Yesterday the besetting sin was wrath. The health board I do my clinical time with has over-spent: this is leading to difficulty with beds. And I was listening to a young man who was suicidal, and needed to be safe: finding him a bed to give him asylum, rest, treatment — and knowing there were three or more people wanting that very bed, which was the last one in the state system. We are facing bed cuts in a time of population growth — and in my field you can predict the number of inpatient beds you need from you baseline population.
So part of me wants to Rant: the prophets were good at this.
1 Ah, soiled, defiled, oppressing city!
2 It has listened to no voice; it has accepted no correction.
It has not trusted in the LORD; it has not drawn near to its God.
3 The officials within it are roaring lions; its judges are evening wolves
that leave nothing until the morning.
4 Its prophets are reckless, faithless persons;
its priests have profaned what is sacred, they have done violence to the law.
Now, there is a pushback. One of my colleagues and namesakes confronted the CEO and asked her if she would be accountable for the consequences when he could not admit someone who needed a bed: in psychiatry our complication rate is measured in the shrouds of the suicides. However, the central government holds up other places as models: I have worked in some of them, and one of the reasons I moved to this town is because I considered those services dangerous: they were beginning to measure their success not by recovery, or decrease in suicide rate, but the frequency of serious inquiries, which they reserved for greater tragedies.
And some days I wonder if having ambulance chasing lawyers would be better than our no fault compensation system. For the threat of lawsuit does concentrate the managerial mind.
But the word of God corrects me. We are to submit to authority. We are not to expect the authority to be righteous — Zephaniah has a fairly accurate description of nobles and judges in his prophecy — but we are to accept them for the Lord. We have to let our wrath go.
I have discovered that the gym is good for this. But you do need to deliberately cut the weights you are using down so you don’t hurt yourself — for you will be driven to higher intensity and frequency when you are in this mood.
11Beloved, I urge you as aliens and exiles to abstain from the desires of the flesh that wage war against the soul. 12Conduct yourselves honorably among the Gentiles, so that, though they malign you as evildoers, they may see your honorable deeds and glorify God when he comes to judge.
13For the Lord’s sake accept the authority of every human institution, whether of the emperor as supreme, 14or of governors, as sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to praise those who do right. 15For it is God’s will that by doing right you should silence the ignorance of the foolish. 16As servants of God, live as free people, yet do not use your freedom as a pretext for evil. 17Honor everyone. Love the family of believers. Fear God. Honor the emperor.
18Slaves, accept the authority of your masters with all deference, not only those who are kind and gentle but also those who are harsh. 19For it is a credit to you if, being aware of God, you endure pain while suffering unjustly. 20If you endure when you are beaten for doing wrong, what credit is that? But if you endure when you do right and suffer for it, you have God’s approval. 21For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you should follow in his steps.
22 “He committed no sin,
and no deceit was found in his mouth.”
23When he was abused, he did not return abuse; when he suffered, he did not threaten; but he entrusted himself to the one who judges justly. 24He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that, free from sins, we might live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed. 25For you were going astray like sheep, but now you have returned to the shepherd and guardian of your souls.
We have to be very clear here. Peter is not talking as much about the gentle and righteous leader, judge, husband or employer. He is not talking about th person you would dream about,
Peter is talking about the bastards in your life. The oppressive. The tyrants.
He is talking about the foolish, the feckless and the corrupt.
And he says that this is a place where by serving we can witness. We can lead. We can show by our lives that there is a better way, a more honourable way.
And this is very difficult for us. For this teaching has allowed for the tolerance of some pretty awful political systems — and let’s face it, Peter was, according to tradition, killed by one of those rulers.
And Peter himself at times confronted the council of Jerusalem — saying he would disobey their orders and would preach. And that could lead to your death: here the stories of the martyrs show us that we are not alone.
Demetrios was born in a small village near the city of Tripolis, in the Arcadia area of the Peloponnesos. In the early nineteenth century the Turks had firmly controlled this area for more than three centuries.
As a teenager, Demetrios was apprenticed to a Turkish contractor in Tripolis, who convinced him to refuse Christ and to accept Islam for the good life. Demetrios even changed his name and became Mehmet.
Fortunately, his father found Demetrios after several months, drew the boy away from the Islamic environment, and returned him to the Christ once again. The young Christian fervently prayed for forgiveness, and became very contrite. Leaving Tripolis, Demetrios made his way to the island of Chios where he hoped to show his sincere repentance.
At Chios, he was admitted to a monastery in which he want to cleanse himself of his shameful act and to serve the Savior with all his heart and soul. Many monks heard his confessions and were deeply moved by the young man’s sincere remorse. So they let him remain amongst them. Finally, he was tonsured a monk after the proper training. Wishing to console Demetrios, the abbot reminded him the story of Peter’s denial of Christ, after which Apostle Peter repented and became a saint.
Demetrios lived a very ascetic life, but he was troubled by an unfulfilled wish to perform an act that would completely expiate his sin. He thought the right way would be to return to Tripolis, the place of his fall, and there confess his belief in Christ before those who were witnesses of his acceptance of Islam. The abbot tried to dissuade him by citing the decision of the David to preach the word of God for all his days rather than sacrifice himself in an untimely death. But Demetrios felt in his heart the need to faced the Turks in Tripolis.
He returned to Tripolis and avowed openly his fidelity to Jesus. For this confession he was executed as the turncoat from Islam. The holy relics of this new martyr, who gave his life for Christ on April 14 lay in the Church of Saint Demetrios in Tripolis, Greece
Now, the Ottoman empire of that time is merely of historical interest. The Soviet empire of last century is also buried under the radioactive waste of Chernobyl. The Maoist project did not engage the minds of the Middle Kingdom, and the Chinese are turning to Christ. The blood of the martyrs, the witness of their lives, makes the church grow.
We need to remember that the tyrants of this day will have their time: it will end. There is no thousand-year Reich: even the empires that lasted changed radically — between dynasties, from pagan republic to Christian Byzantium.
The managers in the health system I work in come and go. But the nurses and doctors remain, and remember. I understand that Her Majesty’s main job is to tell the current PM (she has had 10 or so in her reign) something like “that was tried by McMillan, or Thatcher, or Blair, and this is what happened as a result”. She is the institutional memory: she has the role of speaking for those who would suffer under the new policies.
The hidden constitution of the British Parliamentary system is not a democracy. It is a royal republic: the king is a president — while the US system is a republican monarchy, with a president as a king who rules, not reigns. When these move to a democracy, they become oppressive and they will fall, and fail.
So this period of oppression — of over regulation, of political correctness — will end. We need to continue to serve those who are “above our pay grade” and do our jobs correctly, properly, for it is a witness to Christ. But they cannot take our speech away. We may have to resort to civil disobedience. Our duty may call us to confront the administrators because we have ethical obligations to those we serve.
And we may end up bearing the consequences of the law of the day: for the law can be very unjust. But if society goes down that path too far that society will end. And that has always been terrible. Pray instead that our witness leads to the tyrant’s repentance.