person who was left naked on the road between Jerusalem and Jericho after robbers had beaten him up and stolen from him. Three people come across the body on the road but only one of them stops and looks after him. Jesus’ punchline in the story is ‘Go and do likewise’. Is it far-fetched to imagine that the one who stopped was the only one who saw that the half dead, naked victim was valuable?

  1. https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000rhfg/the-big-questions-series-14-episode-1 Accessed 18/01/21 ↑
  2. It is true that when medical resources exceed the demands put on them, doctors have to triage patients to ensure that the resources available are used appropriately. What is or is not ‘appropriate’ can be debated and ‘quality adjusted life years’ may have a part to play. What is being assessed in such a situation is the potential of the value of the treatment for the individual, not the value of the individual. Furthermore, that circumstance is different from the situation where a government is deciding what restrictions it should impose in order to limit the risk that the NHS might be so overwhelmed as to be unable to treat people in future. ↑

 

HOPE THAT WILL NOT FAIL

October 25, 2020 /

“Blessed Lord, who caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning: help us so to hear them, to read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them that, through patience and the comfort of your holy word, we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which you have given us in our Saviour Jesus Christ; who is alive and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.“

This is the appointed prayer for today, ‘Bible Sunday’. When Thomas Cranmer wrote this one sentence prayer, around four hundred years ago, he ought to have felt like a traveller who has succeeded in stuffing more into a suitcase than a suitcase is designed to carry. Success in having left nothing out is counter-balanced by the effort required to carry it.

There is so much in this one sentence that it is hard to follow. It is as if one opens an overpacked suitcase and can’t focus on any one object because everything falls out in a heap. The phrase which falls out of the sentence and catches my attention this morning is “hold fast [to]… the hope of everlasting life”.

If you had asked me why anyone should bother to read the Bible, before pondering this prayer I suspect I might have come up with such reasons as “to get to know what God is like” or, “To know Jesus Christ better”. This prayer brings into focus another reason ‘so that I may hold onto the hope of everlasting life.’ Holding onto hope whilst adjusting to the uncertainties of the Covid world in the shadow of climate change is challenging. Without hope, our zest for life quickly dulls and eventually withers altogether. Sustaining hope is essential to healthy living. What we hope for and what we place our hope in matters. Get these things wrong and disillusion and despondency follow. “Hope” is so valuable and attractive that we sometimes slip into the habit of talking about it as if it is self-standing rather than asking ourselves what/who we are hoping in and what we are hoping for.

How often, if at all, do we even think about the hope of everlasting life? When you have toothache, it is hard to think about anything other than the tooth that is aching. When all news channels are saturated by the coverage of the pandemic and our day to day life is forced into strange patterns, it requires a deliberate effort to make ourselves think past the virus and focus upon the hope of everlasting life. This is a very timely prayer. What are we hoping for? If our hope is in economic success or enduring good health then the pandemic must surely make us think twice. But what if our hope is ultimately in what comes after this life? What sort of re-orientation of our thoughts is needed to allow us to give pre-eminence to this hope?

The second thing that caught me by surprise in this prayer is the word ‘patience’. What has that got to do with the reading of scripture and holding onto the hope of everlasting life? Quite a lot, I realise, once it has been pointed out to me. Cranmer’s prayer is targeted at the way in which we read scripture […help us so to hear them…]. This is addressing not so much our method of reading scripture as our attitude towards the scriptures. I sometimes read scripture attentively, distractedly, casually, critically, carelessly, carefully etc but never would I have thought of describing myself as reading scripture ‘patiently’. Patience is required; I see that now. There is so much that is not immediately apparent. There is so much that is a mystery. There are so many truths that slowly unfold so that patience is indeed needed. One of today’s appointed readings is Psalm 119:9-16 which includes these words

“11  I have stored up your word in my heart,

that I might not sin against you…..

15  I will meditate on your precepts

and fix my eyes on your ways.

16  I will delight in your statutes;

I will not forget your word.”

This suggests that David was in the habit of bringing scripture to mind and letting it permeate his thinking. It suggests a patience with scripture; a willingness to accept that it might not be immediately clear how it is intended to be interpreted and applied by us in 2020 and that we should not be too hasty in applying the parts we think we understand or too hasty in ignoring the parts we don’t presently understand.

The third and final item to fall out of this suitcase addresses the question of who we place our hope in. This prayer includes all three members of the Trinity. It is addressed to God the Father and its grounds for hope rest upon the person of Jesus Christ and the author’s certainty that He is alive, that He reigns and that He, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, is eternal—i.e. unchanging, come what may.

This prayer may be antiquated but remains potent.

 

REFLECTIONS FROM THE COVID EMERGENCY WARD .

May 28, 2020 /

It is now six weeks since kind neighbours gave me a wonderful welcome-home from hospital with balloons flying, bunting flapping, a home-made poster  and even a Union Jack proudly hoisted.   Their kindness to me and my wife has done much to banish my memories of a week in the emergency Covid Ward and my nightmares have now stopped.  I have regained the two stone I lost and, like many others, I’m so keen to get away from the inconvenience of life under lockdown that I’m tempted to forget how bad this virus is and why life under lockdown is worth it.  So here is a blog based upon an email I sent to a friend shortly after I returned home.  It records my raw reflections on my experience which you may find shocking. 

