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CHURCH OF GOD

And another thing.....

Reading about yet more leaders and shakers of our society behaving inappropriately, I was struck in remembrance of an old testament proverb: “When the righteous are increased, the people rejoice: but when a wicked man beareth rule, the people sigh” (Proverbs 29:2). We have more than one wicked in power; it seems like our whole leadership is bent on doing evil.

It seems that so many are now corrupt that more and more of the general public are behaving in similarly corrupt ways. A report asked people if they found a large sum of money would they turn it in to the police? Most said no. Some said it depended on how much. Maybe anything short of £100 they would keep. Take £10 or £20 to the station and the desk sergeant will probable tell you to take it away as too trifling a sum for them to bother with.

Teenagers in another report were asked about ‘acceptable’ behaviour. Most agreed that it would be what was acceptable to the majority of their mates. All of which might account for the violence in our cities, the corruption in our leaders and our standards of morality being not against a set code—say, the Bible—but against the sliding code of society. What was not acceptable 10 years ago might well be acceptable today. Hence the appalling revelations coming from the present inquiry into the press.

Our leaders and those whom society look to have much to answer for. And, I have to say, that includes our national religious leaders. Few times indeed does any one of them speak out against the twisted morality of our culture and age. No one calls for a return to the standards which set our country on high above the other nations.

I happened to catch some pundit or other talking about the row over the sacking of the English football captain. Oh, not about whether he was guilty of whatever misdemeanour caused his sacking, or the right and wrong as to whether he should have been sacked before being found guilty of any crime, but rather pontificating on ‘what he could get away with’. Only this time he got caught. It reminds me of the old adage: Do as you please, but don’t get caught. Some call that the eleventh commandment.

For Christians, the problem is that we can be sucked into the same ways of thinking as the society in which we live. That’s why, for example, Lot probably found Sodom to be not such a bad place. But our society is a very bad place for Christians. It’s against us, what we stand for, what we believe. It’s standards have no place in the vocabulary or thinking of a Christian. Their entertainment, at best edgy, and their comedy, rarely clean, need care and are not to be taken lightly or without thought.

We need to remember another motto: Dare to be different. We are different. We need to dare.

John Stettaford