[1/9/2003 4:49:17 AM | Gordon Mullings]
HARD CHOICES # 5

Reformation: The Underpinning of Blessings -- Liberty, Justice and General Prosperity

email: kairosfocus@yahoo.co.uk

kairos focus web: http://members.christhost.com/kairosfocus/index.htm

egroup: http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/caribbeankairos/

If vigilance is the price of freedom, reformation is its underlying foundation. For, once liberty has been achieved in a culture, on one excuse or another there are powerful individuals, cabals and groups that will seek to undermine it.

Nowadays, the usual excuses are that we need to protect the poor or provide social welfare, or save the earth, or latterly, to impose Allah's will on the world.

However, as a rule, on whatever rationale that may be cooked up, liberty and justice in a community decay across time. So, prophetic institutions are required top provide that intellectual and cultural and ethical leadership that can begin the process of reformation.

So, we face the hard choice: "today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts."

But, maybe, the incentives to go along with the current rapid global erosion of liberty and justice are perhaps too tempting?

That is the choice we shall have to make in the Caribbean. And, if we are to make a sound choice, we will have to ignore those who are only too glad to tickle our ears with what they think we want to hear.

I guess that leads to a series on exposing ears ticklers in the region, in the interests of reformation.

However, first, some challenges: we will have to stand up and seize the intitiative to provide prophetic intellectual and cultural leadership if the region is to preserve the blessings of liberty, justice and prosperity in the new millennium.

So: why not now, why not here, and why not us?