Breaking the Rules

Maybe, just maybe, the Grenfell inquiry might uncover the truth about the dreadful fire that killed so many. One one level, it seems obvious that what happened was the the tower caught fire and the fire spread rapidly up the outside of the building through the newly fitted cladding. But more is expected from an inquiry, if the truth is allowed to be told. Did anyone break the rules? Behind this question is not only the need for accountability, but also a natural desire in the survivors for justice. It is too early to know the answer, but several (as yet unproven) suggestions have been made. Was cheaper cladding used in order that money could be saved? Was the fact that the tall ladder was not automatically deployed another example of protocols being determined by the need to meet budgets? Is it true that planning permission for sites near the tower overlooked the need for proper emergency access to the tower? And is it true that the health and safety regime that oversaw the application of the cladding was such that it made a mockery of the spirit of the original rules? We cannot say, but it is to be hoped that a proper inquiry will look at all these issues.

It has been pointed out that when people complain about what seem ridiculous and unnecessary health and safety rules, then the Grenfell Tower tragedy is an example of just why such rules are necessary. Rules, of one sort or another, govern our lives.  They define the game of life and allow human beings to interact in a way that creates society and sustains community. In Christian terms, the scriptures provide us with a rule of life by which we can strive to live holy lives as disciples of Christ. The problems come when people apply or interpret the rules in different ways and then feel aggrieved that 'so-called fellow Christians' are not abiding by the rules of the game. Yet what might seem clear-cut teaching (for example, Jesus’s teaching on divorce), can widely be either ignored or reinterpreted in the light of a developing tradition that is modified by reason.

In the Grenfell Tower tragedy, I was struck by another suggestion that rules were broken. A particularly powerful piece of film, shot by one of the attending firefighters on their mobile phone, expresses the horror those firefighters felt on seeking the scale of the fire. It has been said that the fire was so bad that the rules did not allow the firefighters to enter the building at all. Yet they did so, breaking the rules, for they were determined to save as many lives as possible. If this is true, then their bravery was even more remarkable.

There are some important questions here.  What were the rules of engaging in such a fire? What value had they and what was the significance of them being broken? Learning the rules must be seen as an integral part of the training of those firefighters. Indeed they could only develop into skilled firefighters by learning the ropes (the rules) in such a way that doing the right thing became second nature to them. Like learning to drive a car, when the right way to do it can be expressed in terms of rules (including the Highway Code), you reach a point in which driving becomes second nature. In the same way training to become a firefighter also needs to start with learning the rules of how to do it. Yet on the day, the rules could be broken, because all that training had equipped those firefighters both to do the job and to calculate the risks in going beyond the rules in order that lives might be saved.

There is a danger, when we talk about the Christian life, that scriptural texts become the be all and end all of Christian discipleship, so that keeping the rules is seen as being utterly essential to salvation. Yet it seems to me that what wound up the religious rulers of Jesus’ day was the extant to which Jesus was openly prepared to break the rule of scripture in order to reach out with compassion to meet the needs of those around him. The rules set the framework of the game. They define it. Yet it is possible to imagine someone who is a revered, leading expert on the rules of cricket (for example) yet who has never had the ability to set the game alight with a magnificent century or a bag of wickets. In the New Testament it is the Scribes and the Pharisees who are the acknowledged experts in the rules of the game, yet Jesus suggests that they miss the point entirely and fail to step into the Kingdom of Heaven. What then is the witness of scripture? What does it mean to be a bible-believing, orthodox Christian? What is the faith 'once delivered to the saints?' Surely it is to respond to Christ in a way that we lose our lives in self-giving to God and to neighbour. Thereby we not only find that in loving others, with generous abandon, we have fulfilled the law, we find with delight that we have already stepped into the Kingdom of Heaven.