Time to restore civility to public debate and refuse to allow identity to define us - Stuart Weir

Bemoaning the gloomy condition of society has become acceptable and widespread. Acute anxiety about the cost of living is a desperate worry for many. The comfortably salaried have means to shield themselves, but many do not.

Other sources of despair – acute pressure on the NHS and political instability at home, war in Europe, environmental crises and the ongoing ramifications of the Covid-19 pandemic are no respecter of persons, nor of bank balances.

Yet, though faced with these immense challenges, our modern obsession with comparative trivia continues to distract, enticing us to turn a blind eye to the worst of these things, or worse still, to become the “armchair expert”.

In our social media obsessed age we find refuge in the algorithms that reinforce our own sense of identity by fuelling our preferences and prejudices, even as the world burns. Whether we are Unionist or Nationalist, Leave or Remain, or even our chosen gender identity risk becoming the issues that obsess and define us as human beings.

Stuart Weir, national director of CARE for Scotland.

The recent movie Don’t Look Up portrays a world too self-absorbed and self-interested to heed warnings of impending global catastrophe. It is a timely rebuke of celebrity culture and the allure of trivia. The reality is that we are all too often looking down – at our smart phones, our “tribes” and our own political prejudices – immersed in worlds where we are at the centre. Yet if ever there was a time to look outward – to embrace our fellow human beings, restore civility to public debate and to refuse to allow our identity to define us – this is surely it.

Ultimately, times of great national strain and crisis are siren calls to look all the way up to Heaven itself, and to heed the call of our maker. To see that neither capitalism or socialism; unionist or nationalist; environmentalism, nor any human ideology with which we choose to align ourselves, are the ultimate problem – or the solution. As someone once said, Christianity is a unique creed in that it diagnoses the fundamental problem, not as something outside of us, but inside of us.

The prophet Jeremiah lamented: “The heart” (the inner self) “is deceitful above all things” (Jeremiah 17:9). God’s Word shines a probing light into the deepest recesses of our lives, calling on us to deal with the darkness we find there by giving ourselves to Jesus who dealt with the power and cost of human darkness on the Cross.

When God told another ancient prophet: “A new heart also will I give you” (Ezekiel 36:26), the ultimate fulfilment came in the person of Jesus, by whose life, death and resurrection, human redemption is made possible for them that believe. In other words, what we are unable to do for ourselves, God can do for us and in us.

Ultimately, the seismic events that we are living through serve to remind us of our frailty, mortality, and dependence upon God. As the Bible makes clear, the day is coming when we shall stand before Jesus himself. This is a message that our political leaders especially need to hear. The Berwickshire-born theologian Thomas Boston (1676-1732) put it like this: “We are all in this world as on a stage; it is no great matter whether a man act the part of a prince or a peasant, for when they have acted their parts, they must both get behind the curtain, and appear no more.”

On that day the only thing that will matter is whether we accepted the truth of Jesus and availed ourselves of the power of his sacrificial death on behalf of all who shall place their trust in Him.

Stuart Weir is National Director of CARE for Scotland