Acts of worship...

I just heard a bishop on the radio, talking about broadcasting “acts of worship” online, now that church services have been stopped. He finished off by reassuring listeners that “there is a God who loves and cares for us”. The presenter took this appalling platitude at face value, thanked the bishop for his sentiments, and moved on to another topic.

Where is Jeremy Paxman when you need him? He wouldn’t let the bishop get away with such nonsense. With a curl of the lip he might demand some evidence, in this time of plague, that there is indeed a God who “loves and cares for us". If this is being "cared for", I'd hate to be around when God is in a less charitable mood.

And, please, can we have a moratorium on “worship”... at least until the worst of the coronavirus crisis is over? Thanking God for giving us a deadly disease is like “turning the other cheek”: prostrating ourselves before a bully, begging to be spared.

Knedlington Hall, yesterday, beneath a bank of cloud...