THE CHURCH ON THE FRONT LINE

It was heartening reading this week to learn that the Church of England is considering withdrawing the large financial investments it has in Internet Service Providers like Virgin Media, BT Broadband, AOL and Sky unless they take more serious steps to curtail the huge and unregulated flow of internet pornography and especially where it might become available to children. This is in line with the Church’s policy not to help fuel the very problems which it is seeking remove from society. I very much hope that the church authorities will act very strongly here, even if it can only bring partial pressure.

It’s a move which has certainly helped to highlight the enormity of a very nasty and corrupting force in the modern world of communications. The most immediate and glaring example of this problem is that presented by the Dutchman, Tabak, who was convicted of murder in the recent high profile case. He was shown to have trawled through an internet site which boasted 58,000 videos and 50 categories of pornography hours before committing his crime. His crime mirrored what he had been looking at.

There are plenty of statistics which bear out a very grim picture of the appalling impact of this internet pornography. It is an “industry” worth £60 billion annually, and reveals the enormous numbers of people who have no compunction in making money out of it. Even more disconcerting, apparently “sex” and “porn” are among the top five search items for children under 18. A third of British teens say they learned about sex from looking at internet pornography. Around 11,000 pornographic films are made every year in the U.S. with most for internet use. Pornography is viewed by 35.9 per cent of U.K. internet users. These sort of facts really take the lid off our society.

The cumulative influence of this on human society and its adverse impact on wholesome and genuine loving relationships between men and women does not bear thinking about. Yet the internet providers are not keen to act, and neither are the police keen to investigate, which renders even current legislation against pornography virtually impotent. But lurid pornography remains one of the most destructive and corrosive forces in society. The church needs to act strongly wherever it can, and if it can make its money “talk” then it should do so.


At the same time that the Church of England made its welcome stand on the issue of pornography, St Paul’s Cathedral clergy also faced a front line problem with its anti-capitalist squatters. Unhappily the clergy have been torn apart and three, including the Dean, have resigned. This, as the Bishop of London said, is a great tragedy. However, it has only arisen because there were those at the Cathedral who wanted to give genuine space for genuine protest and there were those who saw long tern dangers in allowing unaccountable occupation to get a hold, and whose fears were confirmed. The tragedy is that they did not close ranks together and battle through to a solution together. What does remain, however, is the fact that the Cathedral authorities were very aware of the economic and financial injustices that the modern world is presenting and were looking for proper debate on the issue. We can only pray that the Bishop of London, a strong man with real political gift, may get those authorities back on track. We desperately need those in high places to be speaking out about those injustices that the financial world is imposing on our society.




Bob




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A SYMPTON OF DIS-EASE

The new communication technology based on the ubiquitous computer and mobile phone have made it possible for people to react vocally, speedily and with numerical force to things that deeply trouble them. They have the means to be in instant communication with each other and are avidly listening in for others who are like minded. This is what started the process that led to Gaddafi’s defeat. It’s a challenging new feature of our age.

It is also due to this that in the last two or three weeks we have seen the mushrooming of people camping out in large numbers of the major cities of the western world to make a protest. In the U.K. it has led to the closure of St. Paul’s Cathedral on Health and Safety grounds. The chief point of this protest is simply that there is something fundamentally wrong and unjust with the way the western world is structured financially and economically. The “Capitalism” of the kind we have come to know of recent decades has brought chaos and offers no cures. It radically favours the rich. Something very different has to get in to the system to bring us back in balance.

Newspaper columnists and politicians have treated this protesting as a sort of irritating itch by the ignorant, something to be brushed off. I’m not at all sure this is a wise response. It looks to me much more like an irritating rash that actually is a symptom of a serious disease within the financial and economic body. It is saying, “we are all suffering greatly from unacceptable financial behaviour and business practices, and nothing is being done to address that problem – those who have caused the chaos have got off scot-free and are still doing what they did before”. This sort of gut feeling by the “ignorant” is really a little too near the truth to be treated with contempt. It’s not sufficient to say to people, “You don’t understand how things work”. That sort of answer is always a stop to needed change.

Let’s pin point an issue of protest. If I bank my small amounts of money, my return on it is negligible; my account does not keep up with inflation and I get poorer. On the other hand if I put £1,000,000 in a Hedge Fund or Investment Bank (and I would need that sort of money to do so) I am likely to get a very respectable return and get richer. The reason for that is that the Fund will play the market and its price changes with the latest computer tech. by means of which its constant buying and selling of shares etc. will get me a profit. That’s all such an investment fund does – it just makes money out of money. It makes sure the rich get a profit, and of course that the fund’s traders get a nice slice of that profit in bonuses. What it does not do is to take all that financial resource which is at its disposal and put it to good use in investment of a kind that will profit the community at large by building infra-structure or business. Such banking just makes the rich richer. It’s the bit the banks favour – it’s the golden goose (for them, of course, not for anyone else). Such behaviour is rather like a cancer, living off and destroying the body that feeds it. It has escaped the crash and is as alive today as it was before 2008. The rich like it that way, and the investment banks like it that way. Neither is it purely western, though that’s its source.

This is a massive problem because the rich and super rich have increasingly siphoned off more and more of the world’s wealth and hugely widened the gap between them and the vast majority. The politicians seem to have no handle on them. But it all raises a fair question; how do we control greed? The rich seem incapable of seeing their greed, let alone relinquishing it. That’s the question being aired on the pavements of our cities. It might be uncomfortable for the economic text books but it’s certainly not irrelevant!

Once again I’m back to Amos and his sick society.




Bob




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NO EASY FORGIVENESS

Last week I wrote about the parable of the Prodigal Son. No matter how far away from the love of his father he walked, it was there ready for him to enjoy when he “came to himself”, humbled himself and went home, seeking forgiveness. It is a parable focusing on the eagerness of God to forgive, the joy he has in forgiving and the change of heart that is required in people in order to enter into that forgiveness. What it does not address, and was not attended to address, is the cost of forgiveness.

It would be an abuse of the parable to deduce from it that God’s forgiveness of our wayward behaviour is simply dependent upon our coming back to him and saying sorry. As Jesus was to make clear, there is another aspect to the story of entering back into the love of God, a very critical and sobering aspect. This has to do with his death.

God is not able to simply and easily forgive and forget the moral failures that stain our lives. Their nature and significance is far too deep for that. Neglect of and rebellion against God cannot just be cast on one side no matter how deeply sorry a person may be. The very love of God itself, a holy love, has decreed the exclusion from God’s presence of those caught up in such behaviour. “Sin” is an eternal affront to a holy God, whose holiness is a blazing spotless love which will not look on evil except to destroy it. Sin is an extremely serious matter. It simply cannot be passed over; it has to be purged. No matter how broken hearted a prodigal may be, there is nothing he can do himself to remove the stain of sin that has marked his life. That is the whole thrust of Scripture from beginning to end.

Jesus knew this, of course, even whilst was telling the parable of the Prodigal, and his mind was already set on the cross. He knew that the love of God had found a way for human sin to be justly purged and forgiven, but that it was a way that would lead him, the Son of God, to bear the due consequences of sin in dying on a cross, derelict and cut off from God. He would “bear our sins”, he would be “punished for our transgressions”, and he would be “made sin for us” so that our forgiveness and restoration would be real.

Thus the patience and loving forgiveness in the heart of the Father as exemplified in the Prodigal story becomes wonderfully magnified into a love that found a way to bring meaningful forgiveness through deep pain both to the “Only Begotten Son” and the Father.What man could not do, they would do.

Our forgiveness was not cheap.






Bob




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