‘Acts of God’ still exist, I understand, in law and certainly in matters relating to insurance but in general parlance I don’t think they do – but then neither does ‘general parlance’. 

I suspect it was easier when there was a general belief in the existence of God.  When there was an earthquake or a flood or a natural disaster we could blame God. God could take it; or we assumed He could.

Now that it is simply an act of nature it’s more difficult to know where to lay the blame. Topically it can be climate change for which it seems governments can be the culprits for allowing carbon emissions. Then again governments can be blamed for not being sufficiently prepared to deal with the disaster. Of course, if it’s a flood it may be that houses have been built, unwisely, on the floodplain and then the planners can share in the blame, or the building industry.

It’s not only natural disasters. Now many blame their parents, their circumstances, their education, (or lack of it), abuse they suffered or the care they believe they should have had and didn’t. 

“It’s not my fault” seems to be a common cry.

I am fortunate to have had loving parents who, I believe, did to the best of their ability what they thought best for my care and that of my brothers and sisters. They acted within the thinking of their time. I’m sure that mostly they got it right and only sometimes got it wrong. 

At the end of the day that’s not the point. It’s not so much what happens to me in life that matters but what I do with what happens to me. The choices are mine. Even if I am the victim of injustice only I can take control of how I deal with my future. 

Please God others will be moved to help me.

For three days the BBC News website included a story about a cruise ship docking in bad weather. It reported that a ‘small number of people’ suffered ‘minor injuries’.

On Wednesday I went to a BBC Proms concert at the Royal Albert Hall when more than five thousand people had a wonderful evening. To the best of my knowledge there were no injuries.  

In Kennington Road, walking distance from here, is the Imperial War Museum. It contains exhibits that far from glorifying war serve as a chilling reminder of the dangers which lie in human nature. It’s housed in a fine building that was originally erected to rehouse a hospital – the Bethlehem or Bethlem Hospital. It came to be called ‘Bedlam’. It was for patients who, it was considered, had incurable mental illnesses.   

In the eighteenth century one of the things people did for entertainment was to go to Bedlam to look at the lunatics.  If you paid a penny you could look into an individual cell. Many did.   It seems incredible that people would do that but they did. 

Then in the nineteenth century people went to visit Joseph Merrick, the so called Elephant Man at the Royal London Hospital. He had been rescued from a circus where he had been on display. The people who came to see him at the hospital treated him as being human, which was not how he had been treated before. However he was still a curiosity, a medical curiosity. People came to look.   

I find it uncomfortable to admit that in the early 1950’s at the Christchurch A & P Show I paid my money, sixpence I think or it may have been a shilling, to go in to see the fat lady. The banner read ‘The Fat Lady’ and the man outside the tent called out for custom “Come in, come in and see the fat lady, when she walks she wobbles”. Why did I want to go and look? I don’t know. And I think it’s extraordinary that in my lifetime in New Zealand , a normal part of the side shows at an Agricultural and Pastoral show was indeed a tent, a sideshow, where people paid to see a fat lady. 

Thank goodness we’ve come a long way since then.  But have we? 

For some time we have had  ‘reality’ television programmes where people ‘bare all’.  We watch. The participants are voluntary, paid I imagine, and I can turn off the television if I don’t like it. No one forced people to go to Bedlam to see the lunatics. It was entertainment.

Much of the media coverage of the recent tragic babies’ murder case makes me very uneasy. I am in favour of a free and responsible press. However the argument that what we are given is justified because it is ‘what people want’ doesn’t ring true. Even the argument that it is in the public interest must, I think, be open to question. Too much of the coverage of this case seemed voyeristic. 

The passage of time may separate the viewers of those Bedlam patients, Joseph Merrick the ‘Elephant Man’, the Christchurch ‘Fat Lady’, and our contemporary media reporting but I am far from convinced that we, presenters and viewers, have really changed so very much.  

It was pointed out to me recently that because I am old white and male I have a privileged, restricted and distorted view on many subjects – colonialism and gender identification being just two of them. It was said in the nicest possible way of course and I may have got the message slightly wrong but that was the gist of it.

The answer seemed to be for me to read more widely, presumably the same books that my younger friend is reading, so that, presumably, I come to the same conclusions that my friend has come to. There was no point in my trying to see things from someone else’s point of view, I was told, because I can’t – I am old, white and male.

On reflection it reminded me of a time when I told an older, respected friend of a doctrinal view I had come to, a view very different from his. He responded by saying, “Oh Simon, and I had always thought you were intelligent.”

However I did tell my younger friend of an incident at the swimming pool that very morning. It was Thursday, Silver Swim, for the over sixties. We’ve come to know each other a little and we are quite a mixed bunch.

Into the swimming pool came two young Asian women clearly under sixty, maybe twenty something. There was a little discussion among us. Nothing aggressive or unpleasant just whether or not to say anything to draw the pool attendant’s attention to the situation.

One of our number had the confidence to take matters into his own hands and attracted the attention of the pool attendant who spoke nicely to the young women who apologised pleasantly for their mistake and on we went. The man who spoke to the attendant was black.  

I related this incident to point out that none of the old white men in the pool had the confidence to speak up. My friend responded that a comment wasn’t possible without being there but that I must not make a case from a single incident. I was simply making an observation.

I do realise that there are times and situations in which the voices of young black women are not heard.

“William Gladstone has not one redeeming defect.” Disraeli

Generally the last person to accept that a painting is a fake, despite all the evidence that this is the case, is the person who bought the painting. At least part of the reason for this is having to admit a failure of judgement. The buyer thinks it diminishes his standing in the eyes of those who know their paintings. So the buyer clings defiantly to the possibility that the evidence is faulty or in some way rigged. 

In the world of objects and artefacts having an ‘eye’ for the true is very important – or an eye for the fake. My father said once that the most useful person on a committee was the one who was invariably wrong. Once they had spoken he knew which way to go – the other way.

Never being wrong seems increasingly to be expected of those in many professions. In the Christian tradition there are high expectations with the recognition that making mistakes is part of the deal. It’s why forgiveness is so necessary. 

Perhaps those who do not believe that climate change is happening in the face of hard scientific evidence have invested their own self worth or self esteem in a view that is being proved wrong. It may be the admission of mistaken judgement that is difficult to make.

Many of us know what it is to have trusted someone and been let down. Part of that pain is not in the betrayal, however great or small, but in our own lack of judgement and misplaced trust.

Those who commit themselves to a political cause or more particularly to a political leader are caught in a terrible bind. The evidence against the politician may pile up but it is the personal commitment, the facing up to one’s own misjudgement in the face of the evidence that causes the problems.

When it comes to blind adherence to individual people rather than paintings, causes or policies I think the problem may be idolatry.