The church is much more than a moral compass

Dear Editor,

1 refer to letter by Mr. Eric Phillips entitled, “The church needs to regain its moral compass” (08/01/23).

The purpose of the Church is to manifest the wisdom of the omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent God through the indwelling of the spirit of truth to the world (Ephesians 3:9-12).

Truth is eternal, moral values are subject to change. For example, lifestyles which were considered sinful and morally unacceptable a generation ago are now morally acceptable.

Dr. Phillips by ending his letter questioning whether the Church has lost its heart and soul to commerce and self-love identified the remedy which can reverse the nation from its present course of moral retrogression and decay. Any further attempt by the mind of man to restore this nation to what God expects of it, will only make matters worse.

Dr Clive Thomas ended one of his columns in the Sunday Stabroek with a very accurate assessment of the root cause of the deepening crisis which he attributed to the nation having descended into a state-for-itself or selfishness.

The obvious solution to the problem of selfishness is to have the state-for-itself replaced with a state for others through selfless, compassionate leadership. (Luke 16:12).

However, this mindset only exists in the realm of theory for the most brilliant of natural men, who being unable to rise above the level of their senses remain fastened to the world’s system of corrupted wisdom whose every attempt at ascendancy has always been accompanied by or counterbalanced with a decline in morals. (1 Corinthians 2:14).

The selfishness of compassionate leadership is practiced effortlessly by the man or woman armed with truth as found in the mind of Christ (Philippians 2:3 – 8).

At present the global environment referred to by Dr. Thomas, is dominated by our former colonial overlords now united as a single market. This state of affairs has placed small and isolated nations such as Guyana in great danger by having to bend progressively to trade disadvantages as pawns in the new international chess game, orchestrated by the WTO. “At present we are living through a transformation that will arrange the politics and economies of this century. There will be no national products or technologies, no national corporation, no national industries. There will be no longer the national economies, at least as we have come to understand that concept. All that will remain rooted within national borders are the people who comprise a nation. Each nation’s primary asset will be its citizens, skills and insights. Each nation’s political task will be to cope with the centrifugal forces of the global economy which tear at ties binding its citizens together-bestowing even greater wealth on the most skilled and insightful, while consigning the least skilled to a declining standard of living”.

Failure to bend in an investment climate that is controlled by selfish foreign investors could result in the nation being broken by the world’s ruthless economic system and perhaps being absorbed into a worse form of slavery than that from which our ancestors were freed. However, Guyana is sure of entering into its finest hour with international trade negotiations in effect with the wisdom of God or obedience to truth, as found in the mind of Christ.

Now is the appointed time, therefore, for the Church to arise to its purpose and make the wisdom of God available to the authorities (Ephesians 3:10).

Yours faithfully,

R. Warren

Minister of the Gospel