Category Morality

In light of the release of Israeli & Palestian captives – a reflection

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Today (15th February 2025), Hamas has released three more Israeli hostages; Sagui Dekel-Chen, Yair Horn and Alexander Troufanov, making a total of 19 Israeli hostages released so far this year under the ceasefire arrangements, with over 1000 Palestinian prisoners released in exchange. This most recent release was met with great relief as Hamas had previously said it would pause the release of hostages because Israel had violated the terms of the deal – a charge vigorously denied. This means that under the current arrangements another 14 hostages are due to be returned but since only 6 of them are thought to be alive, the mood will become increasingly dark and the situation increasingly fragile as bodies are finally returned to their loved ones. But then of course the whole thing has been terribly tragic since the terrible Hamas attack of 7th October 2023 when 1200 Israeli’s were savagely killed leading to the ruin of Gaza and the loss of many thousands of Palestinians through the Israeli military response. The physical pain, suffering and psychological trauma of those held captive on both sides has become clear with each subsequent release and we will all be thankful when the hostages have been released and as peace is established.

In recent times, the world in which we live has become increasingly dark, sinister and violent and there can be no doubt that many would describe the anger, hatred and violence that we see as evil. The Christian would equate this darkness with our human, natural capacity to sin which is a product of our fallen nature and our selfish desire to put ourselves first, often at the expense of others. Indeed, self-centred people seldom see, care or recognise the needs of others. Sin of this sort is self-perpetuating – one bad deed leads to another, either to satisfy a personal or collective greed or ambition, or to retaliate, seeking vengeance and getting one’s own back.  In a sense we are all held captive and chained to the dark side of our sinful nature which ruins both our lives and that of our society.

However, the Bible tells us that the love of God is greater and even more powerful than sin, as demonstrated in the life and person of Jesus Christ. His compassionate love and grace ‘for the fallen’ is clearly a model for us all to live our lives by. But it his willingness to literally ‘step into our place’ and to die upon the cross which highlights and demonstrates just how much his selfless sacrificial love drove him ‘to set the captives free’ (Isaiah 42.7). This is illustrated in the fact that upon his arrest, a notorious criminal called Barabas was released in Jesus’ place! It is neatly summarised in the 4th verse of that famous hymn, ‘And can it be’ by Charles Wesley:

Long my imprisoned spirit lay
fast bound in sin and nature’s night;
thine eye diffused a quickening ray –
I woke, the dungeon flamed with light;
my chains fell off, my heart was free.
I rose, went forth, and followed thee.

This is a wonderful freedom which is available to all who put their faith in Christ, so please embrace it.

The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners. Isaiah 61.1

What does Crowdstrike’s ‘blue screen of death’ mean for you?

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Did you escape the ‘blue screen of death’? If so you were lucky, for we have just witnessed the most serious IT outage ever – affecting the lives of millions of people and causing chaos and upheaval around the world. Initially, many wondered if this was a security or cyber-attack but very quickly George Kurtz, CrowdStrike’s chief executive apologised for the chaos caused, admitting that it was due to a bug in a software update rolled out by the cybersecurity firm affecting 8.5 million Windows PCs worldwide. The infamous ‘blue screen of death’ suddenly appeared as users were locked out of their systems requiring many to be rebooted manually, multiple times, before the updated fix could be applied. In the meantime, the damage and disruption caused was widespread, causing chaos to the lives of many innocent bystanders. More than 3,300 flights were cancelled globally. Railways were suddenly hit by major delays. More significantly hospitals couldn’t always access their systems, and neither could GPs access medical records or give patients the results of blood tests. Banking apps were suddenly taken offline and many large stores such as Morrisons and Waitrose couldn’t take payments, and Sky News was taken off the air.

