IN Holy Week when we celebrate humanity’s salvation through the death and resurrection of God’s only son our thoughts are directed towards compassion and the forgiveness of sins. These are the most sacred days in the Christian year, but they also convey a message of hope for those who choose not to believe in the Cross.

Two thousand years later, the historic reality of Christ’s sacrifice continues to resonate throughout civilisation. At a temporal level it’s witnessed in the beauty of the world’s finest art and architecture and in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the ultimate expression of freedom and human dignity. It daily inspires the millions of unrecorded acts of love and kindness, carried out in the name of Jesus, which bring comfort and hope in the darkest places. It’s a sacrifice that refuses to go away.

It continues to trouble a world which believes it has moved beyond such things as each new secret of the universe seems to have been revealed. And it continues to offer hope to those millions deliberately excluded from the bounty that technological progress was supposed to yield. Yes, there are treasures but as each new breakthrough and invention has been achieved they’ve also contained the means by which the riches they bequeath can be further sealed off.

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In Scotland, for those of us reared in the values of the old Labour Party, it’s indivisible from the socialism that helped to free our communities from the tyranny of eternal poverty and the squashing of the human spirit that this always begets.

In thousands of households socialism was held to be as sacred as our Christianity. If the DNA of our value structures were to be made visible you would see the ribbons of socialism and Christianity curling tightly around each other as they rose and fell. Each relied upon the other to provide strength and support in the secular and spiritual worlds to which we belonged.

Nor did we see much tension at the interface of Christianity and socialism. And, when this did occur there was a resolution to be found in those anchors common to the spiritual and the temporal. This is not to say that redemption can’t also be found in Conservatism, only that in the experience of my community socialism and its option for the poor and the disenfranchised was the best fit for us.

In those communities sustained by faith and politics they were encouraged to give respect where the character and the office called for it, but never deference; to salute achievement and authority but never to believe anything other than that each of us was created equal. Crucially, it called on us to support those of our brothers and sisters whose livelihoods were threatened by the ruthlessness of capital. And it held too that we shared two common inheritances: hope in spiritual salvation but hope too that the world’s resources might one day be divided justly. The relationship between faith and politics was entirely rational.

Christianity and socialism also invited us to be radical. These are not beliefs that favour a lukewarm or perfunctory approach. There was a reason why the Son of God died slowly and in agony nailed to a tree and not peacefully in his dotage. And why blood was shed in the struggles for universal suffrage; dignity at work and the right to strike; racial equality; women’s sex-based rights and gay rights.

Yet, all of this is worthless if it doesn’t also proceed with the radicalism of love and compassion and – perhaps the most radical of all – the desire to forgive. In modern politics all of us who are actors in this circus purport to be less macho and more inclined to a softer and kinder approach. This gets parked, though, when there is a requirement not only to condemn, but to be seen to have done so more strongly than anyone else.

This month, more than two years after his resignation and public humiliation for sending inappropriate text messages to a 16-year-old, Derek Mackay has featured once more in the news cycle. His reputation and career having been safely buried a long time ago, his former boss and friend, Nicola Sturgeon perhaps felt able to divert public anger over the Calmac ferry fiasco on to his shoulders.

Such were the shaming circumstances of his resignation that Ms Sturgeon might have felt her former Finance Secretary was in no position to defend himself and expect to be heard fairly. Barely had this adroit reminder of his past misdeeds subsided than Mr Mackay found himself featured in the news once more.

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This time, we were invited to throw more rotten fruit at him when it was revealed that he had ventured onto LinkedIn, the social networking platform to announce that he had started a new business advisory service. In a further twist of the knife some of those who had "followed" him on LinkedIn were named and, by mere association, shamed. My fervent hope is that none of those mentioned subsequently severed their tentative connections to Mr Mackay.

This man, talented and young, still has much to offer in the public realm and has had a long time to reflect on his errors of judgment. His behaviour was indeed inappropriate and while it was right that he resigned over this it warranted no police action.

Are we saying though, that he is to be stalked for the rest of his life over his misdemeanours? That he must always be regarded as a social leper? And that he must be condemned to walk among us with a bell attached to his neck shouting “Unclean! Unclean!” And that he is a person who must always be reviled and must always be cast out from polite society?

In Holy Week we’re invited to reflect on our own errors and transgressions and to take solace in knowing that God has already forgiven them and that His son chose to pay the price for them. All we’re asked to do is to extend a little of this compassion to others in crisis.

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