Taking Reasonable Precaustions

Taking Reasonable Precautions

These days the words “reasonable precautions” is bound to make us think about the Covid-19 virus that has been taking away loved ones, generating fear, and rocking personal and national finances.  The important question is what is reasonable?  When the outbreak began I was still caring for my wife who had Alzheimer’s Disease.  At the beginning of March, a fall put her into hospital for three weeks, and by the end of that, the virus had moved to the top of the agenda.  Working with Adult Social Care and our main Carer, I managed to get her out of hospital and back home on a hospital bed with a lot of equipment.  I could see the dangers both in the hospital ward with five other very ill elderly patients, and the risks in Care Homes.  It certainly seemed reasonable - and indeed sensible - to get her home.

The past few days have seen an easing of the lockdown restrictions.  Unsurprisingly, it has also seen the outbreak of stupidity.  Some people have been acting as if there are no risks to life, like the 20 people clustered in a recreation field that I passed on my walk yesterday evening.  They were indulging in drinking alcohol and having “harmless fun”!  I gave them a wide berth, and emerged from the Recreation Ground just as the police were arriving. 

What would have been your reaction if it were you that had to walk past them?  I guess it might have been to think, “How can people be so stupid?”  But my reason for writing this piece is that there is an important spiritual principle, and the Bible also warns us to take reasonable precautions.  Here are two scripture references.

“Abstain from all appearance of evil” (1Thes. 5:22 KJV).  As a young Christian I was exhorted to guard my testimony.  “Even if it only looks bad”, I was told, “it could still ruin your witness.”  But this verse is not so much concerned about how things might appear to others.  Rather it is concerned about the risk to our own spiritual welfare.

As a teenager before God had got hold of me, another lad and I were chasing after some girls who had walked through some public gardens and were sitting in a bus shelter formed from a small concrete wartime air raid shelter. We planned to cross a flower bed to the top of the old shelter and lean over the top.  It sounded fun and in the fading light of day,  the apparently shallow layer of grass cuttings looked safe.  Unfortunately, the top of the shelter had been used for dumping grass cuttings for a long time.  Suddenly we were up to our waists in foul smelling slimy liquid.  

In this case it had the appearance of being safe and a lot of fun, but we should have taken a more careful look at where we were going.

The second passage of scripture that comes to mind is, “keep oneself unspotted from the world” (James 1:27 NKJV)  Some translations use the term unpolluted  but unspotted is the better translation in my opinion.  But this raises the question as to how the world could stain or put spots on our lives.

On one occasion when I was part of a team working in Devon we had been given excellent hospitality on a farm belonging to a Christian couple.  After a large Sunday dinner most of the team were relaxing in the living room, but I decided to follow the farmer who had gone off to milk his cows.

I found him in a herring-bone milking parlour.  The arrangement is that cows enter on either side into stalls separated by metal bars.  A chain is then hooked up behind their rear legs, presumably to make it safer for the person doing the milking.  As I arrived at one end of the parlour I could see the farmer trying to hook up a chain with one hand while having to hold onto something  with his other hand.  It was a long stretch and he was clearly in difficulty.  I immediately offered to help, but he knew my clothes were clean and was anxious they would get spoiled.

I assured him that I would walk carefully around the milk chambers and apparatus in the centre of the parlour.  So I wrapped my raincoat tightly around me with one hand, got to the chain and with finger and thumb carefully hooked the chain in place.  I then retreated the same way I had come in.  I managed to avoid brushing against anything dirty both times.

Then I looked down at the front of my raincoat and found it spotted all over with cow dung!  I had taken care, but I had gone into an unclean environment and suffered the consequences.  As  Christians, keeping unspotted from the world is not easy.  TV programmes, sexuallised commercials, the jokes and conversations of unbelievers around us, selfishness and greed, can all provide an unclean environment from which it is impossible to escape.  If we recognise the alien nature of this to holiness, we can then take reasonable precautions, and seek cleansing if we do get spotted.

Take care, and stay safe.

Barry

Rev Barry Osborne

CEO Rural Mission Solutions