Now the dust has settled, after the election, what is there to say about our new coalition government? Do we want to leave it to them to shape the future of our country and our world or should we be in the business, as the church of God, of shaping the future with God’s agenda?

 

It is time for the church to give a moral and spiritual lead. For too long the church has been asleep on the job, when we should be waking up people and trying to discern what is the will of God for our present generation. Paul writes in Romans 12 verse 2, ‘Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your minds so that you may discern what is the will of God – what is good and acceptable and perfect’

 

So the question is, and it’s a vital question for the church, what is God’s will for our country at this present time and can we be involved in giving people and the government a vision to shape the future of our country and the wider world?

I am worried by the government’s main approach, with its emphasis on cutbacks and the extent to which these will hurt the people who are most vulnerable and poor. Is this a return to the trickle down theory of politics? This says that first we must fix the economy, before we can help the poor. The rich need to be secure and looked after first and then, once the economy is fixed, we can help the poor.

 

God is on the side of the poor as Mary’s song, the Magnificat, makes quite clear. ‘He hath filled the hungry with good things; and the rich he has sent empty away’. The church must speak out on behalf of the poor and protect those who are vulnerable. To follow God’s agenda we must look for a radical redistribution of wealth. It is not enough to say must wait until the economy is fixed before the poor can be helped. The poor are suffering today and they should not have to wait until the day after tomorrow.

 

Water Aid quotes the horrendous fact that a child dies of a water related disease every 15 or 20 seconds. That’s three or four children every minute. I gave a talk to an assembly of 255 children recently and we worked out that with a death rate of three per minute that the whole school would be dead in 85 minutes.

 

Our government and other world leaders need to be challenged to do more about poverty and the uneven distribution of wealth. It is not good enough to say that the poor must wait. We must look at why the poor are poor. We must look at why we don’t make their needs a priority. So many people are suffering now and the church needs to speak out on behalf of the poor. 

 

The church must beware of following the government’s mantra of cuts, cuts, cuts. If we follow them we are in danger of becoming mean in our outlook. We must model our behaviour on God’s love and generosity. ‘Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s’. While the government is spending so much of its time thinking about cutbacks, the church should be thinking about how we can show God’s love and generosity to those around us, and especially to those who are poor and suffering. We should be encouraging people to be generous with their wealth and we should be thinking about how we can make the world a more equal place. Perhaps the rich should be paying more taxes?

Inequality between rich and poor is a scandal in God’s world where loving and caring for one another are a priority. God wants to bless all people and to bring us into unity as brothers and sisters in one family. The church needs to be challenging inequality and speaking with the voice of a prophet when it is confronted with such suffering.

Are we willing to speak out and to act?