As we digest the latest news about the pandemic – how its behaviour has changed, and how our behaviour will need to change as a result – there is a predictable tendency in many of us to look for someone to blame. As the statistics move in the wrong direction and new restrictions are imposed on what we can and can’t do; as we experience the upset of seeing the new freedoms so recently restored to us once more snatched away; as we look forward anxiously to the winter months and a Remembrance tide and Christmas season without the familiar observances and celebrations, it’s all too easy to point the finger at… well, who? It can’t be Brussels this time, so it must be the government’s fault – except that there seems to be a general acknowledgment that the choices faced by those in power are genuinely difficult, and nobody appears to be volunteering much in the way of an alternative.
I know! Let’s blame the students! They’re young, inexperienced, an easy target. And undoubtedly if you take a bunch of teenagers who have just left school and lock them up all together in a hall of residence with no parental control, some money in their pockets and a bar close by, social distancing, even at 1 metre plus, is unlikely to be the first thing on their minds. It must be their fault! Now, I am fully aware that my memory is nowhere near as good as it used to be, but even I can remember not very long ago Bournemouth beach covered by bodies enjoying the sun; and holiday-makers from up country being greeted by abusive messages fixed to road bridges in Devon and Cornwall. I don’t seem to recall anything about students then – apart from sympathetic outrage at the way the exam system had swindled them out of the university places we now wish they weren’t enjoying quite so much.
My point is not to defend irresponsible behaviour by some members of any social group, student or otherwise, but to point out how short and how selective our memories are, how strong is the tendency within us to lump people together by age or social group (or gender, or race, or sexual orientation, or nationality, or faith, or …) and how quick we are to pin the blame on someone else – to judge, when judging is not our business.
“What do you think?” asked Jesus. “A man had two sons. He went to the first and said, ‘Son, I want you to go and work in the vineyard today.’ The son answered, ‘You must be joking!’ – but later he changed his mind and went. The father went to his second son and said exactly the same thing to him. The boy answered, ‘Sure, no problem dad. Right away.’ – but he did not go. Which of the two,” asked Jesus, “actually did the will of his father?” They said, “The first.” Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you.” “Judge not,” said Jesus, “and you will not be judged. Forgive, and you will be forgiven.”
Comments