“I have now been home for eight days and am gradually coming to terms with what I experienced in hospital, which was, frankly, traumatic. The hospital was so under-staffed as to be unsafe. Fifty percent of the staff were off sick and it was impossible to replace them all with agency staff. Those agency nurses who were hired had no one to teach them the basics and they were frequently working in areas in which they had no expertise. I spent one night on a general ward when my ability to take in oxygen, even with a mask, was dangerously low and I was moved to an emergency ward for treatment, which involved a machine which forces oxygen into the lungs through a face mask which covers the entire face.

 Not a pleasant procedure, but far worse was the experience of seeing patients die because there was no one to respond when monitoring machines were sounding alarms and knowing that if one was in trouble, it was potluck if there was anyone free to come to the rescue or whether all staff would be unable to respond because they were already dealing with others in a critical state. In short, I quickly realized that the staff were overwhelmed and the fear in their eyes and the trauma they were suffering was not their fault. It was like being in a ship which has been swamped by waves of ever-increasing magnitude whilst the crew were ever decreasing in number.

 Under those conditions I learned that Jesus is real; prayer was not difficult; worship was not difficult (I took great joy and strength from Bach’s ‘St Matthew’s Passion’ on Easter Day whilst on the machine.) After three days on the machine, my prayer had changed from, ‘Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me a sinner,’ to, ‘Lord Jesus, I know you are with me and you can see what’s going on around me and my fear. I’m buggered if I’m going to die here Lord: give me the strength I need to get out of here alive.’  Not likely to become a future congregational classic but short, heart-felt and to the point!

 There were also some God-created moments of grace I could not have manufactured. For example, on day one there was a cock up and I was abandoned in a ‘side ward’ (think cupboard, not intended to take a bed) whilst all my alarms went off and a deafening alarm which no one heard for a very long time. I was only rescued because I WhatsApped a registrar in another hospital and he realized the gravity of the situation and used official channels to speak to the registrar for health in the hospital I was in. This led to the nurse in charge coming to see me and apologising profusely for the fact I had been overlooked. She introduced me to another senior nurse, who was likewise apologetic and, though I could barely speak for lack of breath found myself forgiving and comforting them.  They were pretty upset.  Six days later, on the day before I was sent home, the second nurse mentioned sought me out in the recovery ward and asked me if would return to the hospital to encourage the nurses once I am strong enough. I am now chatting to a few contacts to see if I can line up resources that might offer a counseling / listening service for nurses so that they can know there is somewhere to turn. There were also opportunities to encourage the odd patient and nurses. [I have since discovered that the Samaritans have a hotline dedicated to NHS employees 0300 1317000]

 Coming out of the emergency ward I experienced nightmares so that sleep was difficult. I guess I probably got about one hour’s sleep in total each night I was in hospital so it is not surprising that I was mentally struggling. With each day that passes, and each night of rest I am gradually getting stronger and able to piece things together. I am no longer taking for granted things like a) quietness and peacefulness, b) the freedom to go where one wants when one wants, c) ability to wash oneself, toilet oneself and eat / drink.

 I have long wondered whether many of the evangelical churches, in a well-intentioned effort to be accessible and welcoming to visitors, have gradually become focused on what almost amounts to entertainment rather than presenting a balanced style of worship which includes lament, puzzlement, anger with God, bewilderment and suffering as part of the normal Christian life?  My experience in hospital has again made me wonder how effectively we are preparing followers of Jesus to cope with life crises?  If this pandemic forces us all to get real and look some of these issues in the face that will be all to the good. A recalibration is required. In essence, I think Jesus bluntly and repeatedly warned that He was serving the Father to his death and that his followers serving Him were on the same trajectory (eg: Take up your cross / No servant is greater than his master etc). Do we get that message accross effectively?  If not, the impression may be given that becoming a Christian entitles one to  a ‘get out of jail free’ card against hardship, disappointment and difficulty.  This superficial approach will surely need reassessment by the time COVID-19 has finished. We have seen nothing yet: I fear for those parts of countries such as India, Bangladesh and Africa where social distancing and hand washing are not options…

(A Sunday Times article, complete with pictures, gives a bird’s eye view of the hospital during the same period.)

A Prayer For Now.

March 28, 2020 /

Lord, perhaps Coronav is to enter my body,

Let it not gain pre-entrance via fear.

Your followers sang of your presence in death’s shadow

Banishing fear of evil.

May that be our experience now:

Through the mercy and grace of Jesus Christ.

Your Son our Saviour, Redeemer and Friend.

Amen.

Resources for today:

2 mins of prayerful reflection with Krish Kandiah https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000gn7w

15 mins of quiet reflection a day available at:-

Pray as you Go.  https://pray-as-you-go.org/

Lectio 365 https://www.24-7prayer.com/dailydevotional

 

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