Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)

Meeting date: Tuesday, June 16, 2020

Official Report 907KB pdf

Time for Reflection

Good afternoon, colleagues. We start our business, as usual on a Tuesday, with our first item being time for reflection. Our time for reflection leader today is the Rev James Maciver, who is the minister of Stornoway Free church.

Presiding Officer and members of the Scottish Parliament, beannachdan thugaibh à Steòrnabhagh. Blessings to you from Stornoway, and thank you for the opportunity to address you today.

Time for reflection is a term we could aptly and profitably apply to our national circumstances since the Covid-19 outbreak. My faith community, the Free Church of Scotland, has always regarded the Bible’s teaching as being pertinent to every aspect of human life, so my reflection theme today, without intentionally denigrating any alternative world view, is the Bible’s suitability and sufficiency for our national and personal needs.

In the whole sweep of its treatment of our human condition, the Bible takes account of nations as well as individuals. It places both within the unfolding events of history as being under God’s sovereign government. Its concern is for the whole of humanity, but also for the wellbeing of every individual, when it presents us with, and invites us under, the lordship of Jesus Christ. After all, our human traits affect every facet of life—individual and corporate. No nation can rise higher or sink lower than its people. Our nation will be what we all—Government and governed alike—make it.

In that light, I suggest that the Bible can be seen as our greatest asset, setting the principles and conduct of human life within the bounds of the God-defined “righteousness” that Proverbs, chapter 14, verse 34, calls that which “exalts a nation”.

The evil of racism cannot survive in the atmosphere of the Bible’s ethic that all human beings are created equally in the image of God, which in turn undergirds the Bible’s denunciation of sinful pride, hatred, prejudice, and intolerance, all of which are destructive of human dignity. The Christian ethic, founded on the Bible, contains the principles and practices of freedom of thought, speech, conscience, religion and worship—the fundamental liberties of the human spirit. It also demands our respect for human life—for its sanctity in all its stages and conditions, from the unborn to the grave.

Probably the most important consequence of the 1560 reformation in Scotland was the making of the Bible available to the people, for wherever the Bible went, education followed. It is the book of the people and for the people, which presents the ideals that enable the state to maintain its responsibilities to God and to its people, while simultaneously providing the framework for our individual liberties.

Thank you, and God bless you.