Fortunately, it seems that no deaths have been caused by this IT outage, but the ripple effect and unintended consequences of this software ‘accident’ are plain for all to see, and the remedy is both time consuming and costly. The Christian will immediately see a parallel between this ‘Crowdstrike’ incident and the notion of original sin as depicted in the Bible, for as the Apostle Paul makes clear, ‘just as sin (and death) entered the world through one man … so death came to all people (the ‘crowd strike’) because all have sinned’ (Romans 5.12). Paul goes on to say that ‘the wages of sin is death’ (actual death and not just a ‘blue screen’) (Romans 6.23) which is much more severe. It seems that sometimes, despite our best intentions, sin has a way of distorting the good that we wish to do and making it less so – and of course deliberate and wilful sin often causes untold damage and chaos not only to ourselves but to the people around us. It also spoils our relationship with God!  Which is why we are so fortunate to have a friend and saviour like Jesus, because through him not only does God take upon himself all of the pain, punishment and guilt of our sinful behaviour as individuals and as communities, but he also takes it away, giving us the opportunity of a reboot – a fresh start when we put our faith and trust in him which is his free gift to all who believe.

For just as through the disobedience of one person many received the status of ‘sinner’, so through the obedience of one person many will receive the status of ‘in the right’. Romans 5.19 (The Bible for Everyone – N.T. Wright)

With war in Europe and the Middle East – how do you define a just war?

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It was the writer of Ecclesiastes who said:

1There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven … 8 a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace. (Ecclesiastes 3.1,8)

But the problem is with so much hurt caused by war, and with conflict in both Europe and the Middle East, how do you know the ‘right’ time to go to war and can it ever be just?

Even before we can consider this question, we must be unequivocally clear that war is terribly costly and will always be a dreadful, dreadful tragedy – the price of which for many in terms of human life and suffering will always be too much and the misery unbearable – and that’s even before we have considered the subsequent damage caused to society, economics and the environment. War is awful and must always be considered a last resort!

So how can we possibly contemplate it and ever call it just? Well, there are six conditions generally required for a war to be classified as just.

  1. The reason for going to war in the first place must be just. i.e. a morally right or just cause, such as defending a nation (Revelation 19.11).
  2. The war must be called by a legitimate legally recognised national authority such as a government. It can’t be called by private individuals or corporations (Romans 13.1).
  3. There must be a genuine desire for comparative justice. It should be clear that the actions of the enemy are morally wrong and that the motives of one’s own government should be, in comparison, morally right. There must be a genuine intention to establish good and restrain evil (Proverbs 21.2). Revenge, conquest, economic gain and matters of ideological superiority  are poor motives for conflict and do not remotely satisfy the conditions for a just war.
  4. There must be a reasonable chance of success (Luke 14.31); will the good results that come from victory be significantly greater that the harm and loss caused?
  5. Only sufficient force must be used, and civilians should not be involved. Will conflict be proportionate and conducted with a right intention discriminating between combatants and noncombatants? Will those captured be treated with justice and compassion according to the rights and norms set out by international law?
  6. Finally, as mentioned previously, is the war a matter of last resort; have all other diplomatic avenues and possibilities been extinguished?

These are the generally accepted criteria for a just war, made all the more difficult when it’s impossible to distinguish between military personnel and civilians, which is sadly so often the reality in many theatres of war. Which is why the Christian and many others will appreciate the Gospel imperative to ‘love your neighbour as yourself’ (Mark 12.31), living together in love and peace – and Jesus’ own words, ‘Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God’ (Matthew 5.9).

So let us continue to pray for our governments and world leaders, that they will do everything they can to live justly, to promote peace and protect the innocent.  

“The fruit of righteousness will be peace.” Isaiah 32.17

Russia and the United Kingdom – a tale of two elections!

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As I write this month’s letter, there is a lot of political angst in the papers about the Prime Minister’s decision not to hold the general election on 2nd May as has been predicted by most papers and political pundits. Pat McFadden, Labour’s election co-ordinator said, “The British public have the right to expect an election to be called by the 26th March and held on the 2nd May. Rishi Sunak should stop squatting in Downing Street and give the country what it desperately needs – a chance for change with a Labour government”. Sir Ed Davey, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, accused the Prime Minister of ‘running scared’. Whether we should agree with these sentiments or not is not for me to say, but surely Rishi  Sunak was right when he replied, “There won’t be a general election on that day but when there is a general election, what matters most is the choice.”

