GOOD GOVERNMENT

“The powers that be are ordained of God”, writes St. Paul. That means God conceives of government as a necessary thing for humanity. Why is it necessary? The simple answer is that built into humanity is a terrible tendency for people to hurt each other. Government in the purpose of God is there to prevent that happening. However, there are powers that seek to frustrate that purpose, and all too frequently we see bad government as well as good government, bad government which is self-seeking, fear inspiring and ruthless. When that happens the hurt becomes multiplied.

What makes for good government? Essentially there are two sides to that question, each seemingly opposite to the other. On the one hand good government seeks to release people into freedom. It seeks to provide space and opportunity where people may fulfil their lives. On the other hand government is there to restrain people. People are to be restrained when they pursue what is evil and unjust. In Paul’s words, government “bears the sword”, in order to bring restraint, and to do so forcibly if necessary. These two different sides of government, release and restraint, are not really opposed, however, but belong together since people can never be truly free if evil is not restrained.

Good government cannot operate properly, therefore, without a clear outline of what is evil and to be restrained and what genuinely belongs to human freedom and is to be promoted. That outline is provided by Law. So, in the case of ancient Israel, fundamental to the exercise of good government was the Law God gave at Sinai. It was essentially a “moral” law, a law of behaviour. It was a law of moral restraints designed to secure genuine freedom. At the heart of all good government there must always be this “moral” law. Good government cannot opt out of “moral” law. If it tries to do so it ceases to be effective as true government. There can be no hazy, “please yourself” moral law. There are many areas where choice is legitimate but moral law is not one of them.

The obligation laid on good government is first and foremost to make sure the nation is educated in the precept and practice of its moral law. It is then obliged to restrain behaviour which does not conform to its law and is harmful.

When government becomes confused about moral law it is in danger of becoming bad government. The modern secular government is confused. One of those areas of confusion has to do with sexual behaviour. It has effectively abandoned any kind of restraint. It has encouraged the notion that sex is a private and personal matter for each person to do as they please; permissiveness is a freedom! This is maintained not withstanding the obvious hurt and harm that results. In this way moral law has become personal moral permissiveness. Sex education bears the stamp of this confusion, and is actually an education for permissiveness – it deals with the how but never the why and the when of sex; restraint and self-control are notions not to be mentioned. There is no control over the exploitation of sex in the culture of the times. It contrasts very sharply with the law as we have known it for many generations, “do not commit adultery; do not commit fornication”.

Government is equally confused about coveting and stealing when it comes to the world of finance and business. When coveting and sharp practice becomes institutionalised in our financial structures it is time for government to restrain.Good government is obligated to do so. The opposition against such restraint is of course extremely strong and among the influential and powerful people who benefit. But government needs to be stronger. Over the last two or three decades it has actually acceded to the removal of carefully built laws of restraint on the indulgence of financial greed, so that regulation is virtually non existent. All this has been done under the specious cloak of reformed and liberal economic theory, in the same way that sexual permissiveness has been allowed under the cover of specious theories of what really belongs to human freedom. More to the point here, the confusion over sexual morals has actually been caused in no small measure by the failure to restrain the world of money making from making full use of sex in its quest for profit and riches.


Pray for good government.




Bob




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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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