Faith and kindness

The Rev Dr Richard Frazer highlights the value of kindness in communities.

PEOPLE often ‘overhear’ the liberating message of the Gospel, not necessarily in Church services but in the public square and in the “quality of mercy that is not strained”. So many today hunger for an alternative imagination that is a counter to an increasingly harsh and cruel world.

Those who offer kindness are like “braziers in the cold streets of the city”.

When I was a probationer minister at St Giles’ Cathedral in Edinburgh in the 1980s, I found in a storeroom some old white plates. They had a logo on them that intrigued me. The emblem of the Church of Scotland and the inscription “Church of Scotland Huts”. “What on earth are these?” I wondered to myself. I did some research and discovered a remarkable story.

Church of Scotland Huts and Canteens, established during the Great War, offered hospitality to soldiers often posted far from home. There was food and friendship available. In an article in Life & Work in 1940, the uplifting stories of soldiers encountering kindness whilst feeling isolated and the inevitable anxiety of imminent posting to the Front was clear. Some attended “Lantern” services held in the evening at the camps. There were stories of men helped to write their will or even to learn to read and write; and of people coming to faith.

It all reminds me that kindness is the centre of our faith and I wonder where our nation would be without the work of so many congregations throughout Scotland, and further afield, offering that simple virtue.

There was a retired minister in my congregation who told me of his work as a chaplain in a hospital in Aden (now Yemen) in the 1950s. It was a hospital established by Keith Falconer of the Church of Scotland. He told me once that he sometimes wondered why he was there. “Nearly all the people I visited were Moslem. All I could do was sit at their bedside and hear their stories.” When he died a few years ago, his son told me of the countless former patients who maintained a correspondence with him years after he had returned to Scotland. They were grateful for his kindness and who knows what impact that had.

Throughout the church today, congregations and individuals are offering kindness to people in need. One of the things we fail to record in our Annual Statistical Return is an indication of this astonishing work. The Church of Scotland is certainly not in decline when it comes to acts of kindness. It is just that our statistical analysis overlooks nearly all of that work. In the midst of it all, people overhear the faith that has inspired people to serve and often feel drawn to faith. We realise that Church is happening in spite of what our statistics tell us. For that reason, I think we should celebrate what happens in our communities and not just dwell on membership statistics.

“ The Church of Scotland is certainly not in decline when it comes to acts of kindness.

One Sunday an elderly man turned up at our church. He wanted to talk and, after the service, he shared his story. He was a Palestinian studying medicine at Edinburgh University in the 1940s. He lost his home when the State of Israel was established. He was a refugee. He had never forgotten the kindness shown to him by the people of Greyfriars and the university at that difficult time. I realised that he had come back to Edinburgh to be baptised and I did that for him there and then. The Christian kindness he had experienced never left him. The unique quality of Christianity is its offer of kindness, not fear, and we should never underestimate its impact.