Which of course immediately made me think about the other enormously important election taking place at this time, which is the election of Vladimir Putin as Russia’s President for six more years. We are told by the media that the result is not in doubt because Mr Putin has no credible opponent, for not only has he changed the rules by forcing through an amendment which gives him personal exemption from the law which states that no Russian President is allowed to serve more than two terms in office, but he has taken every opportunity to crush meaningful opposition. Most opposition figures are either in prison, exile or, like the most charismatic figurehead Alexei Navalny met an untimely death. Despite the televised superficial veneer of running the election, the reality is that deep down there is no actual substance – no freedom, no democracy and no choice!  A point that has been made by a few brave individuals who have either spoilt their ballots, poured paint into election boxes or discretely demonstrated their discontent.

The Christian will be aware that the Bible tells us to pray for those who are in authority and this we do with sincerity, but we also do it in the knowledge that Jesus himself was not afraid to be critical of the political and religious authorities of his day, especially when he thought that they were taking advantage of the people and abusing their God given political positions. The Psalmist reminds us that “the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears are attentive to their cry: the face of the Lord is against those who do evil” (Psalm 34.15-16), and in the previous verse “turn from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it” (Psalm 34.14). Ultimately, how we behave is a choice – a choice to stand up to tyranny, promote peace and seek the common good – or not. The much-quoted statement by Edmund Burke, recently restated by Alexei Navalny still holds true – “the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing”.  It may appear that our general election is still some way off, but we all still have a choice as to how we wish to live and the society we wish to live in. Let’s use that choice wisely and cherish it!   

“And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” Micah 6.8

What can Lent teach modern people like us?

Stephen Thorp Leave a comment

The Archbishop of Canterbury, The Most Revd Justin Welby, has just recently attended a meeting of Bishops and Primates abroad (The Anglican Consultative Council, Accra, Ghana) where he has described how the secularisation of western society has dramatically changed the morality of financially rich, independent Europeans over the last 30 years. Indeed, with 75% of people under 30 in the UK claiming to have ‘no religious affiliation’, the Archbishop saw this as further evidence that we live in a post-Christian world and society.

The Archbishop also noted that along with financial independence, people have sought other personal and individual freedoms, longing to be free from the traditional norms and external constraining authorities and influences. Such as ‘how we live’, ‘who we love’, ‘how we change and manipulate our bodies’, ‘produce our children’ and even ‘how we die’. He then went on to describe how this modern post-Christian morality, was not only a morality for the wealthy, powerful and intellectually well educated – but also a morality that does not believe in human sinfulness and failure. Nor does it believe in forgiveness or hope – and this is where the church struggles.

However, Lent is a time when we are all invited to pause, take stock and reflect upon the way that we live, both as individuals and as part of a broader society. And sometimes this reflection isn’t easy, because although we appreciate that much of what we do is positive and good – much of it is not!  ‘To err’ they say ‘is to be human’, but sometimes our errors and mistakes have unintended consequences, inflicting damage not only upon our own lives but also those of the people around us. The ripples of our ‘sin’ (as the Bible puts it) often spread further than we can possibly imagine, having a negative impact not only upon those we love and come into contact with, but also within our communities, our society and the world – and even the God who loves it.

Lent is therefore a time when we can reflect once again upon the glorious story of a God who so loved the world that, despite its sin, he stepped into it. Whose love led him to take upon himself the terrible consequences of our sin ‘in the person of Jesus’ by dying for us upon a cross, so that we might not only be forgiven but also have hope for the future. All we need to do is the one thing that modern people find so hard to do, which is to say sorry, sincerely repent (turn away from our sin) and recognise that in Christ we have a Saviour who loves us.

We may not be able to change the misfortunes or moralities of the entire world but we can make it better where we are – and as always, it always starts with us! 

“Repent and believe the good news!” Mark 1.15