Insight on the News
The Church and Morals
● The head office of the United Church of Canada sent a draft document to its member churches asking the congregations to discuss and study topics such as masturbation, adultery, divorce and sexual fantasies and to submit their comments for the purpose of establishing Church policy by 1985. Meanwhile, a conference of the Church held in Alberta asked the provincial government to protect the individual’s rights in sexual orientation and to provide guidelines on ordination of homosexuals.
Commenting on the position of the Church, Fred Cline, chairman of its Calgary Presbytery, says that the time “is not right for us to force issues. . . . We have to tread carefully. There’s too much heat and too much misunderstanding to think about finalizing policy at this time.” But on the homosexual issue, another churchman observes that “the church leadership has shown the direction it favors and the rank-and-file is largely following that direction.”
What a contrast all of this is to the firm stand taken by the first-century Christian congregation! Rather than looking to public opinion for guidance, or dodging the issue, the apostle Paul spoke out unequivocally on the subject: “Do not be misled. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men kept for unnatural purposes, nor men who lie with men, . . . will inherit God’s kingdom.”—1 Cor. 6:9, 10.
Reality or Fantasy?
● Two television stations in the midwestern United States were swamped with over 800 protest phone calls when they interrupted their afternoon soap opera to cover the shooting of Pope John Paul II. Some callers threatened to come over and burn down the station or do physical violence to the people there if the regular program was not restored right away. Similarly, students in a number of schools spontaneously broke out in cheers and applause when they heard the news that President Reagan was hit by an assassin’s bullet. Later, when a teacher told her class that the president was all right, the students snapped their fingers and shrugged in disgust.
Particularly disturbing to many is the fact that these were the reactions of apparently normal people who acted in real earnest. One soap-opera fan who called the station said: “I’m a religious person, but the pope is not an American.” In the school incidents, a teacher reported: “It was like television to them. Someone shot J. R. (a TV villain], and they cheered. Someone shot Reagan, and they cheered. That’s scary.”
Clearly, the inability to distinguish between reality and fantasy, the insensibility to the evil of violence and the dismal disrespect for life and authority are all a part of the bad fruitage harvested in these “last days” by those who have become “lovers of pleasures rather than lovers of God.”—Gal. 6:7, 8; 2 Tim. 3:1, 2, 4.
Suicide Kit and Guides
● Do-it-yourself suicide guides are being published by Exit, Britain’s voluntary euthanasia society, and Hemlock, its American counterpart. The guides detail the effects of dozens of lethal drugs and poisons, dosages and where to get them. “There’s a tremendous hunger for this book,” says Derek Humphry, Hemlock’s founder-director. He claims that among the estimated 60,000 Americans who commit suicide each year, “many are desperately ill people who do it in needlessly horrible ways. Others maim themselves terribly in the attempt.” According to the police, two Exit members who have been accused of assisting seven persons in their suicide admitted merely to helping people “not to make a botch of suicide.”
Is this sort of doing really ‘helping’ these “desperately ill people”? Far from it. Being destitute of hope, many view life as meaningless, worthless, to be put away dispassionately. But the Bible shows that God views life as precious. He holds out to mankind the hope for cure and recuperation. (Isa. 33:24) How much better if these depressed souls could be helped to learn of the time when “death will be no more, neither will mourning nor outcry nor pain be anymore”!—Rev. 21:4.