My car crash - and what happened next.

 

Two years ago in May 2019 I was involved in what could have been a disastrous collision. I was driving towards Chippenham from Corsham when the car behind me crashed at speed into the back of my car.

Instead of pulling back, he continued to push my car forwards. For a few moments I accelerated and disconnected from him, but he also accelerated, crashed into me forcefully again, pushed me along for several hundred yards until my car left the road and turned upside down, partly on a hedge and partly in a ditch. 

 

If I had hit a tree or a telegraph post I would have been killed.  As it was, thank God, I was left hanging upside-down in my seatbelt completely unhurt with not even a scratch!  The other driver sped away but was eventually caught by the police.

 

For some unaccountable reason he was not taken to court,  but a couple of months later he did the same thing again, driving at speed into the back of a Range Rover. However, this time he failed to knock the Range Rover off the road, and instead overtook it, changed gear, speeded up to over 80mph on the wrong side of the road and crashed into a Honda, killing two elderly passengers and injuring the driver.

 

Nicholas Haynes appeared in a magistrates court and was tagged and forbidden to drive pending a Crown Court hearing.

 

The Court hearing was scheduled for June 2020 -  a year after the collisions, but was delayed until May 2021, presumably as a result of the covid lockdown.  His defence claimed that he had suffered an epileptic fit, and the judge instructed the jury to find him Not Guilty.     I am astonished, to say the least, by this verdict.  I am sure that he was fully in control of his car when he rammed me off the road. In the subsequent collision, which was the subject of the trial, it seems  unlikely to me that a man disabled by an epileptic fit would change gear, speed up and  steer past the Range Rover, only to crash into a car coming the other way. The defence argument of epilepsy seems preposterous, and is compounded by the jury being instructed as to what decision to make.

 

The newspaper report of the court hearing is at  https://www.wiltsglosstandard.co.uk/news/19333165.judge-directs-not-guilty-verdicts-fatal-crash-court-case/

 

My reaction.

You may wonder how I feel about this outcome.  Certainly I feel grateful that I emerged from my collision physically unscathed, and I feel sure that I was protected by God from harm. I do wonder though what the relatives of those who died will be making of the verdict.

 

I’ve had plenty of time to think about it all, and I believe that this is an unfinished story.  There spring to my mind two stories from history which provide examples of where a terrible situation turned into something completely different.  

 

The first Christian martyr.

Stephen was a leader in the early Christian church in Jerusalem.  His story is in the Bible in Acts 6 and 7.  He was arrested for preaching the good news about Jesus, falsely accused of blasphemy, and executed by stoning.   

 

If the story ended there, it would be just one more tale of a miscarriage of justice – though Stephen’s own reaction to what was happening to him was extraordinarily inspiring: if you don’t know the story it’s well worth reading!    The story could have ended with his death – but it didn’t!  The authorities had Stephen stoned as a warning to the growing numbers of believers in Jesus to keep quiet about their faith and do nothing to spread it.  Yet today there are hundreds of millions of Christian believers worldwide, whose lives have been revolutionised and whose practical work especially in health, education and voluntary service have made the world an immeasurably better place, The injustice of Stephen’s death has been turned on its head.

 

The slave-ship captain.

The second story which came to my mind was that of John Newton. (1725-1807). This is not so much about a miscarriage of justice as about a dreadful evil which, when we read on, became a great good.  A bad beginning with a good ending.

Newton lost his first job, in a merchant's office, because of "unsettled behavior and impatience of restraint"—a pattern that would persist for years. He spent his later teen years at sea before he was press-ganged aboard the H.M.S. Harwich in 1744. Newton rebelled against the discipline of the Royal Navy and deserted. He was caught, put in irons, and flogged. He eventually convinced his superiors to discharge him to a slave ship.   

 

Newton served on a number of different slave ships, eventually being promoted to captain. On one voyage he was caught in a violent storm. Having been influenced by reading the bible and Christian books he converted to Christianity during the storm, realising at the time how fragile life was and how dependent he was on God’s good will.  He continued for some years as a slave trader, hoping as a Christian to restrain the worst excesses of the slave trade, "promoting the life of God in the soul" of both his crew and his African cargo.

After leaving the sea for an office job in 1755, Newton held Bible studies in his Liverpool home. He became increasingly disgusted with the slave trade and his role in it. He quit, was ordained into the Anglican ministry, and in 1764 took a parish in Olney in Buckinghamshire. In 1787 Newton wrote Thoughts Upon the African Slave Trade to help William Wilberforce's campaign to end the practice—"a business at which my heart now shudders," he wrote. Recollection of that chapter in his life never left him, and in his old age, when it was suggested that the increasingly feeble Newton retire, he replied, "I cannot stop. What? Shall the old African blasphemer stop while he can speak?"

 

Newton became well known as a hymn writer, his most famous hymn being Amazing Grace.

Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me
I once was lost, but now am found
Was blind but now I see……

The point, to me, of both these stories – the martyrdom of Stephen and the conversion of John Newton, is that neither story ended with disaster.  In both cases, great evil was turned eventually into great good.    I can hope and pray that the court's verdict on the driving of Nicholas Haynes may not be the end of the story and may yet be turned to good at some stage in the future.

Here are two swords

 

Regular readers of my blog will know my enthusiasm for the Bible and for getting to know its contents well.  The Archbishop of Canterbury described the bible well as‘this Book, the most valuable thing that this world affords.’ as he presented the Queen with a bible during her coronation ceremony in 1953.   She has maintained a firm Christian faith throughout her reign, which started when I was a child and has lasted for the whole of my lifetime since then.  

