BBC Radio 4 2016-07-22

I suspect like many listeners, I feel torn, hearing the news that all Russian athletes could be banned from the Olympics, not just those found guilty. We all agree doping must be ruthlessly stamped out, not least to protect each and every competitor from the devastating effects of body-bending chemicals. But I, too, couldn’t help imagining innocent individuals, dedicating their lives to clean sport only to be punished because of their country’s guilt.

I have felt this dilemma before. Barely into adolescence I met a German, who had barely been an adolescent himself at the time, who felt personally culpable for what his country had done. This struck me as both noble and absurd. How could it possibly be laid at his door? But his identification with the historic fault of his fatherland seemed also somehow admirable.

In the week after the Referendum, when a Jamaican friend, living in our proudly multi-cultural and welcoming neighbourhood, told me of an immediate shift in attitude and was even spat at in the street, I felt horribly shamed... and, yes, personally guilty for what my country seemed to have become.

Obviously, ultimately we can’t be held responsible for what we haven’t done. When, a decade ago, Tony Blair expressed “our deep sorrow that [the Slave Trade] ever happened”, he didn’t expect to be personally punished for the actions of our ancestors. There is a sense in which the day we take final responsibility for the way we have lived will be the loneliest we experience: alone answerable for our actions, and answerable for ours alone.

Nonetheless the history of God’s people is larded with collective responsibility and communal punishment. Daniel, personally a godly hero who preferred to be eaten alive by wild animals rather than risk doing wrong, poured out a heartfelt apology to God for his nation’s crimes: he expected all his people to be justly punished. Christian understanding is that we are born into an inherited indifference towards God’s love and default dispassion regarding His care, long before we are old enough for any individual choices whatsoever.

Inversely, just as many after the War felt implicated by one person, so one person can be implemented to represent us all. Single combat between two warriors has been known to settle a war between two nations.

Watching Wimbledon’s men’s singles final, I felt excitement, enthusiasm... and eventually, pride. Sad to say, Andy Murray’s achievement was not, by the tiniest iota of imaginable influence, attributable to me: I wasn’t even there to cheer him on. And yet I claimed a minuscule shimmer of reflected glory from my countryman.

One, winning victory for all. This too is Christian teaching. If one person representing us can take responsibility for what all have done, paradoxically the day we are held to account can also be the least alone we have ever been.