Church and social harmony

October 11, 2017 370 Views No Comment

Historically, those Christian who truly realize the spiritual foundation for life have not been slow to fight for justice in material things. This has been the Christian heritage in society all through the years. God is the Lord of all life. Private and public affairs must all come under God’s control. The social order must be governed in accordance with God’s commands. The relations of human beings to one another ought not to be of an acquisitive society but those of the members of a family all having the same care for one another. Christianity’s emphasis on the rights of men and women has been the corner stone on which democracy founded society.

Society and Christianity are inseparable except at great cost. A society without Christian values soon deteriorates into authoritarianism. The state is magnified at the expense of the individual whenever and wherever the Christian Gospel is socially rejected.

Obviously it is only those who are prepared to venture into the social field can truly keep the Christian heritage in society up to date. Every Church ahs the responsibility of adding its positive influence in society and has to interpret Christ’s teaching in relation to the social problems which confront it. The claims of Jesus are not modest. They are total: They are absolute. The truths in Christ’s teaching form the background against which each generation of Christian Church measures its problems. Thus the permanent and transient are both involved in our great heritage.

The Church has proved to the generations that her influence has risen high when there was a growth in concern for humanity and their conditions of life, i.e. when controversy has not frightened the leaders into silence.

To relate our faith to the basic issues touching the life of this generation is therefore not to diminish its significance, but to extent it. Indeed, people will refuse to listen unless the Church is able to show how Christianity has a relevance to civic sense, tribe and race problems, to social poverty and disease, equal opportunities and rights and to the awakening of the under privileged peoples in our context.

The Church is to redefine our basic heritage and to apply it to this age and then to convince our fellow citizens both of its authenticity and of its relevance.

Parts 1 2 3