 

 

This week our friend Matt Grylls gave an excellent short talk for Lent based on a passage from the Bible in Luke’s gospel. His talk can be found at

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjFLHLv2Tnk

 

In it Matt spoke of the challenge of facing dark times, and of knowing that there will be light at the end of the tunnel.    He used an extract from the bible where Jesus, shortly before his arrest, warned his disciples of difficult times ahead:                                                                                

Then Jesus said, “When I sent you out and told you to travel light, to take only the bare necessities, did you get along all right?”

“Certainly,” they said, “we got along just fine.”

 He said, “This is different. Get ready for trouble. Look to what you’ll need; there are difficult times ahead. Pawn your coat and get a sword. What was written in Scripture, ‘He was lumped in with the criminals,’ gets its final meaning in me. Everything written about me is now coming to a conclusion.”

They said, “Look, Master, two swords!”

But he said, “Enough of that; no more sword talk!”   Luke 22 35-38 (The Message translation)

 

The encouragement in this passage to face up to dark times and persevere until they are over is strong and helpful.  However, Matt described this as ‘a curious passage’ which indeed it is; not least because Jesus told  his disciples each to buy a sword, and yet very shortly afterwards Jesus was arrested and this took place:

The men stepped forward, seized Jesus and arrested him.  With that, one of Jesus’ companions reached for his sword, drew it out and struck the servant of the high priest, cutting off his ear. “Put your sword back in its place,” Jesus said to him, “for all who draw the sword will die by the sword.  Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels?  But how then would the Scriptures be fulfilled that say it must happen in this way?”   (Matthew 26.51)

At first this seems contradictory, and it got me thinking.   What was Jesus’s attitude to the use of arms?   In fact I think these events can provide a case-study in right and wrong ways of reading scripture.   It is clear that Jesus does not advocate the private use of arms, otherwise he would not have said “Put your sword back in its place”.

Yet the American gun lobby has used Jesus’s phrase “get a sword” as biblical support for the right in the American constitution of citizens to carry arms.  Years ago I was faced with a dilemma. I was a teacher in Uganda at a time when lawlessness and household robbery were real dangers.  My wife and I had to decide, as some expats did, whether to keep a pistol at the bedside for defensive use if there was a break-in.  We made a firm decision not to have one when we heard of another expat who accidentally shot dead a school pupil during a school riot.  (School riots were very prevalent at the time, and incidentally many pupils were adults, having had their education delayed by lack of school fees).  He wasn’t at fault – he was aiming the gun upwards to frighten the rioters off (they had been hurling stones very noisily at the tin roof of his house) , but someone grabbed his arm and he fired into the crowd by mistake).  

Pope Boniface VIII used the phrase  “here are two swords” in connection with his bull 'Unam Sanctam' of  1302 to represent the temporal and spiritual authority of the church.  i.e. to assert the notion that the church should bear arms in the way that a sovereign nation does.  

 

 

These examples teach us how easy it is to take single verses or phrases from scripture to defend a mistaken point of view by not looking at the wider teaching of scripture.  From this wider view we know that Jesus never advocated violence, even in self-defence.  It’s much more likely that when Jesus said ‘buy a sword’ he was using hyperbole (deliberate exaggeration) to emphasize a clear point that they were about to go through a difficult and dangerous time.  Jesus often used hyperbole or metaphor. (e.g. “you must be born again” -  a phrase which Nicodemus initially took literally (See John’s gospel ch 3) ;    “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven” (Mark 10.25) – if he meant this literally then probably many Christians in the developed world today would not qualify for heaven! By world standards most of us in Britain are very rich).

This all reminds me of the importance of reading scripture intelligently and widely, and of not plucking isolated phrases out of context to prove a point.   Thank God that he has provided us with the scriptures, and let’s be wise in our reading of them, as Matt was in his talk this week.

 

 

 

 

The power of words, the power of The Word, and the power of art

 

I was listening to a talk recently by my cousin-in-law Eve Lockett and would like to draw it to your attention. In it she speaks of the power of words and then focuses in on the power of The Word. This might seem to some of my readers like coded language, as indeed in a sense it is. ‘The Word’ is mentioned in the Bible, in John’s gospel chapter one verse one. For any of you who are interested in the meaning and purpose of life, where we come from, where we are going to, this is deeply significant. If, as I am convinced, we are created by God and created for a purpose, then it is obvious common sense to try and find out as much as we can about what God has to say to us, and I believe this is to be found in the pages of the Bible. (I have written about the Bible in my blog entry of December 10 2019 “The best story book in the world”) 

 

 Eve is a lay minister at Cumnor Parish Church, and you will find her talk as part of the online service there at 

https://cumnor.org/sunday-service-online-7th-february-2021/

I recommend it to you. It is a thought-provoking talk, and I listened to it twice: when you know what the speaker is going to say, it’s easier to think about it carefully during a second hearing: this is perhaps one of the advantages of the current lockdown and the proliferation of online talks. You’ll find her talk 23 min 33 sec into the video. 

 

My cousin David Lockett also has some videos featured on the Cumnor Church website. David is both an artist and an art historian, and has made several videos which analyse paintings and sculptures of religious significance by well-known artists. These are to be found at 

https://cumnor.org/category/art-faith/

Whilst we are in lockdown, some of us*   have more time than usual to sit and think about matters of importance. Eve’s talks and David’s art videos provide plenty of food for thought. 

 

* I do realise that, sadly, some of you have less time than usual!