Message from Tim


Boris, Confucius and Jesus

 What is your view on the most recent restrictions introduced by the government in the fight against coronavirus? Draconian? Arbitrary? Too little, too late? Scaremongering? For a host of different reasons, most people seem to be unhappy, both with the new regulations and with the heavier penalties for breaking them.

My bedtime reading for the past few weeks has been Defending Shame: its Formative Power in Paul’s Letters, written by a Chinese scholar Te-Li Lau, who argues that, far from being a bad thing, inculcating a proper sense of shame has a role to play in the formation of good moral character. At about the time that the new government restrictions were announced, I was reading what he had to say about the Confucian role of shame: ‘The Master said, “If you try to guide the common people with coercive regulations and keep them in line with punishments, the common people will become evasive and will have no sense of shame. If, however, you guide them with Virtue, and keep them in line by means of ritual, the people will have a sense of shame and will rectify themselves’ (Lunyu 2.3). Comparing the two approaches, I invite you to reflect on the last six months and to draw your own conclusions about the extent to which Virtue has led the way…

Don’t worry – I have not switched my allegiance from Jesus to Confucius; nor actually, have I been persuaded that shame is a good thing. But when I compare Boris Johnson to Confucius, I am reminded a little bit about the dispute between the Pharisees and Jesus over keeping the law. From the best possible motives, the Pharisees were into regulating every area of people’s lives: for them, holiness was a matter of rigorous adherence to a comprehensive catalogue of detailed commandments. Jesus, on the other hand, advocated living by just two basic principles – loving God with all your being and loving your neighbour as yourself.

Living as we are in the midst of a global pandemic with all its attendant consequences for our health, our jobs and our social wellbeing, what does loving your neighbour as yourself look like for you? At its most basic level, this altruistic focus means that I will be meticulous in taking precautions to make sure that I don’t inadvertently pass the virus on to my neighbour or to anyone else with whom I come into contact. Beyond that, Jesus’ words invite us to reflect on how we love it ourselves when other people are good and kind and generous and helpful and gracious to us – and then to take the initiative by actively treating others in the very way you would like them to treat you. The Golden Rule has a lot more to do with virtue than with adhering to a set of regulations.

If I am honest, a niggling sense of shame almost deters me from posting this in the bulletin, for the simple reason that when I look at how I live I see how little I practice what I preach. So what right have I to ask you to do something that I find so difficult? But I guess it’s a matter of who you follow. I am not asking you to follow me – or Confucius, or Boris Johnson, for that matter. I am asking you to follow Jesus, who consistently lived the way he taught. And because we are flawed human beings, we will all fail when we try to follow him, but we will still be better people for having made the attempt, and at the end of the day, we have the promise that our failures will be covered by his grace, because ‘whoever believes in him will not be put to shame’ (1 Peter 2:6).