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Good morning.

I am speaking to you from lockdown Burnley. Our town is in one of those areas where extra measures have been introduced to address an increase in COVID cases. It’s bad news, especially for single or older people, that we cannot visit each other’s homes. But there is also a deeper, emotional impact. It may just be me, but I’m finding it hard not to feel guilty. I almost want to apologise to family and friends, as if I personally am responsible for the spike.

It is a symptom, perhaps, of the culture of scapegoating that we are in danger of drifting into. We are living through a time of huge anxiety and worry, and it is a natural instinct in hard times to look for someone to blame. It might be young people crowding into beer gardens. Or families eager to take their cooped-up children to a busy beach. Or public figures who don’t live up to their own advice. Or members of particular ethnic or religious groups. Many people want scapegoats.

And whilst natural, this instinct is also a profoundly dangerous one. Those who blame others often do so in order to evade responsibility themselves. If it’s the fault of the other, then I myself must be innocent. Scapegoating is convenient because it gets you off the hook.

People of faith have an interesting way of dealing with this instinct to look for scapegoats. In the Bible the Book of Leviticus describes a Jewish practice where the priest on the Day of Atonement would pray the sins of the people into a goat who would then be set free into the wilderness, carrying all those sins away with him. For Christians like myself, this practice points to Jesus who we believe carried on his back the sins of the world when he went to the cross.

The interesting things about these beliefs and practices is that they do not allow the believer to evade their own responsibility. You can only transfer your wrongdoing to the scapegoat if you first accept that you have something to transfer. They acknowledge that sin is corporate and that everyone carries some responsibility.

And that presents a broader challenge. COVID is a lethal and invisible foe. It won’t be defeated by blaming or scapegoating particular individuals or communities. In fact, giving way to that instinct could make things worse because it will damage relationships and fracture communities. If by contrast people look first to themselves, to their own patterns of behaviour, then not only will we defeat the virus, but our common life will be strengthened. As Jesus once said to a crowd anxious to scapegoat a woman, ‘Let the one who is without sin cast the first stone.’

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