Praying Together 2nd March 2025

I try very hard to make sure that I don’t bring my personal political views into my spiritual meditations – but I often fail, and anyway, I don’t think that the two can be considered separately. Archbishop Desmond Tutu was challenged about bringing Scripture into politics, and replied ‘When people tell me that politics and religion don’t mix, I ask them which Bible they are reading’. He also quoted his father as telling him ‘Don’t raise your voice. Improve your argument. Good sense does not always lie with the loudest shouters’.

So I make no apology for addressing Yesterday’s utterly shameful exhibition of bullying by the ‘Leader of the Free World’ and his puppet acolyte in the White House on Friday. It is plain that the whole scene was set up, from Mr Trump’s sarcastic initial comment about President Zelensky’s uniform being picked up as the first question from an inane member of the US press corps, to Mr Vance (clearly primed) pointedly trying to generate anger and confrontation. It was a disgusting example of the tactics of humiliating an opponent to weaken them into making a ‘deal’ – except we are talking here not of low negotiating tricks to maximize profit from a sale of real estate, but the lives of the people of a sovereign nation under threat from a predatory neighbour.

And then this compounded by asserting blatant lies over the invasion that started the conflict. As Hitler’s propaganda minister Goebbels said – “Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it.”

A planned humiliation, and the potential result being a continuing war in which countless more – Ukrainian and Russion, Soldiers and Civilians – will be needlessly killed. All to satisfy the needs of a bloated narcissist and leave a clear path to a successful outcome for a victorious land-grabbing Dictator whose track record clearly shows his total lack of trustworthiness.

And what has this to do with our Christian response (and I mean confessing Christians rather than those in name only)? We turn to St Paul’s advice to Timothy, Chapter 3:1-9.

Mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God— having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with such people.

They are the kind who worm their way into homes and gain control over gullible women, who are loaded down with sins and are swayed by all kinds of evil desires, always learning but never able to come to a knowledge of the truth. Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so also these teachers oppose the truth. They are men of depraved minds, who, as far as the faith is concerned, are rejected. But they will not get very far because, as in the case of those men, their folly will be clear to everyone.

I pray fervently that it will, in the name of Jesus, my Christ, my Saviour, my Peace and my Friend.