Gleanings 24) Viewpoint - Corruption
There's a terrible smell in the air. Corruption seems to be in every headline. But Watergate, Poulson, T. Dan Smith, allegations about the police, suspicions about M.P.'s - these are but a well-publicised whiff of a decaying odour many of us breathe in every day, because the places where we live and work also see the pressures which are dishonest, unethical, untruthful and corrupting.
Christianity is brutally frank in its diagnosis of our mess. Its blunt assessment is found in that often misquoted verse: "The love of money is the root of all evil." Note it's the love of money, the overmastering desire for more that pushes men into dishonesty and its harvest of corruptions. Whenever man loses perspective and puts money so high on his list of priorities that it dominates all else then he is in severe danger. The fact that we belong to God and we live in God's world is forgotten,. Instead we plunge into the labyrinth of deceit and self-seeking.
If the diagnosis points to man getting money out of proportion and forgetting God, what is the cure? I believe there is only one cure and that is to know a greater love than anything we feel for money and possessions. That greater love is seen in God's gift to us of Jesus Christ, who died that the stinking mess of this world and our deceits and self-seeking might be cleansed. When we see God's love for us at Easter all the stress we put on money and material things seems far less important. There was a sign outside a church which read: HELP STOP TRUTH DECAY. Certainly truth is under siege and men are anxious in the swirling stench of corruption.
But the only way we can stop truth decay is with God's help as we grasp his love and get things back into proportion. There is nothing more important than knowing the love of God. If we begin to grow in that love then money and its threat of corruption will be knocked off its pedestal and we shall have helped to stop truth decay in our hearts.
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