St Columba's Episcopal Church Reverend Mark Goodman says emergency situations have made him think deeper this summer about how we react to crisis situations...

I have had three fire alarm experiences during a three week spell earlier this summer.

The first was in a hotel in Jedburgh at about 7am in the morning. I was quickly out of bed, out of the building and standing in the street in my pyjamas, with about three other people. The rest never bothered to leave the building.

The second was at Glasgow University. I was at an event at the back of the Chapel and talking to someone who worked at the University. The alarm went and mostly people, including me, went on drinking coffee. You could tell that most people thought it was an alarm test. Then we hit that point when the alarm didn’t turn off and people were having to make up their mind, to stay or go. Still most people were enjoying their coffee and conversations. We had to be ushered out of the building.

The third was a fire alarm practice at our summer holiday club. The children were brilliant and sensible, the building was cleared and in under two minutes the registers were checked and we were heading our way back into the hall.

In the first two events, there was an obvious possibility of danger, yet most people, unlike the children, took no action.

So how to unpack this. Is it people not caring? Is it people thinking that this cannot happen to me or I’m sure it will be alright and everything will work out ok in the end.

There is a lot of psychology around how we respond to threat, (e.g. flight, fight, freeze). That we seem not to notice or care very much about the possibility of danger maybe tells us something about ourselves.

As Ingmar Rentzhog, founder of We Don’t Have Time notes, if no one runs, neither do we. So maybe it’s all down to peer pressure. If no one takes the lead, we all go down.

Well, the children at the holiday club got it and acted. Maybe the attitude of children helps here. Jesus, in Matthew’s Gospel, reminds us about changing our perspective on life. He said, ‘Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.’

Jesus is saying, don’t let our misconceptions get in the way of doing the right thing.