J.John

Talking about their struggles with a stressful life someone said to me, ‘My problem is that I’ve got too many tabs open in my brain.’ At the time, I thought it was just another example of the increasing habit of using computer terms for ordinary life as when you hear someone say, ‘Sorry, I’m in data overload mode,’ or ‘Let’s interface over coffee.’ On reflection, however, I think it says something important.

The background to this idea of ‘having too many tabs open’ is something that today many of us are all too familiar with. We load a web browser (Safari, for example) and open a webpage, perhaps to check our email. Then we chase up other things, checking on weather, sports, news and then, perhaps, continue trawling around the web as we research things, read reviews and so on, without closing any of the previous webpages.

The result is that open tabs proliferate: I gather there are people who quite commonly find themselves with a 100 open tabs. Eventually the browser slows down and up pops the warning: Too many browser tabs open. It’s a computing habit that has been well studied and been found to be bad practice. Although it may give the user the illusion of successful multi-tasking, in reality it isn’t very productive. It leaves lots of things unfinished, weakens the focus of the user and encourages the sort of displacement activity where you find that you have mysteriously left a hard activity for an easier one.

Applied to life, having ‘too many tabs open’ is a very common phenomenon. Many of us have lives in which there is simply too much going on and which we don’t manage in the best way. On the screen of our existence there are far too many tabs open. We may have one cluster of tabs to do with work: projects, trips, a forthcoming meeting; and another cluster to do with home: that DIY job, the tidying and the gardening.

Then there are all those other collections of tabs associated with our social life, families, finances, holidays, hobbies and so on. Matters are made worse because these are open browser tabs. They are not some sort of static to-do list; they are live issues that we have commenced but not completed. We have either found ourselves bored with them or been distracted away by the call of some other tab.

In part, this is a problem of the modern age. Life is so complicated. Today, everything from a toaster to a car comes with a manual that is at least 30-pages thick – and a demand that it be registered online, connected to the Internet and given a software update. Where once we only received communications from other people once a day when the post fell through the letterbox, now we undergo a continuous deluge of emails, tweets and updates from when we wake to when we fall asleep.

Once, when we left our houses we left our telephones behind; now they pursue us everywhere. Once we lived in a world in which we had space in which we could think and live; now we are under pressure to respond and react continuously. We have too many tabs open.

There’s a lot wrong with this. One danger is that we find it easy to slip from those difficult issues that we need to address into easier ones that don’t need our attention. Another is that it’s confusing: I doubt I am the only person who finds himself asking, ‘What exactly am I supposed to be working on now?’ It’s also stressful. In our minds we know that these tabs are open: we can hear them whispering for our attention. It also discourages serious thinking: after all, you can focus deeply on a little but not deeply on a lot.

What’s the solution? First, we need to have the humility to know our limits. It was always a wise rule to never bite off more than you can chew and it’s even wiser in today’s hectic world. I can well imagine that, somewhere, there’s already a gravestone with the sad inscription, ‘He just had too many tabs open’.

Above all, prioritise. We need to ask ourselves: do I need to do this? Do I need to do it now? Can I do it well? I suggest we need to reflect on the following little story in Luke’s Gospel and note its application both to our mind and spirit.

“As Jesus and the disciples continued on their way to Jerusalem, they came to a certain village where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. Her sister, Mary, sat at the Lord’s feet, listening to what He taught. But Martha was distracted by the big dinner she was preparing. She came to Jesus and said, ‘Lord, doesn’t it seem unfair to You that my sister just sits here while I do all the work? Tell her to come and help me.’ But the Lord said to her, ‘My dear Martha, you are worried and upset over all these details! There is only one thing worth being concerned about. Mary has discovered it, and it will not be taken away from her.” (Luke 10:38–42 )

Indeed, there is only one thing worth being concerned about! Let’s make that priority our priority.

Visit J John’s website for more encouraging words. Canon John has a variety of resources for both adults and children including books on evangelism and faith, plus Bible stories retold for today’s kids. Follow J.John on Twitter @canonjjohn

It has been said of Edward Jenner that ‘his work saved more lives than any other man on earth’. It’s an extraordinary claim for someone who spent his entire life as a country doctor, but it may well be true.

