Nukhosa Chuzho
Perhaps, one of the greatest challenges facing Christian today is learning how to be faithful Christians and responsible citizens in an increasingly pluralistic society with a constitution that guarantees religious freedom and forbids an established Church. Issues ranging from the life of an infant to the face of relative poverty involves laws and public policies that structures human behavior. As such, offering personal viewpoints and explanations directed to the issues given rise to the exclusivists and the inclusivists. The former believed that religious faith should be excluded as much as possible from the public life, while, on contrary, the inclusivists affirmed that religious tenets and its application may be included in public life. Interestingly, both categories are either furtively or descriptively present within our realm. Furthermore, toleration of others’ religious or personal viewpoints is often misinterpreted as relativism, which is in itself a fallacy.
Living in a world of devaluing moral principles and basic ethics of life, our conscience become awfully obstinate as to whether any of our reasoning ability could transcend defined areas of understanding that could hint us a clue to discern the real truth behind. The presence of reasoning, which, sometimes, is subject to falsification, is apparently the guiding way out to precisely comprehend the issues involves both religious and social assumption in resolving issues honorably.
Abortion
The most heated issue but also the most hidden topic in our church among issues lies manifold. Two differed groups crops out as a result of the debate on right to abortion, whose opinions from both sides involved met with the same opposition in response. The pro-choice, who backed abortion, argued that women should be allowed to decide as to whether she should have aborted her conceived child. Whereas those of pro-life, who opposed abortion, asserted on the premise that a sacred life of a child should never have been terminated at all cost. Unjustly, to deprive a person of his/her life is a most grave violation of human dignity, of responsibility to the vulnerable and of the common good. Never have to deny personal responsibility, also have to stress the mutual responsibilities that human being owed one another. For everyone is potentially sacred, holy, and everything and everyone may mediate God’s love; the “sacredness of human life in the womb deserves legal protection”, which is our responsibility to protect the vulnerable and because the social virtue of solidarity demands it.
Homosexuality
It is too premature to assume that we have homosexual members in our churches, but also cannot be totally concluded that we are free of homosexuals. Without detailing out the causes and the consequences of gay marriage, we all know that it will have a disastrous outcome in the society where God’s vision of the world being filled with multitude of His loving children is openly challenged. From the constitutional point of view, to excommunicate or to root out homosexuals from the primary membership of the church and to withhold their due rights account to violation of basic right of individuals, as the gay activists themselves admitted that it was not by choice but by enormous force. While referring to biblical truth and Christian principles, marriage was purely a relationship, or a bond, between a man and a woman, whose sole responsibility is to raise a stable family in way God himself has predesigned.
But when view this from a secular perspective, neither the state nor the church should overrule the rights of individuals but rather make a platform where they can express themselves and pursue their own business that can contribute a bit to the making of a workable society. As the bible pointed out, to cut down branch of unwieldy grapes and to cast it off into the lake of fire rest with him alone, let the word of God take precedence.
Spirit for Accumulation of Wealth
Protestant ethics advocates work to make wealth, which is a virtue in itself if pursue not for pleasure and defied moral values, as the fact that economy is the backbone of survival remains as true as ever. Uneven distribution of resources and opportunity makes persons especially vulnerable to violation of basic amenities, economic exploitation, crime and robbery albeit the variable low and high income varies with persons and cannot be balanced as it is earned through experiences and one’s capacities accordingly. Still then, our consumerist and materialist culture, derived from over commitment to capitalist norms, undermines families and moral values, leading to a culture of instant gratification, rootlessness, dissatisfaction, and resentment against the natural limits of the human condition.
There is a growing conservative voice in our state in defense of free market principles that emphasizes granting a private body or an individual concerned a complete freedom to, in matter of economy, pursue and amass wealth. To hint out that even those who are at the apex point of income comparatively, even when theorizing equal participation, they themselves are too committed to a capitalistic and consumerist belief that undermines the very foundation of a state’s elements. Before being dived into spirit for capitalism, we should have studied the moral considerations and that if the ethics of work culture found its own place in the making of wealth, then morality based on Christian understanding must underlie the means production.
What is your response?
The above discussions are just alluded to how a Christian response to the social evils prevalence in and around us. Yet Christians have had their differences as to how problems involved Church should bring a just social order. As Neuhaus emphasized, “public decisions must be made by arguments that are public in character…fundamentalists morality, which is deserved from beliefs that be submitted to examination by public reason, is essentially a private morality”.
Just as a theologian cannot legitimately address a social issue solely on theological grounds that ignore the facts, so also a legal or a factual expert cannot relevantly offer a Christian moral judgment solely on the basis of fact and without consideration of the faith. It is a fervent appeal to everyone alike that, those representing the church and those who have inclination towards secular viewpoint, irrespective of any beliefs, come a step closer and work out things in just and acceptable conclusion, which is godly. It can be a wonderful thing when the two are deeply harmonized.
