Matthew 6:19–24 ‘The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness.’ (vv22–23)
There are so many ways to communicate God’s glorious deeds today. The difficulty is the extent any such communication will be noticed. Forced to compete within an ever-expanding mountain of garbage, even if amongst the detritus gold can be found. The pearl of great price comes to mind! Social media offers unimaginable reach, but like fish and chip paper of old, it’s usually yesterday’s, often ‘fake’, news. How will we communicate across open media channels choking on their own vast volume of information?
It’s said nature abhors a vacuum, and the internet is testimony to that. Fearing a confident Christianity seems strangely outdated since science and its twin, secularism, have enjoyed more than sufficient time to apply the empirical method they love and call out the fantasies that crowd all media platforms.
One wonders if Christianity had not been so heavily censored within the public square, then free speech might have survived to counter ‘cancel culture’. Worse, the Church has in many ways retreated to proclaiming its message inside an echo chamber of its own design, whilst deliberately abandoning a wounded population to stagger on the battlefield of rhetoric and hand spun nonsense, now called news.
We must confess that as Christians we’ve been complicit in the silencing of our Christian message. We need to accept the challenge to offer practical education and training in how Christian values underpin and secure the future of a multicultural society that may live at ease with itself whilst offering hope to all.
SCRIPTURE TO CONSIDER:
Ps. 19; Jer. 17:7–11; Luke 6:41–49; 2 Tim. 2:14–26
AN ACTION TO TAKE:
If tempted to join the social conversation, don’t do so at the expense
of your Christian understanding. Ensure that the yeast you contribute affects the whole loaf.
A PRAYER TO MAKE:
‘Lord, help me to think clearly about my faith in the context of my work,
my community and my family. May church not be my ghetto,
but an engine room for my faith and social engagement. Amen.’
Photo by Lara Jameson
