Kemsing with Woodlands

There are two kinds of religion in the world.

Some think of God as distant. He’s all-powerful, he’s far above us mere mortals. And so he’s impersonal, and he cannot be truly known. This is the classic Muslim view of God, although many modern Muslims are rewriting that part of their religion.

I’m sure I’m not alone in saying that I hate war. I hate the nations fighting, the damage to property, the loss of life, the grief, the trauma, the memories soldiers cannot shake. I would love to live in a world where there is no war.

Who’s with me? It’s so obvious, you don’t even need to put up your hand. We all are.

After the Second World War, the United Nations we know today was formed with just 51 member states. Today, there are 193, but the aim is the same: To try and get nations to work together, talk together, rather than fight each other.

One of my heroes is the Member of Parliament for Hull, in the year 1780, William Wilberforce. He went on to be elected Member of Parliament for Yorkshire in 1784, always an independent MP. The following year, he became a Christian, and wondered whether he should leave politics. He carried on, but his new found faith gave him a sharp social conscience. He sought to use his position in Parliament to campaign for issues he felt strongly about, and one of those was the trade in slaves from Africa to work in the West Indies.

Here are some of the headlines from the past week: UK unemployment total up by 15,000. A German court convicts a 94-year old former guard at the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz of being an accessory to the murder of at least 300,000 Jews. Fears of new arms race after Iran nuclear deal. Many NHS hospital patients complain of lack of dignity.