Thought for the Week: Expediency
Joyce Trotman reflects on expediency
As a part of my growing up I was made to memorise Psalm 34 of the Old Testament. Verse 14 reads: ‘Depart from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it’ (the italics are mine).
I would ask myself: How do you pursue peace? The operative word being ‘pursue’.
I read in my Celtic Daily Light about the mystic Teilo. When asked ‘What is the greatest wisdom in a person?’ he replied: ‘To refrain from injuring another person when one has the power to do so.’
As far as I can remember, my mother was always saying, ‘All things are lawful but all things are not expedient’. I did not know what she meant, but I liked to hear her say ‘expedient’. To me the word had a pleasant sound, even though I did not know its meaning. It was not until after she died that I found the origin in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians (1 Corinthians 6:12):
All things are lawful unto me, but all things are not expedient: all things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any.
The Shorter Oxford Dictionary gives the meaning of ‘expedient’ as ‘proper or suitable to the circumstances of the case’. I then realised what this meant: viz. the law may allow you to perform a certain act with impunity, but you have to decide whether it is advisable for you to take advantage of it, taking into account ‘the circumstances of the case.’
James Atkin, lord of appeal in 1932, in Donoghue v Stevenson, gave the legal definition of a neighbour: ‘You must take reasonable care to avoid acts or omissions which you can reasonably foresee would be likely to injure your neighbour. Who, then, in law, is my neighbour? The answer seems to be persons who are so closely and directly affected by my act that I ought, reasonably, to have them in my contemplation as being so affected when I am directing my mind to the acts or omissions which are called in question.’ This is known as ‘the neighbour principle’.
There is a Guyanese proverb that says ‘When goat dung wan’ ‘fo’ roll, the slightest breeze ‘a blow am down’. This is used as a comment on the behaviour of someone who is bent on causing trouble and uses any excuse, however insignificant, to start a riot.
This is my observation about the militant Islamists in our midst. I therefore ask: Is it expedient that we should provide the breeze for the goat dung to roll, or should we take account of the Atkin judgement, which is as relevant today as it was in 1932?
Let Isaac Penington have the last word:
Our life is love, and peace, and tenderness; and bearing one with another, and forgiving one another, and not laying accusations one against another; but praying one for another, and helping one another up with a tender hand.
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