Pre-emptive confession?

Off to Aberdeen where I’m preaching on Sunday. Catching up with a number of friends, out for an evening meal with some of them tonight, and then making and taking time to worship together at Crown Terrace Baptist Church tomorrow. Amongst the other friends I’ll catch up with, will be Chris, who owns Old Aberdeen Bookshop.Whenever possible I try to encourage my friends by supporting them in whatever they do that matters to them in life. I don’t often leave Chris’s shop without buying – it’s what Dr Johnson used to call the wise habit of ‘keeping your friendships in good repair’. One way or t’other, a few inches of my shelfspace is about to fill – this is by way of pre-emptive confession.

And yet – Chris is a friend, and I want to support his business, so that’s all right then. Aye, but what about motivation – is buying books from him further unnecessary self-indulgence, masked by alleged goodwill? So good consequences for the other person, don’t rule out convenient excuse for me. Isn’t life complicated if you think about things too much – maybe that’s why the wise spiritual guides of the past warned against scruples. Evangelical Christians are not immune to this spiritual obsessive compulsive disorder. It takes the form of self-centred wallowing around in our own souls, supposedly concerned about sin when all the time we are self importantly putting our little selfish moral sensitivities at the centre of God’s attention as if God had nothing better to do than monitor our personal guilt thresholds.

In which case I’m going to just enjoy burrowing for an hour and happily and innocently buy some good books, from a good shop, at a good price, for a really good guy?

Or is that me rationalising – is that ethical spin doctoring –

aye probably, but there’s worse things than buying yet more books. One elderly lady we came to love in Aberdeen used to say dismissively to people going on…and on… with their moans and complaints, ‘Aye well – worse things happened at Culloden’.