When the COVID pandemic struck, lots of us had opinions and views. At the time, I remember some discussion about the importance of “staying in lane.” I think I contributed to that discussion. The point was simple and good. We were facing a global pandemic, a serious medical crisis and there were politicians, clergy and media columnists sharing their views on how we should respond to combat the pandemic.
Yet, there was a particular level of specialism required to truly understand COVID19. Whilst we speculated about whether or not the virus was really that bad, if lockdowns could halt it, the place of facemasks and if herd immunity would work, we risked speaking from place of ignorance. We needed to listen to experienced medics and not just any medics, we needed to hear from medics with expertise in epidemiology and immunology. Not only that, we needed to hear those with experience and expertise particularly in respiratory epidemiology.
However, there was a risk with that. You see, it also became a “trust the experts” approach and that meant that people with the title “epidemiologist” were prioritised. Yet, soon you began to discover that some of those people were not medics and did not have expert knowledge of respiratory virus. Rather, there were psychologists and mathematicians. Now, this doesn’t mean that those people didn’t have a relevant contribution to make. We still needed to understand collective human behaviour and we still needed to understanding processes and systems to know how to respond. Similarly, the voices of people who didn’t have the title “epidemiologist” in their social media profiles became important. As the disease developed and mutated, it was important to listen to people with expertise in genetic mutation. And as we sought to make decisions at a local level as central regulations were reduced, many of us discovered that the most helpful people to pay attention to were those who understood statistical modelling and so were able to develop pretty accurate forecasting models.
I’m not a medic, never mind a specialist in viruses and epidemics. So, whilst I was free to have and share my opinions about all kinds of things -and did -those opinions were just that, my opinions. I doubt that anyone in government or the Health Service were making strategic decisions based on my blog and that’s a good thing. I do however have a pre-church career background in Operations Management. This means that seeing data, graphs and models is where I come into my own! So, I think it was legitimate for me to offer advice on how churches should respond to a changing situation. I was able to make some forecasts -and in fact – I believe that they proved reasonably accurate, especially compared to some of the media reporting! This helped me to make recommendations on risk assessments.
We have been facing different crises since COVID. In particular there are two deeply concerning wars happening right now. We are now well over a year into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and sadly this week we have seen Hamas launch a horrific attack on Israel and Israel respond. Now, when it comes to both conflicts, we will all have lots of opinions about what should happen. However, it is important here that we also think about what it means to stay in lane.
When I write about Israel and Gaza, I do so first as a Christian pastor and this means I’ve got a particular area of expertise, theology and its implications for ethics. So, it is possible for me to speak, from within my lane about the rights and wrongs of particular actions morally. As it happens, my initial training was in Law and in fact, one of the areas I focused on back in the early 90s was International Law, before the field became fashionable and at a time when the existence of International Law itself was still considered some what controversial. This gives me an additional perspective, I’m able to comment a bit more on the legality of certain actions. I can offer an evaluation of whether the sides are in breach of treaties and whether that means there have been human rights failures. I can offer a view on whether war crimes have been committed.
However, there are questions that take me outside of my lane. There have been a lot of opinions offered this last week about how Israel should respond to Hamas in ways that would be effective and would minimise civilian suffering. The reality is that most of us simply don’t have the kind of expertise required here. There may be people who do have experience. I’d be looking particularly to those with experience of counter-terrorism operations in Northern Ireland or possibly those with experience of Afghanistan. Again, this doesn’t mean that we cannot share our opinions but it is important that we remember that this is all that we are offering on such matters.
Faithroots 