Dear Friends. Did you ever hear anything so crass as the decision of Newcastle Borough Council to push over cemetery gravestones because they were regarded as unstable, then to expect relatives of the deceased to pay to have them restored? It had to be done, said a council officer, because health and safety rules demanded it.
Dear me! If we were to eliminate every conceivable hazard from daily life we would have a rule book as big and interesting as the London Telephone Directory. There seems to be a category of human beings who live for creating and enforcing control systems over everything we do. Common sense doesn't come into it. If you could think of one thing designed to upset and antagonise people it would have to be this: meddling with the graves of their loved ones. Has somebody gone mad in Merrial Street? Are there gangs of employees with nothing much else to do because the winter has been so mild? Are we actually paying top salaries for officials to sit there dreaming up more daft things to do? If there was a politician with enough savvy on the council to take on the bureaucrats the gravestones would immediately be restored, at council expense. I would deduct the cost from somebody's salary.
Rule books bug me. I suppose we have to recognise some agreed common principles, but how easily strict enforcement of petty laws can inhibit the human spirit! Some years ago a couple came to me wanting to get married. He had divorced his first wife years ago when she went off with somebody else. Then he met a delightful woman and wanted to marry again. They both regularly attended an Anglican church but the priest would not even discuss the possibility of marrying them there. They were naturally disappointed and not a little bitter. This cobwebbed cleric had put the rule book before the reasonable requirements of two honest Christians who wanted to make a new start to their lives in God's house.
Not, of course, that we should give a Christian blessing to all who want to 'use' the church as a decorative background for. their expensive party. There again, it is a matter of human judgement. Thankfully as a 'free church' we are not expected to perform wedding services for all who are legally free to marry, as are the Anglicans some who never or rarely attend worship should be directed to the register office, and I have no hesitation in advising such that a civil ceremony would be most appropriate in their case.
Rules are created for guidance. Jesus confronted rigid Pharisees who wanted him to keep strictly to their immense rule book, with its detailed strictures about rights and wrongs in every area of life. No, he said; life is not intended to be managed by such things. The biggest clash occurred over keeping 'the Sabbath'. Moses' laws had been interpreted in such a way that you could hardly breathe on that day. Nonsense, said Jesus. 'The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. The Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.' (Mark 2 27/28) In other words, legitimate human needs must always come before rigid rules.
It is just this that makes the rule-bound bureaucrat so wrong-headed and inhuman, whether sitting in a council office or a vicarage. There are certain areas of life in which we have to use common sense, sprinkled with the sugar of compassion and good humour. The alternative is to treat everybody as if they are potential trouble makers, needing to be restrained and confined. Many evil characters may need to be so treated in a civilised world the trick is to know the difference.