Thought for the Day
Good Morning Scotland
BBC Radio Scotland
December, 2010

Those unshakeable convictions.

In great dining halls there are pictures lined up on the wall of the “broad-shouldered” - who fought battles and founded charities and championed their ideas against tremendous odds.

People who knew their own minds.

We’d like to say that we know our own minds. We might even denigrate other people for changing theirs too often. But in a world which is constantly generating new ideas and undergoing change would we want to merely fall back on what we already know?

Jesus once told his disciples that if they are bringing their gift to the altar and remember that their brother has something against them, they should leave their gift to the side and, first, go and be reconciled with their brother. The reversal of negative judgements is one of the great joys in life. When someone comes to regard me in a positive light who had once dismissed or despised me the achievement is tremendous – even though that person has changed his mind.

Winning over an enemy is difficult, at first glance. Wouldn’t it be easier to avoid them or to put the extra effort in and defeat them? But Scotland is a village. If we run in the normal circles of friends or co-workers we will not avoid their gaze for long. Nor, I think, will the smoking greasy smudge where once our defeated enemy stood give us much pleasure for very long other than perhaps to remind us of our excessive and unforgiving zeal.

We could revise our own negative judgement of somebody else – that’s also possible. This is where we change our mind. The most entrenched situations politically and personally are maintained by people who believe they know all they need to know.

The winning moments in both personal and national history are not when things stay the same but when things change – when somebody is “brought around” – when he comes to his “right mind”

which is not always where his mind was the day before .