Line of Duty viewing figures highlight our desire for justice

The current series of Line of Duty has been attracting record audiences. The opening episode of season six of the BBC’s police drama was watched by 9.6 million viewers, breaking all previous records for the programme. The fifth episode went on to attract 9.9 million viewers, making it the second-most watched drama across all channels in many years. Those us of who catch up with the series during the week also helped BBC iPlayer to its best quarter on record.

With the series about to reach its dramatic conclusion, even more records could topple as Superintendent Ted Hastings and his team at Anti-Corruption Unit 12 hunt ‘bent coppers’ all the way to the top echelons of the Police Service.

So what is it about the show that makes it such compelling viewing? Is it Jed Mercurio’s writing? Is it the characterisation? Is it the actors, such as Glasgow’s Kelly Macdonald or Greenock-born Martin Compston? Is it the Belfast backdrop which gives a recognisable feel to fictional areas like Moss Heath?

I would argue that above all, what makes the series so gripping is that deep down, we all have a powerful longing to see justice done. To see injustice and corruption rife among the very people who should be protecting the public and bringing criminals to justice, is almost too much for us to bear. And so we long to see those pulling the strings unmasked and brought to justice. To have the book thrown at them, as Hastings would put it.

In sport, in the rule of law, in our work – in every area of our lives we have a burning desire to see fairness reign and justice prevail. From players surrounding a referee on a Saturday after a poor decision, to drugs cheats winning medals – from the anger at seeing an incompetent colleague promoted, to seeing dangerous criminals get away with a slap on the wrists – our desire for justice pervades every area of life.

But identifying our longing for justice is one thing. Explaining why it’s so innate is another. After all, if the human race has got to where it is today by the survival of the fittest, then there wouldn’t seem to have been much room for justice in our development.

And if justice is just a social construct, why does it mean so much to us? Why is there so much anguish when murderers like Harold Shipman take their own lives and (seemingly) escape the punishment they deserve?

For me, the Bible’s explanation of why we care so much about justice is far more compelling. This deep-rooted desire for justice in us all comes from the fact that we’re created in the image of a God of justice. The Bible tells us a number of times that ‘the LORD loves justice’. We were created in his image – and remnants of that image remain in us all.

And yet while the Bible explains where our desire for justice comes from, the fact that there’s a God of infinite justice isn’t automatically good news for us. Because one day, it will be our turn to stand in the dock. God tells us that ‘all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God’ (Romans 3:23). And even if our good deeds could somehow outweigh our bad, that wouldn’t be enough – God’s standard is perfection.

Nor can we take the attitude that if something happened a long time ago, it doesn’t matter. Historical abuse enquiries rightly seek to bring people justice, despite the fact that their crimes may have been perpetrated decades ago. A just judge won’t ignore wrongdoing, just because many years have passed.

And so the fundamental question of Christianity is how God can forgive sin and still be just. If God ignored wrongdoing, he would cease to be God. As someone has put it, ‘The moral fabric of the universe would tear in pieces if God were not fair’.

And yet in God’s infinite wisdom he has provided a way in which we can be forgiven, and he can still be just. When Jesus died on the cross, he did so bearing the sins of all his people. Martin Luther called it ‘The Great Exchange’ – Jesus takes our wrongdoing on himself, while his record of perfect obedience is counted as ours.

And so as we await Line of Duty’s climax, we know that a far more significant day of reckoning lies ahead. But because of Jesus, his people can look forward to it without fear.

An updated version of this article appeared in the Stranraer & Wigtownshire Free Press, 6 May 2021

Dumfries & Galloway: Lowest % church attendance in Scotland

According to the latest UK Church Statistics report (2020), Dumfries and Galloway currently has the lowest percentage church attendance of any Scottish council area. In 2016, 4.6% of the population here attended church, second only to East Lothian (4.5%). However by 2025 Dumfries and Galloway’s church attendance is forecast to drop to 2.8% by 2025 - with the next worst being Clackmannanshire at 3.1%.

For Scotland as a whole, the figure was 7.2% in 2016, forecast to drop to 5.5% by 2025.

Of course, the percentage of the population attending a Bible-believing church will be much lower.

We have previously discussed the closure of churches in Stranraer and Wigtownshire, while Stephen also contributed an article for the Free Press pointing out that even in churches that remain open, the Bible has long since been stolen from unsuspecting churchgoers.