Edward Jenner was born in 1749 in Berkeley, Gloucestershire, England, the son of the local vicar. His family had a long tradition of sending people into the church, but the death of Jenner’s father left the family impoverished and forced the young man to take up another career. From an early age Jenner had a great interest in science and the natural world and was apprenticed to a doctor. Learning the trade, he went on to work in London where his skills both as a physician and a scientist were soon recognised. He was invited by Captain Cook to be part of the science team on his second voyage to Australasia. Jenner, however, had no love of either travel or London life and soon returned to his home village as its doctor.

Jenner’s reputation as a caring and wise doctor grew among his community but he continued to pursue his long-standing fascination with nature. He was particularly interested in birds and his careful studies of cuckoo behaviour gained him such respect in the British scientific community that he was elected to the prestigious Royal Society.

The great medical curse of the age was the killer disease smallpox. In Europe, around 400,000 people a year died from the disease. Typically, when smallpox swept through a village 20 to 50 per cent of those infected died. A third of the survivors of smallpox went blind and many more were scarred for life.

People were so desperate to avoid smallpox that they sought to be deliberately inoculated from sores of those who had a mild form of the disease in the hope that this would give them some immunity. It was a risky procedure with limited success: the great American preacher Jonathan Edwards died as a result of it. It was a disease without a cure.

In thinking about smallpox, Jenner pondered a dairymaid’s intriguing comment: ‘I shall never have smallpox for I have had cowpox.’ Cowpox was a mild infection of animals which could be caught by humans with little harmful effect. Jenner concluded that there must be a possibility that smallpox could be prevented by inoculating people with cowpox. Yet as a scientist he knew that to be of any worth, any experiments had to be conducted carefully. When an outbreak of cowpox occurred locally, Jenner deliberately inoculated a young stablehand with it. The boy suffered only mild effects and when, a few months later, he was inoculated with smallpox, he failed to catch the far more serious disease. Encouraged, Jenner persisted with more inoculations and in 1797 sent a short communication to the Royal Society describing his results. His paper was rejected on the grounds that it had only 13 samples. Disappointed but not deterred, Jenner went away and carried out more work, eventually publishing his results at his own expense.

Jenner called his new procedure vaccination after the Latin word for cow, vacca. Despite controversy, his method spread rapidly throughout Britain and was soon taken up across the world. Jenner refused to make money out of his discovery – he inoculated the poor for free – and in encouraging the careful use of the new technique he bankrupted himself.

There is very little to say about the rest of Jenner’s life. He continued as a doctor and consultant, kept up his interest in the natural world and died in 1823. His old adversary, smallpox, outlasted him but not for long. Increasingly confined to remote parts of the world, it was finally eradicated in 1980.

Despite the turbulence of the times in which Jenner lived – the Napoleonic wars were raging – his fame became enormous. He was soon considered one of the most famous men in Europe and honoured everywhere, even by Napoleon, who had his entire army vaccinated.

Edward Jenner was a committed Christian. He was typical of many believers in every age who demonstrate their faith through the way they live their lives. An amiable, quiet, warm-hearted Christian, ever ready with the appropriate Bible verse, Jenner was anxious that his discovery would be used as widely as possible. He was particularly concerned that praise should be directed not to him, but to the God who had made and used him.

I find many challenges in the life of Edward Jenner.

First, I’m challenged by what Jenner achieved. In Christian circles, it is still sometimes held that the highest calling that anyone can have is that of being a full-time minister of the gospel. Circumstances demanded that Jenner never made it as a preacher but it’s hard to imagine a life of greater value than his.

Second, I’m challenged by how Jenner let his Christianity guide his work as a doctor and a scientist. His faith supported and regulated all that he did as a doctor and scientist. His science – apparently still impressive two centuries on – overflowed with virtues: enquiring, accurate and honest.

Third, I’m challenged by his determination. Jenner’s first efforts at publishing his results were rejected. Instead of giving up, he simply went back and got more data until his work was accepted. Vaccination then, as now, was controversial and Jenner had more than his fair share of criticism. Nevertheless, trusting in his knowledge, his studies and his God, he stood firm against his critics.

Finally, I’m challenged by Jenner’s immunity to fame. Here is a man who became quite literally a household name across the world, yet his celebrity status left him unchanged. Jenner remained to the end of his life a man who was gentle, humble and gracious.

So at a time when the word vaccination is widely heard, spare a thought for Edward Jenner, the man who started it all. A true hero of the faith.

J.John
Reverend Canon
www.canonjjohn.com