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April 21, 2014—Thought for the Day
Radio 4's Today program has a slot at around 7:50am each day except Sundays called "Thought for the Day". A person of faith--some sort of faith is required and atheists or humanists need not apply--speaks for around 2-1/2 minutes on a religious subject often with a connection to the news of the day. I am not likely to appear, but I have a "thought for the day" that I had to write down today. I wouldn't normally post something this long, but it has to be said.
The Prime Minister last week stated that the UK should be “more confident about our status as a Christian country”. In the Daily Telegraph, a large group of writers, academics, and scientists has challenged that assertion, saying that it could cause alienation in the country.
This set me thinking: “Would the United Kingdom look like a Christian country were Christ to see it today?”
At home, we have a large number of people who are not employed, or underemployed. Some are on zero-hour contracts, which guarantee no work but prohibit a second job. They must depend upon the kindness of their fellow citizens for food to keep themselves, and their children, fed.
The so-called “bedroom tax”, which penalises those who have an extra bedroom by removing part of their housing support, has pushed many families including a disabled person needing a support worker 24/7 into housing poverty. Elderly couples who want to see their far-away children on visits will have no place to host them.
Those who have the resources to live well are favoured by government policies. Companies and financial institutions have been allowed to plunder our common resources and accumulate money and power, while the poor are deprived of the means of life in the name of “austerity”.
Those who come to the United Kingdom to escape persecution and death in their own countries are faced with insurmountable obstacles to demonstrating that they are in mortal danger in their home countries. Those who are forcibly expelled from the UK sometimes pay for their struggle for freedom with their lives. We welcome those who have resources with open arms, while sending the poor away empty.
In our prisons, those inmates who want to read books that are not in the prison library cannot improve themselves by receiving books from relatives and friends outside: we have forbidden that.
Overseas, we do send a large gross amount of aid to countries in need of help. However, we sell arms and police equipment to governments that use them to oppress their own people. We send our own troops to find supposed weapons of mass destruction and thereby cause a good deal of death and suffering among innocent people.
With only a few exceptions such as foreign aid and the personal charity of some of our people, not all of whom are baptised Christians, our actions among our own people and in the wider world put the lie to any assertion that we are a Christian country.
Those of us here who are Christians, rather than asserting that we are a Christian country, should do whatever we can, individually and collectively, to be true to our own baptismal promises and feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit prisoners, and make our country into a place where all people have freedom, justice, peace, and the means to live and thrive. And that is an aim that every one of us, regardless of religion or belief, could support.
Thought for the Day, 21 April, 2014
The Prime Minister last week stated that the UK should be “more confident about our status as a Christian country”. In the Daily Telegraph, a large group of writers, academics, and scientists has challenged that assertion, saying that it could cause alienation in the country.
This set me thinking: “Would the United Kingdom look like a Christian country were Christ to see it today?”
At home, we have a large number of people who are not employed, or underemployed. Some are on zero-hour contracts, which guarantee no work but prohibit a second job. They must depend upon the kindness of their fellow citizens for food to keep themselves, and their children, fed.
The so-called “bedroom tax”, which penalises those who have an extra bedroom by removing part of their housing support, has pushed many families including a disabled person needing a support worker 24/7 into housing poverty. Elderly couples who want to see their far-away children on visits will have no place to host them.
Those who have the resources to live well are favoured by government policies. Companies and financial institutions have been allowed to plunder our common resources and accumulate money and power, while the poor are deprived of the means of life in the name of “austerity”.
Those who come to the United Kingdom to escape persecution and death in their own countries are faced with insurmountable obstacles to demonstrating that they are in mortal danger in their home countries. Those who are forcibly expelled from the UK sometimes pay for their struggle for freedom with their lives. We welcome those who have resources with open arms, while sending the poor away empty.
In our prisons, those inmates who want to read books that are not in the prison library cannot improve themselves by receiving books from relatives and friends outside: we have forbidden that.
Overseas, we do send a large gross amount of aid to countries in need of help. However, we sell arms and police equipment to governments that use them to oppress their own people. We send our own troops to find supposed weapons of mass destruction and thereby cause a good deal of death and suffering among innocent people.
With only a few exceptions such as foreign aid and the personal charity of some of our people, not all of whom are baptised Christians, our actions among our own people and in the wider world put the lie to any assertion that we are a Christian country.
Those of us here who are Christians, rather than asserting that we are a Christian country, should do whatever we can, individually and collectively, to be true to our own baptismal promises and feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit prisoners, and make our country into a place where all people have freedom, justice, peace, and the means to live and thrive. And that is an aim that every one of us, regardless of religion or belief, could support.