comprehension. Follow-up

There is a great debate today about moral and spiritual values in our national life. In the past we could take for granted a huge capital of moral and spiritual culture, in both education and public life. Today a gulf has opened up between knowledge and wisdom. We need to get away from the delusion that just because somebody is informed, that knowledge will automatically translate into wisdom.
Incomparably the most serious thing that is happening is the disintegration of the family. It is no longer seen to be so essential, economically or socially, as it was. It has been enfeebled and undermined, despite the realization that it is the main vehicle for communicating a moral and spiritual ethos between generations.
We cannot have any morality without relationships. As these get frailer and frailer, and people's commitments get more and more threadbare, spiritual and moral ways will also be enfeebled. We are only just beginning to reap the whirlwind.

CONSUMPTION MODEL
We are in an austere period of rediscovering, immensely painfully, all the things that used to be obvious and implicit in the structure of life, including family and church life. Now the only gospel that people respond to is the progressive removal of constraints on the freedom of consumer choice. That goes for morals as well: 'Why can't people be promiscuous? It's not hurting anybody else. ' And so we have an ideology, and an economy, which is bent on undoing all the connections which give energy, substance and form to moral and spiritual tradition.
Moral and spiritual tradition was never summed up by transactions; it was always embodied in social relationships. You cannot have morality without community. Yet community has been undermined to the point where everybody is merely a consumer.
The media is one example of this 'conversion' of society to a model of individualistic consumption. The media have become entertainment packages to be sold to individual consumers. We are not very interested in truth. As one of President Reagan's aides said rather meekly, 'The definition of truth is what entertains the audience at the time. '
Politics has also been emptied of meaning. The 'wide blue water' between Britain's two main political parties seems to have been who could lie the most effectively about the scary tax proposals of the other party. Politics is no longer about principles. It is about management. It is about the individual consumer getting an even more prosperous deal, simply because our vision is only focused on consumers and their choices. That is no basis on which to foster a spiritual or moral culture.
If we look at the debate about spirituality in schools, the most that influential people are prepared to say is that spirituality is about developing openness and tolerance. This is profoundly vacuous. In our post-modern world, we have inherited a prejudice about prejudice; against any continuity, any established moral and spiritual position.
When our divine relationship is so weak we expect too much of one another. We put inappropriate demands on each other. This can lead to a huge oppression, in our unrealistic expectations of human relationships. It can also lead to great disappointments. Then we find it easier to love whales or pandas rather than our fellow human beings.
But this love of the environment and the natural world can also be good in some ways. People start falling in love with the Earth. And in loving the natural world, people discover the sacred. But to discover the sacred we also need silence.
If we want to be of part a long wave of transformation, rather than a series of gusts of generosity or indignation, we need to be serious about the family, about faithfulness and the marriage vows. We have to prepare people to be critical of the picture that is offered to them of an individual consumer paradise.

SACRIFICE
What can the church do about all this? The sheer level of loyalty to Christian churches in Britain is nothing short of a miracle. Every Sunday, some three to four million people attend church. Few others associate on the same level in the public realm for such a positive purpose. The decline of other associations, such as mass political parties, is far more striking.
The most important thing the Church can do is to help people form 'schools of relating', to support people in stable family life and in good parenting, and to be faithful to their marriage vows. That is why in my diocese our major effort is going into training the next generation of Christian leaders. The most important thing they can do is to make clear how central the family is to transmitting spiritual and moral values.
There is no family life without sacrifice. There is no communal or economic prosperity without people being prepared to give themselves up for a cause. If we can address these issues effectively, there is immense cause for hope. [33]

                                          TODAY’S REALITY

For centuries the base of all societies has been the family throughout the world. We all needed two parents to be conceived and requiring a great deal of care the two parent family with the differing and valuable contributions from a mother and father were invaluable.
Throughout the western world family values are disappearing as under a mass of pressure from the media, work life, freedom of choice and greed, we have all been hoodwinked into a raft of divorce and dissatisfaction when we should be enjoying life more fully.
People have lost the ability to communicate and to talk openly together, mealtimes are fast food, junk on the lap. Children are increasingly occupied by the television, parents are under stress from two parent working families to bring them the things they imagine they need but never sit down and think if they are all necessary for a happy life.
Lost in the midst of consumerism, humanity is losing itself as we are faced by a barrage of information and supposed time saving devices.
Stop and think, look around and ask yourself, what are the issues that the public are increasingly concerned about?
Rising costs in council taxes, crime, the fear of crime, lost freedom to go as you please, and where in all of this is the family?
Let's contemplate the independent and impartial research, the tools of weapons of family destruction are just not real.
Domestic violence is not a gender issue, women are equally if not more violent than men.
The greatest risk in terms of child abuse is the biological mother, the least risk the biological father.
Suicide rates for men are soaring. Women's longevity is decreasing. People just do not appear happier anymore.
Unless our Government bases it's policies on genuine research, then it may well be that the increase in taxes, and council tax are being met to cover the tracks of the failings of family policy over the last twenty years.
Yes, whilst we need more police to keep crime off the street, some 80% of American criminals are from broken homes. Teenage pregnancies are directly related to the lose of the biological father, drug and alcohol abuse as well as self harm are also related to the breakdown of the family too.
Women have male relatives, sons, uncles, friends and even husbands. None of this is good for women or for men so we are looking to put the matters right again, so our children will have future... what do you think? [31]