On my recent holiday I visited the Port Arthur Historic Site in Tasmania. It was the second time I had visited there and I found the place tranquil, and fascinating, but also disturbing. Port Arthur was established in 1830 as a prison for the ‘unreformable’ convicts – the ones that kept escaping and reoffending. It was a harsh, cruel place, dominated by corporal punishment and strict discipline.

In the 1850s, however, a new philosophy of incarceration was taking hold. Instead of physical punishment it was thought that the best way to reform criminals was through isolation, silence and control. In other words, by removing all physical contact. The Separate Prison at Port Arthur is one of the earliest attempts at putting this new philosophy into practice. Prisoners were no longer called by name, only by number. When they were out of their cells they wore hoods. Mats were laid in the corridors so even footsteps made no sound. A central part of this reform program was the daily chapel service where the law of God was proclaimed by fire and brimstone preachers. Even in the chapel the prisoners had no interaction with each other. They were shut in individual boxes, walled off at the sides so they could only look ahead and see the preacher – the law-giver!

This ‘enlightened’ attempt at reformation was worse than the previous version! Prisoners weren’t rehabilitated, they simply went mad.

If it was reformation and transformation they wanted, perhaps they should have taken a leaf out of Jesus’ book. As Jesus stood on a mountain, flanked by the two great law-givers of the Old Testament, Moses and Elijah, Jesus had a different approach. He bent down to his cowering disciples, spoke words of comfort and touched them.

He touched them.

~ Pastor John

I came across a book the other day in my local library. It was called, The Perfectionists: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World. Now, I’m not very mechanically minded, but it was a fascinating account of how much human ‘progress’ relies on ultra-precise, machine-made and technologically-flawless engineering. What a blessing this has been in so many ways. But, the author also highlights the challenges our striving for perfection brings in an inherently imperfect world. Perhaps it’s only now that we are becoming more conscious of those challenges with the rise of Artificial Intelligence, as we allow machines not only to perform tasks, but to think for us. Is it possible that in our quest for (God-like?) precision and perfection, we lose not only some of our humanity, but also a real appreciation of the divine?

~ Pastor John

In 2019, Sarah Wise broke her spinal cord which left her with quadriplegia. She was 24 years old. Although doctors said she would never walk again, Sarah was determined to prove them wrong. Over many agonising months she did! With the help of physiotherapists, she taught herself to walk again. Of that experience she writes:

“I would try not to think too hard about the fact that before my injury, walking was something I didn’t even have to think about; it was automatic.

But at every physio session I went to, I had to think about it, and I had to think about it hard. It wasn’t just remembering to put one foot in front of the other anymore. I had to remember eight things at once! “Walk on train tracks, lift the leg, don’t snap back, lift your toes, tuck your bum under, tense your abs.”*

She had to go through that process for every step! Imagine having to do that every time you wanted to take a step? How blessed we are when those basic tasks can be done without thinking about every step, when they are done automatically.

Now, imagine what a better place the world would be if the task of being kind to other people was automatic, for everyone!

~ Pastor John