Proclaimer Blog
Some books what I read (2)
I also enjoyed Churchill and the Secret Service by David Stafford. Using recently released material, Stafford surveys the role and relationship Churchill had with the intelligence services, in particular. There is considerable focus on how Churchill used intelligence to bolster his own ideas. He particularly liked the raw data which he was want to interpret in his own way, not trusting those from within the services (sometimes rightly) to interpret it well. It follows Churchill from the Boer War through WWI, Churchill’s wilderness years (when he still had access to intelligence sources), through WWII and on into his last premiership.
It’s fascinating reading. Stafford is no Churchill acolyte. The leader is presented fairly I think – not always in a good light in the specifics, but overwhelmingly the leader Britain needed at various junctures.
It did get me thinking about how politicians today use data. I did some statistics training and I know how numbers can be manipulated. I also know that if I had a pound for every time there’s a statistical report on the effects of a glass of red wine a day, I would be able to afford a glass of red wine a day.
It’s easy to make things say what they do not. And that includes the Scriptures. It’s easy to promote a church vision by telling people that without a vision the people will perish when we know full well that’s not what the proverb means, and so on. Often our people are in no position to argue. We are, after all, the ones trained.
Twisting Scripture to suit our own ends is a terrible practice. We do it – on occasion – consciously. But sometimes we do it subconsciously to bolster a particular view. It’s too easy, in other words, to read into Scripture something we expect to see there, when it is not really there at all. If we need to show integrity in our relationships with others, we certainly need to show it in relation to the text.