Guest blog by Tim Childs
We have seen in the last few months that the present coalition government has initiated cuts of all kinds, often to the detriment of the poorest and even the most vulnerable in society, and astonishingly at the same time introduced a tax break for millionaires who, if we’re honest, really don’t need any more.
If you’re a Christian, what is the position you are supposed to take on these matters? What if you are someone who is suffering as a result of these ideological cuts? Should we accept what the ‘powers-that-be’ do and say, or should we challenge what we perceive to be injustice?
These are tough questions, and who really has the answers anyway? Have we gone too far in providing welfare, and has it become a lifestyle choice rather than a safety net? Is it only a problem when it’s poor, disabled and working class people who receive it, and not a problem when royals and peers in the House of Lords receive all kinds of benefits, subsidies and perks? Where do you stand on this?
As a Christian, and as someone who myself comes from a poor background, my view is that we should all be very careful how we judge other people, especially when those people are seen to be a problem in the way the poor and unemployed have recently been portrayed.
If we’re honest, Jesus had more time for the ordinary people than He did for the great and the good; or for that matter, the particularly religious.
Some Christian denominations have recently criticised the government for its attacks on the poor and also for the rhetoric and cruelty that often goes along with such attacks; certainly for its old trick of setting one group against another: in this case the working against those not working.
Are these alarm bells to warn Christians that something isn’t right, or what exactly? Is British society basically fair but occasionally unjust, or is it badly out of kilter?
I believe that we live in a fallen world, and often even the supposedly ‘best’ societies reflect that fallen status; people are fallen and make mistakes and can even be downright evil. Systems are fallen and can be abused; democracy itself, although a very good idea in principle and sometimes even in practice, can be ignored and abused.
No human or human system is ever going to be perfect. But what happens when people wilfully and even cruelly attack others, making them scapegoats for problems that the scapegoated didn’t create?
I have believed for a while that some of what passes for Christianity in Britain is more of a social religion than real Christianity; more about being a glorified social club for those who think they are better than everybody else, rather than a life-affirming, life-transforming and ultimately personal relationship with our Creator.
I don’t say this lightly, and I don’t say it is the case with all Christians, but I think many use their faith as a mask of respectability or hide behind it to control and ruthlessly exploit other people, sometimes even in the name of religion.
This is not the reason Jesus came to earth, nor is it Christianity as it should be practised. There is religion and the world ‘out there’ and there is an ‘inner reality’, the truth we hold in our hearts and the relationship we have – or should at least be working on – with Jesus.
If a person is truly a Christian, and not using religion for their own ends or selfish agenda, sooner or later we will know them simply by what they do, as opposed to what they might say. It is up to us, then, as simple Christians who merely want to serve the Lord each day with a whole heart, to understand that sometimes our faith can be used by the ‘great and the good’ for their own purposes. Often these purposes have nothing to do with Christianity and nothing at all to do with God.
Click here to read more blog entries by Tim Childs.
