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Morning Reflection
February 21, 2026
Recognition
“To look [at another] before one thinks or speaks is simply an expression of love.
To speak in love is to speak with the intention of benefitting, and we cannot expect to benefit what [or who] we have not taken the trouble to understand.
In order to understand particular human beings in their concrete predicaments, it is not enough to hoist one’s prejudices over them.
An ethicist who is a Christian should want to follow his Lord and Master in loving the world.
And if he would love the world, he will play pastor before he plays prophet. For the only people a prophet has the right to prophesy against are those he has first cared to make his own.”
Nigel Biggar: Behaving in Public
Reflection by Peter Vanderveen
The short text above is the concluding paragraph of Nigel Biggar’s wise book. It’s a fitting culmination. I included parts of it in the Grace Notes for last Sunday’s services because it’s one of the best articulations of our ethical responsibilities that I have ever encountered.
An ethical life begins with our intent to recognize others. Or let me amend this a bit. An ethical life begins by our doing all that we can do in the attempt to recognize others, to see who they are, however that picture is comprised.
This is not our usual habit. We are far more practised in prescribing rules and laws that we consider to be universal obligations. These we take as primary. We presume that there is an ethical structure to our life and to the world that requires our conformity; and to act outside of this system opens us to judgment and punishment. People, then, are secondary, and there’s nothing that compels us to take into consideration anyone’s individuality. No one needs to be recognized. No one should. For rules should be applied anonymously.
Of course, we argue incessantly about which system or what rules or which laws properly apply. There’s no end to this process. Disagreements abound. And the divisions that result incline us all the more to harden our own positions – often to the point where we proudly and emphatically, and sometimes brutally refuse to recognize anything about those who differ from us. And as we descend into increasing ugliness, we shout all the more loudly that we are simply right. Others be damned. Is this not our current predicament?
In the foundational Biblical account of the fall of humanity, when for the first time the division of good and evil was introduced, the very first evidence of sinfulness was manifested in the furtive need for everyone to hide from one another. Adam and Eve immediately clothed themselves. They both sought ways to keep themselves out of the sight of God. And their banishment from the Garden wasn’t a punishment imposed for their breaking of a rule. The Garden disappeared when they could no longer face one another, when they couldn’t allow themselves to be seen, and when they had no desire to draw others close in empathy.
The long history of the development of rules and laws followed only after this. They have proved to be a very poor, but necessary, substitute.
And the truly uncanny characteristic about all of Jesus’ interactions is that he never led them by invoking the law or a set of standards. What amazed people is how intimately he saw them – as if something of the Garden had been returned.
Maybe this is the best way we can behave in public.
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