Our Own Good

Sometimes we do things for no other reason than for our own good. We don’t have to justify it to anyone because we think it’s the right and best thing to do. We don’t expect someone else to know better, and in a sense we don’t really care what they think.

Have you ever gone on a diet? Not because you were advised by a doctor, but because you thought you needed to shed a few pounds? What about giving up some sweet things, or bread, or starch, or fat? Something that you would benefit from and could see the difference in your waistline? What about cigarettes? We now know that nicotine is highly addictive, so what if we decide to do ourselves some good and cut down or even take all the help available to quit? It even has a spin off to our children and grandchildren who now don’t have to inhale our second hand smoke. Then there’s alcohol. Do you know, or have you ever been close to an alcoholic? One who will spend his or her last penny in the pub, while the kids at home go hungry? Do you think it’s a good thing for that person to do something for their own good? Ask anyone who has lived in a home alongside an alcoholic husband, wife, son or even daughter.

There are fifty two weeks in the year, but some would suggest that you can only do these good things within forty six of those weeks. The other six are out of bounds. Why? Because they are the Lenten weeks in the run up to Resurrection Sunday. If we do anything for our own good and those near to us in these six weeks, and you are a Protestant Christian who believes in the Reformation, somehow we are seen as having sold out to Catholicism by taking part in one of their rituals of giving something up.

I would suggest any of these actions taken for our own good, even during Lent, should be seen as a benefit, and certainly would not affect our standing before God, who after all is the only one who knows our heart, and when and why we are doing this small piece of personal good to and for our own body, and that of others around us whether it is Lent or not!

You want to do some good for yourself, or your family? Then don’t check the calendar first!

Abuse

And whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me. ‘If anyone causes one of these little ones – those who believe in me – to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung round their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea. Woe to the world because of the things that cause people to stumble! Such things must come, but woe to the person through whom they come! Matthew 18:5-7 NIV

The UK was rocked once again by new allegations of child abuse by Roman Catholic priests and monks against young boarding school pupils in the north of Scotland. There have been others, and this new revelation is added to the heap of the growing list of reports. The abuse is of the devil, carried out in priest’s garb, and then there is the cover up which went on for decades because the youngsters were ashamed, and because they trusted their overseers. The so called priests were moved about and hidden from public gaze when the church hierarchy found out. The church protected the perps and left the victims to their own fate. Some committed suicide, and those who did not, live with physical, faith, and emotional scars for the rest of their lives. I am sure there are more abuses to surface. As a dad and granda, this news makes my blood boil. The verse above says what will happen to someone who makes a child ‘stumble’, so where does child sexual abuse lie? The church cannot save satanic priests from hell!

As a Christian, and trying to live a decent and Godly life with His help, I find myself asking these basic questions:

Why did these priests think they were above the normal law of moral decency?

What Bible did they use, because they didn’t do what it said?

Why did they not own up right away when they knew they had sinned, but carried on with their abuses on other children, until their transfers were authorised by their ‘protectors’?

Then there is the final question:

On seeing all of these abuses, why do ordinary Roman Catholic members stay within their fold, and there is no mass exodus of disillusioned parishioners? The answers to the other questions must be addressed by the Roman Catholic church, but this last one is down to the pew sitters. Are they in denial, just like the demonic priests? There is no doubt about how any church (of any denomination) overseer/priest/minister must behave, and the following verses can be found in every Bible, so there is no excuse.

Whoever aspires to be an overseer desires a noble task. Now the overseer is to be above reproach, faithful...temperate, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not given to drunkenness, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. He must manage his own family well and see that his children obey him, and he must do so in a manner worthy of full respect. 1 Timothy 3:1-4 NIV