be sure your sins will find you out’

Roger Johnson writes:
We went last night to see J. B. Priestley’s excellent play, ‘An Inspector Calls’ at the Theatre Royal in Nottingham. For those who haven’t seen this, the play revolves around the shameful acts of a family being exposed by a bogus police inspector. Bit by bit the sordid tale of their seedy private lives is revealed leaving the family in a state of shock and shame. There is, of course, a nasty sting in the story’s tail as well as a sober warning to us all. I bumped into some old friends after the performance and wistfully mused, ‘be sure your sins will find you out’.

Afterwards I couldn’t help but think of the present turmoil in the House of Commons as some MPs are facing a similar agony over the way they have handled, or mis-handled, their expense claims. Today we will be casting our votes and no doubt many will be voting in reaction to what the Daily Telegraph has been exposing over the last few weeks. I have heard some MPs suggesting that what they do in their private lives has no relevance to their work as an MP. It seems now that we can all revert to pantomime mode and say emphatically, ‘OH YES IT DOES!’

But, is it true? Do our sins always ‘find us out’? The psalmist starts off by thinking not in Psalm 73:1-14. He (or she) was bemoaning the fact that he (or she) had lived a righteous life in vain. In contrast, when we read 1 Samuel 12:1-15 we find a man of some stature, King David, exposed by the prophet Nathan with regard to his adulterous affair with Bathsheba. Indeed David did suffer the consequence of his sin but had it not been for an Old Testament equivalent of the Daily Telegraph (Nathan), he may well have got away with it.

I suppose the current MPs expenses scandal raises serious questions about whether the Daily Telegraph has done us a service or disservice, bearing in mind the damage done to the country’s political reputation, but that’s for the historians to reflect upon. My hope and prayer is that those MPs who have embarked upon a political career for the right reasons will recover from this mess and that our democracy will be purified and strengthened as a result.

By this time tomorrow morning the news will tell us what effect this sorry mess has had upon our political life. We could end up with MEPs who are completely unrepresentative of the mainstream views of the British people, simply because they have filled the moral vacuum left by the traditional parties.

So let’s leave the last, and sobering word to the psalmist – “For lo, those who are far from thee shall perish; thou dost put an end to those who are false to thee” (Psalm 73:27). I wonder how much the psalmist was adding his (or her) own emotional veneer to these words.