Dear Editor,
Most of the discussions around unity in faith and life for Christians currently revolves around ethical issues specially, in this season, to do with gender or indeed the teaching of the Holy Scriptures on male and female, as the divinely ordained context for marriage and sexual relations. Such attention to the ethical content of our faith is deserved, because after all Jesus did not mince words: ‘Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them’ (John 14: 23).
Ironically, many of us boldly profess Christianity as our faith, and firmly declare its Biblical tenets as our foundation for ethics on all matters in public and private life. However, the stark reality is that, despite our declared spiritual and moral identity, our actual spiritual and moral formation have been shaped by a world which, as St John puts it in 1 John 5: 19, has been taken captive by the evil one. We could argue our heads off regarding how to live and maybe even win the argument. We could attain a high degree of moral decency, but remain at risk of losing touch with the life of God, as we feel good about gains we might be making in asserting our moral identity.
