Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Christian Values?

The Bishop of Manchester has blamed the 'me-first' culture for the recent riots in England.  He goes on to explain that in his opinion the problems were down to the 'relentless erosion of Christian values' and a moral deficit in private and public life which had spawned 'acquiitiveness and dishonesty'.

I have to take him to task on two key issues here.

Firstly he is rather suggesting that only Christians have values and morals which is totally inaccurate.  The majority of the people in this country have good values, ethics and moral standards regardless of which religion they support, and of course those who have no religion.  It is totally wrong to say that Christians have the monopoly on this.

Secondly, we regularly hear cases of those in the church who one would expect to demonstrate these so called 'Christian values' demonstrating anything but.  To take just two examples we have the child abuse within the Catholic church, and the number of church ministers who seem to ignore the sanctity of marriage in their dealings with their parishioners and have extra-marital affairs, ruining lives.  I seem to remember a saying about people in glass houses and stones.

Perhaps the church lives by the maxim of 'Do what I say, not what I do'

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