Tendring Topics

                  The Tendring Talking Times

 

            One of the most valuable of the local charities in this area of north-east Essex is the 'Tendring Talking Times'.   This is a 'talking' newspaper (actually an audio tape) sent weekly free of charge to every blind or visually impaired person within the Tendring District.  It enables folk who are no longer able to read, to keep up with local news and local opinion.   One of its regular features is 'Thought for the Week' a kind of five-minute sermon supplied by a member of one or other of the Christian traditions within our area.

 

            I was at one time a regular contributor to the Tendring Talking Times but had to give it up three years ago when I became a full-time carer for my then-disabled wife.

 

            A month or two ago though, I was asked if I would again supply a 'Thought for the Week'.  In view of my reduced mobility, a tape recorder would be brought to my home for that purpose.  I agreed and duly made my recording, which was included in the following issue of the Tendring Talking Times. 

 

            It has now occurred to me that my message might well be of interest beyond the recipients of Tendring Talking Times and I am therefore including it as a Tendring Topic on this blog.  Here it is:

 

 

Somebody once said that no matter how long you lived, the longest half of your life was the first twenty years.  Certainly, now that I am in my mid-eighties, the first two decades of my life do seem to loom larger, and hold more deeply etched memories than any later period.

 

I was born in 1921 so you'll realize that my first eighteen years were spent in the 1920s and 1930s, that uneasy period after World War I and before World War II   made its violent impact on all our lives..  For some it was an era of peace and prosperity – for others it was a time of starvation wages, unemployment and grinding poverty.

 

One big difference between those days and ours was our attitude to morality, to what is right and what is wrong, to what is good and what is evil.

 

Some folk of my generation will simply say that there's no doubt about it – we were all better behaved in those days.  I don't think that it is quite as simple and straightforward as that.  We had different ideas about what was – and what was not – morally important.

 

By today's standards many of us in the 1920s and '30s were quite casually and unconsciously racist.  We didn't, like the Nazis in Germany, arrogantly go round proclaiming the fact, but we were quietly convinced that the English were superior to any other race in the world and that England was superior to any other country.  We were, of course, far superior to all our European neighbours – and we had done the world a great service by creating the British Empire.

 

There was too, a great deal of taken-for-granted brutality and cruelty in those days.  Few people – none that I knew – questioned capital punishment or the flogging of adults and birching of juveniles for certain offences.   The cane was widely used in both primary and secondary schools and at home some parents punished their children, not with a bad-tempered slap in response to some particular naughtiness (I've done that myself!) but with systematic beating with a cane or strap.

 

There was casual cruelty to animals and birds too.  It seemed to occur to no-one that it was cruel to confine wild animals in small cages and teach them to do tricks. We small boys were avid collectors of birds' eggs.  It was OK, teachers at school assured us, provided that we left at least three eggs in the nest. Birds, so we were told, could only add up to three!

 

These attitudes have, for the most part, disappeared, and few will mourn their  passing.  However, in the '20s and '30s there were also very different attitudes towards certain other aspects of human behaviour.

 

It is nowadays considered quite normal – even wise – for a young couple to live together as man and wife before deciding to marry – or possibly deciding never to marry.   In the '20s and '30s that was anathema.  It was considered to be 'living in sin!' 

 

Today, teenage sex is taken for granted.  In my day 'getting a girl into trouble', as we called it, was about the most shameful thing that a young man could do. Today, sex education, including the best and most effective methods of contraception is part of the school curriculum and is taught in mixed classes.

 

In the '20s and '30s the very idea of this would have caused outrage and horror.  Yet I suspect that there are many more teenage pregnancies now than there ever were in those unenlightened days.

 

Clearly there has been a revolutionary change over the years in our society about what is right and what is wrong.  The situation is complicated by the fact that we now have in our midst a considerable number of adherents of religious faiths whose moral codes may differ from those to which we are accustomed.

 

Is there then, no absolute right and wrong?  Does good and evil depend  entirely upon majority opinion in any community at any given time?

 

Perhaps at different times and in different communities, it may be right to place greater or less emphasis on this or that aspect of morality.  I believe though that there is at least one moral imperative that is, always has been, and always will be, valid for all communities and adherents of every religious faith – and those who have no faith at all.

 

It is from Jesus Christ's Sermon on the Mount and is to be found in St. Matthew's Gospel Chapter 7 verse 12.   I generally prefer the old King James' Bible, with which I am familiar since childhood, to modern versions.  I have to say though that J. B. Phillips' translation, made in the 1950s, gives Our Lord's words greater clarity and emphasis.

 

Here they are:

 

Treat other people exactly as you would like to be treated by them – this is the essence of all true religion.

 

Perhaps I may add that, in my opinion, the converse is at least equally important.

 

Do not treat other people as you would hate them to treat you.

These words do not provide an easy answer to every problem of human behaviour but – my word – the world would be a happier place if more people heeded them more often!