We have recently begun a new series in church on the book of Nehemiah examining both how we got here and where we go from here, as we pray and work to see the church of Jesus Christ revitalised both in Stranraer and throughout Scotland.

Lives changed by God

Last Sunday morning our topic was ‘Power to Change Your Life’. Below are some videos of people talking about how God has changed their lives.

These first four - including the story of one man from a Muslim background in Iran - are taken from The Tron church in Glasgow:

The following video is from Musselburgh Baptist Church:

This final video describes the conversion in Glasgow in the 1960s of Allan MacLeod who is now the RP minister in Toronto:

(The rest of the interview is well worth watching: Part 1 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8)

A new generation are asking the most important questions

This Easter will be particularly joyous for Christians in Scotland with churches having only just returned to worship after a further three months of lockdown restrictions. And yet it won’t be a case of ‘as you were’ before coronavirus hit.

While many will be ecstatic to be back, some will be apprehensive – and others may not come back at all. A leaked Church of England report suggested that a fifth of worshippers may not return post-Covid. North of the border, there will be similar concerns.

Others however will be watching on optimistically to see if the undoubted rise in spiritual interest there’s been during the pandemic will translate into people returning to church after decades – or starting to come for the first time. 

In a recent New York Times opinion piece, the writer Leigh Stein spoke for many millennials when she admitted: ‘I have hardly prayed to God since I was a teenager, but the pandemic has cracked open inside me a profound yearning for reverence, humility and awe’.

In her article, entitled ‘The Empty Religions of Instagram’, Stein argues that while 22% of millennials (those like myself born between 1980 and 1995) would describe themselves as having no religion, they have simply swapped traditional religion for new moral authorities – namely, social media influencers. Televangelists like Billy Graham have been swapped for Instavangelists like Glennon Doyle and Gwyneth Paltrow, but ‘we’re still drawn to spiritual counsel’, such as ‘It’s ok not to be ok’.

However, writing as a ‘leading feminist’ (Washington Post), she says ‘the women we’ve chosen as our moral leaders aren’t challenging us to ask the fundamental questions that leaders of faith have been wrestling with for thousands of years: Why are we here? Why do we suffer? What should we believe in beyond the limits of our puny selfhood?’.

In fact, once we start asking those questions, the answers might surprise us. I was struck recently by a poignant interview that comedian Eddie Izzard did with the Guardian in 2017. Entitled ‘Everything I do in life is trying to get my mother back’, the following paragraph really stood out: 

“I have a very strong sense that we are only on this planet for a short length of time,” he says. “And that is only growing. Religious people might think it goes on after death. My feeling is that if that is the case it would be nice if just one person came back and let us know it was all fine, all confirmed. Of all the billions of people who have died, if just one of them could come through the clouds and say, you know, ‘It’s me Jeanine, it’s brilliant…’”

Izzard’s words struck me because at the very centre of Christianity is the claim that of all the billions of people who have died, one did come back. In fact, in the words of the Apostle Paul it is of ‘first importance…that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day’ (1 Corinthians 15:3-4).

In the past year, we’ve been surrounded by death as never before in most of our lifetimes. And according to the materialist worldview, that is it. The end. Finito. And yet when we stand around the body of a loved one, everything in us screams no – that can’t be the end! Furthermore, we’re asked to believe that on an objective level, the death of a human being is no more tragic than the death of an animal.

Stein notes, ‘The whole economy of Instagram is based on our thinking about our selves, posting about our selves, working on our selves’. But deep down, we know that we’re made for something bigger than ourselves.

In fact, Stein puts her finger on it when she says: ‘There is a chasm between the vast scope of our needs and what influencers can provide. We’re looking for guidance in the wrong places. Instead of helping us to engage with our most important questions, our screens might be distracting us from them. Maybe we actually need to go to something like church?’

The challenge for churches is: what will people hear when they come? A recent survey said that 25% of British Christians don’t believe in the resurrection – unsurprisingly when it’s routinely denied or ‘spiritualised’ from the pulpit.

A new generation are asking questions they’ve never asked before. Are we equipped to give them the answers they so desperately need?

Published in the Stranraer & Wigtownshire Free Press, 1st April 2021