Forgiving sins!

Originally from: Farmtalking
                        
Reading Hansard's verbatim report of the Animals Health Bill yesterday I was amused to see the Bishop of Hereford's remarks as follows,

 "Were I a theologian, I hesitate to claim that title, I would say that this is a sinful Bill, giving the word "sin" its proper root meaning.

Every student of elementary New Testament Greek is told that the word "sin" comes from a word in classical Greek which does not mean "doing a bad thing", that is the wide misunderstanding of sin, but which means "missing the mark".

Thucydides refers to people throwing a spear or shooting an arrow and missing the target. There is reference to someone who takes the wrong turning on a journey. That is "sin". It is making a mistake of that kind, falling short of what you should be aiming at. In Plato and Aristotle the word has come to mean "an error of judgment".

By any standard, this Bill misses the mark, falls short of where it should have gone, takes many wrong turns and fails to address a great many of the issues which were extremely pressing at the end of the foot and mouth outbreak this time last year."

He is so right and so many of the noble Lords seem to agree with him.

This ill-conceived desire by our Government to implement greater and more stringent controls, inspite of vast quantities of advice to the contrary, borders on insanity and a panic driven action that attempts to justify and thus they hope, will brush aside their illegal actions last year.

They do not seem to notice that far from serving their desires, it puts them and their mistakes in a glaring spotlight. Like rabbits trapped in oncoming headlights they rush from one side of the road to the other in panic, hoping to distract attention. Never realising that if they leapt into the darkness and disappeared with their amendments they might well be safe and even get a chance to live and govern in a better way!

While they remain in the headlights, fear is bound to mount and they run the risk of coming to a very sticky end indeed! They've received many gentle 'beeps' from the horn over past months and some of us have given them a very loud 'blast' – I do hope they don't turn out to be 'stone deaf'!

I also hope they realise that 'sins can be forgiven' especially if some degree of repentance is evident!