Rhys and Jamie
Even before late August’s tragic incident of the murder of little Rhys Jones in Liverpool by a teenaged gunman, politicians were talking of ‘breakdown Britain’.
The Bible spells out certain fundamentals on how fallen human society works. It therefore enables us to foresee the future. Anyone using God’s Word could have predicted what would happen to our land years ago. In fact they did. Back in 1971 many Christians came together in London for the Nationwide Festival of Light to warn the government which had presided over the permissive society and the ‘swinging 60s’. But their warning was ignored. Now we are reaping the harvest. It is not just gangs and guns on our streets. There are, as we all know, epidemics of family breakdown, drug culture, binge drinking, teenaged pregnancy, sexually-transmitted diseases, gambling addiction, abuse of the elderly (and terrorism).
The secular delusion
The secular delusion is that we don’t need God. In fact, life is better without him. The apostle Paul speaks of this as a delusion. For example, in Ephesians 4.17-19, he describes those without God and ‘the futility of their thinking’. Within that passage you find a progression. Cut off from God we are in spiritual darkness. That darkness leads to ignorance of God. That ignorance makes us hardened or insensitive. (How callous our society has become when a little ten-year-old can be shot down in cold blood?) This in turn means people do not know the life of God in them as the source of joy and wholeness.
The re-emergence of heavy shepherds
What would you think if you received a letter from your church leaders that read like this? ‘Are church members …