Contents
- Time for Reflection
- Topical Question Time
- Child Poverty
- Business Motion
- Motion without Notice
- Decision Time
- Renfrewshire Health and Social Care Partnership
Time for Reflection
Good afternoon. The first item of business is time for reflection. Our time for reflection leader today is Dr Amy Orr-Ewing, author and theologian, and honorary lecturer at the University of Aberdeen.
Before the impact of the Covid pandemic, the Scottish household survey in 2018 was the first to include a question on loneliness. The results of the survey showed that 21.3 per cent of people reported feeling lonely at some point in the previous week. The figure was higher than average for people in the age groups of 16 to 24-year-olds, 25 to 34-year-olds and the over-75s. The young and the old are lonely. We are in a cultural moment crying out for connection.
Relationships matter greatly to humanity, and our theme today is relationship. I suggest to you that for relationships—whether personal, political, corporate, familial or international—to flourish there needs to be a grounding: a basis that makes sense and that works in practice.
The French philosopher Voltaire famously said:
“We look to Scotland for all our ideas of civilisation”,
and perhaps one of the books that has most shaped Scotland—the Bible—might have something to say that could help us with the question of relationships. In the book of John, chapter 1, it says:
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning … In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”
Here are two things that matter greatly for relationships: words, or truth, and goodness. John’s gospel opens with that phrase,
“In the beginning was the Word”.
Meaning, language and truth are real in an ultimate sense. Our hunger for clarity and integrity in public life—and not for the doublespeak of Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four”, the propaganda of totalitarian regimes or the fake news and algorithm-driven echo chambers of our day—points us to a deep truth about ourselves as humans beings. Words matter and truth matters; we are creatures of the word.
In relationships, goodness also matters. In public life, goodness matters. The agnostic historian Tom Holland points out in his book “Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind” that many of our deeply held intuitions about what goodness is have been indelibly shaped by Jesus Christ. It is humility rather than pride and glory; it is love of neighbour, self-sacrifice, faithfulness and kindness.
John Knox said:
“When I think of those who have influenced my life the most, I think not of the great but of the good.”
Words matter and goodness matters. It is not weakness to believe that; it is strength. A coherent foundation for truth and goodness can be found in the person of Jesus Christ, who in John 1 is described as the light shining in the darkness.