In Depth:  James Torrens

‘What is truth?’ Pilate’s question echoes down the centuries, long after he asked it of Jesus.

His query was prompted by Jesus’s claim that he came into this world ‘to testify to the truth’ and that ‘everyone on the side of truth listens to me’ (John 18.37). Significantly, Pilate did not wait for a reply to his question, but turned his back on the Truth and gave in to the cries of the crowd and the lies of the religious leaders.

The former Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling (he of the white hair and black eyebrows), has written a memoir of his time at No. 11 Downing Street. It’s called Back from the Brink and provides a fascinating insight into the economic and political troubles the Labour government faced from 2007 to May 2010. Towards the end of his book, Darling charts a way forward, stressing the need for both private and public sectors to be involved in any sustainable recovery. Anticipating, perhaps, some criticism from the left wing of the Labour party, he says: ‘To me, what matters is what works’.¹

Results are all that matters?

In other words, it is the end result that counts; how one achieves that result is not important. Ironically, he does not seem to realise that it is precisely this attitude which led the banks, politicians and regulatory bodies to ignore the serious weaknesses in the British economy. While the good times rolled, few questioned the shaky foundation on which those good times were built. The economy was ‘working’, delivering impressive results, and that was all that mattered.

I’ve been looking for a word and I can’t find it. More specifically, I’ve been looking for a word in the Bible and I can’t find it. Yet it’s a common word. And it’s a word often used to describe members of a church. I’ve used it myself, quite recently, and many of you will have used it too. But, as far as I can tell, it’s nowhere to be found in the Bible. The word is ‘volunteer’.

Voluntary organisation

Isn’t that striking? We often say that ‘the church is a voluntary organisation’ or ‘the church is made up of volunteers’, usually meaning we can’t force people to do what we think they should be doing! But I cannot find any reference in the Bible where the people of God are called ‘volunteers’.