Saying Sorry in 31 Seconds

There is something not quite right about the post-mortem over Maria Miller’s resignation. It smells unpleasantly sanctimonious.

I am not for a moment saying that she didn’t make serious mistakes. There are misjudgements that someone in public office can’t afford to make. This has always been true, but scrutiny is especially thorough nowadays in the aftermath of the parliamentary expenses debacle. It’s understandable that the public is not in the mood to be lenient. We are right to expect the highest possible degree of accountability. And it’s a pity she didn’t offer to repay the higher sum about which questions had been asked, even if technically she had been cleared of the requirement to do so. It would have been a welcome sign of good faith.

What I find disturbing is how Ms Miller’s apology to the House has been endlessly picked over since she spoke. Someone on Any Questions called it (if I remember aright) the worst speech from a parliamentarian he had ever heard.  Why? Because (I am paraphrasing) it was perfunctory, insincere and lacking any real sense of contrition. The assumption is that an apology lasting a mere 31 seconds cannot possibly be genuine. Ergo it didn’t do the job. ‘It wasn’t fulsome enough’ I’ve heard it said – by people who clearly don’t know what that word really means.

There’s a lot I don’t know about what has gone on in this affair, but I can’t help thinking that it’s dangerous to make judgments like this. For one thing, how long would Ms Miller’s speech have to be to carry conviction? Two minutes? Ten? Half an hour? You see the difficulty. You can’t calibrate the quality of an apology with a stop-watch. In one of his parables, Jesus compares the attitudes of a Pharisee and a tax-collector. The Pharisee offers a long platitudinous (fulsome, indeed) address to his Maker. The tax-collector simply beats his breast and says ‘God be merciful to me a sinner’. That’s a lot shorter than 31 seconds. Yet Jesus commends him for those few words. When the Prodigal Son returns to his father to make a long contrite speech, his father cuts him off in mid flow and embraces him.

I once had to apologise to a friend I’d hurt. I tried the Prodigal’s long speech but the words would not come. All I could whisper was: I’m really sorry’. Then there was silence. I did not trust myself to speak. ‘It’s ok’ he said after a bit, and put his arms around me. Just then he didn’t need to know more than that I’d said it, and I only needed to know that he had heard. Yes, it can take a lifetime to work through the consequences and make reparation. It’s hard to say sorry but harder still to forgive, if my limited experience is any guide. What mattered to me all those years ago were the few brief words that enabled something important to begin. Saying sorry is a speech-act that opens a door.

So who is going to peer into Ms Miller’s heart and say, on the basis of what she said to Parliament, that she didn’t really mean it when she said she was sorry? We can never know what goes on inside another person; it’s hard enough when we try to look into our own hearts. Is this why Jesus says that we should not judge others, lest we come under judgment ourselves? Queen Elizabeth I wisely said, against the puritans of the 16^th century, that she ‘would not make windows into men’s souls’. Nor should we.

It’s seductive to obsess about feelings and inner motivation. In today’s Guardian, Loose Canon Giles Fraser says that when it comes to forgiving other people it’s what we say and do that matters, not what we feel. ‘Forgiveness breaks the cycle of revenge and makes possible a future that is not trapped in the violence and hatred of the past.’ We can extend that to all the remembered and forgotten failures and flaws that haunt the present and get in the way of reconciliation.

Perhaps we should take an apology at face value, not try to analyse its level of sincerity but simply say: wrong has been acknowledged and publicly apologised for. The words we needed to hear have been said. It’s not cheap grace to recognise when it’s time to move on.

Equal Marriage: Gamaliel's View

After the vote in parliament on equal marriage, how should the churches respond?

 

Some of the rhetoric of church leaders has been little short of hysterical. To call gay marriage a ‘catastrophe’ or hammering the final nail in the coffin of marriage is not the measured language of responsible debate. In a recent tweet, I urged that Christian leaders should turn the volume down.

 

I have been a bit baffled by some of the arguments on both sides.  For instance, it worries me that in the draft legislation for same-sex marriage, there does not seem to be any clear understanding of marriage as a covenanted relationship that requires loyalty and fidelity.  I am told that this is because the lawyers can’t agree about what constitutes same-sex consummation or unfaithfulness.  So straight away this makes equal marriage unequal because it is not defined in precisely the same covenanted way as heterosexual marriage. It is not surprising that some Christians are concerned about weakening the classical understanding of marriage by not placing the vow of faithfulness right at its heart.

 

On the other hand, I am worried by assumptions on the ‘conservative’ side that to allow couples of the same sex to marry somehow undermines the institution of marriage. If this were true of gay marriage, it would be even more true of unions including a divorced party. Indeed, if the vow of fidelity is of the essence of marriage, then divorce and remarriage are in theory a far bigger threat to it than enlarging covenanted unions to include same-sex couples. In fact, this has not turned out to be the case. So I can understand the claim that to advocate gay marriage is in fact to honour marriage as a wholesome institution, good for individuals and good for society because it fosters stability.  This is the very opposite of subverting it.  So I recognise that it's seen as a matter of justice (I don't say human rights) that same-sex couples should be able to enter it too.  

 

There’s a story in the Acts of the Apostles that may help.  A Jewish leader called Gamaliel had to intervene in a furious row about whether or not the infant Christian movement should be tolerated. When things threatened to turn violent he said this: ‘Fellow Israelites, consider carefully what you intend to do…because if this plan or undertaking is of human origin, it will fail; but if it is of God you will not be able to overthrow them; in that case you might even be found fighting against God!’ (Acts 5.33-39)  In today’s febrile atmosphere of heated debate, what would Gamiliel say to us now?  Here are some thoughts.

 

1  We should remember our history. In his speech in Acts, he warns the traditionalists not to be too hasty to condemn.  The Church of England has been in this position several times in the past century.  The furious debates about artificial contraception in the early 20^th century are barely remembered now, but at the time contraception was rejected by bishops and church leaders as a terrible threat to the nature of marriage as meant for procreation.  The legalisation of homosexual acts between consenting adults was another example, the remarriage of divorced people in church yet another.  The Church of England has found ways of accommodating itself to all these developments.  We have seen this as recently as the past decade.  Bishops’ initial hostility towards civil partnerships has become at least a working recognition of their importance to the extent that they are now invoked as desirable as arguments the new-fangled gay marriage. The church will, I’m pretty sure, do this once again and come to recognise equal marriage; if it can’t welcome it, it will at least become pragmatic about it in time. 

 

2  Wait and see how the argument develops in the months ahead. Don’t rush into condemnation. It doesn’t do any good, it will probably make you look foolish, and in the future you may find you wish you could take back things you had said in anger or haste.  Gamaliel does not invoke the principle of Christian charity, but I think he would have urged us to debate with restraint, moderation and courtesy.  The megaphone never clarifies arguments; only thoughtful reflection can do that. There is no point in shouting at Parliament for supporting equal marriage, or at those in the church who are at least prepared to consider that there might an important principle here.

 

3  There is no likelihood of turning back the tide of events.  So the church must learn to live in the light of them. We are beginning to do this in the welcome we give to gay people in the church (though there is still a long way to go: if the bishops really believe that civil partnerships are good or not-bad, the church should be able to bless them as it has come to bless the marriages of the divorced).  What we especially need to do now is to make sure that the legislation is informed by the wisest and best insights that Christianity has brought down the centuries to its understanding of marriage, such as the dimension of fidelity and covenanted love that I mentioned earlier.

 

And if charity directs the way we respond to equal marriage as everything else, I believe we shall continue to hold the goodwill and respect which, despite everything, many people still have for the established church.