As a Christian my faith demands that I show love and care to God and to people and creation. "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might..." “and your neighbour as yourself.” The parable of the ‘Good Samaritan’ paints out who is my neighbour.
My neighbours includes the poor, the weak the powerless, the disenfranchised, the marginal, those hated and despised in society. The person who doesn’t look like me, who thinks differently than me. They are the drug addict, homeless, the uneducated, the person on benefits, the illegal immigrant, people of different religious persuasions, sexual orientation, different understanding of gender, race or culture. My faith demands and commands not tolerance but love, and not just a little bit but “with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might…”
In recent weeks and months media has been awash with hateful rhetoric, sentiments and actions. I have seen one nation of whom history ought to have taught them better commit ethic cleansing on another. And what did the political leaders of the developed world do, next to nothing, Token shaking their heads verbally at most. I have witnessed a dictatorship invade and wage war on another nation in an act of empire building. Enormous lose of life and pain. Dreadful. In the United States the present incumbent of the presidency, has criminalise immigrants, cancelled diversity programs, abandoned the Paris Climate Agreement, Withdrawn from the World Health Organisation, expressed interest in taking over Panama, Greenland and Canada, condemned the International Court of Justice, closed US AID. He also seems to wish to start a disastrous trade war with his allies using tariffs, which will cause awful poverty, depression and recession.
The phrase often attributed to Edmund Burke comes to mind "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing".
In the light of what I see and hear in the media, what should I do as a Christian?
Shake my head at the TV? Write a strongly worded letter to my MP, or the US Ambassador? Pray for those negatively? Pray for the paddlers of hate, instigators and perpetrators?
What should I do?
Do nothing? Then evil triumphs.
I am virtually powerless.
I do have the freedom of where I spend my $$.
I can inform myself of where my money is going when I spend it and make informed decisions to limit my $$ going to supporters of MAGA, Trump, Elon, Netanyahu. I will buy locally grown and manufactured where possible. I will move away from US based Tech companies, move to Linux and European based Tech. I prefer French wine, German beer and cars and English Pork Sausages.
