Lucifer
was enraged. Someone was caught violating the dress code in Hell. An alert
demon reported that a staff had carried a pocket Bible along with her as she
conducted her assigned work. For her misconduct, she was to be given the stiff
penalty of serving as coal in Hell’s fire generation room.
Tuni
Parata, a Sky Tower host, who worked for years in the Auckland gambling casino;
was considered for citing of misconduct for carrying a pocket Bible at work.
This incident figured in the front page of the national newspaper. The woman
didn’t end up in the fire generation room of the casino (it doesn’t have one
anyway), instead the company, due to public pressure, simply reminded her that
she should not display the Bible openly while at work, and that she could read
this during breaks.
In
the Philippines, legislator Raymond Palatino has proposed the banning of religious images in
public offices. Under the bill, the conduct of religious
ceremonies such as prayers, masses and other liturgical celebrations as well as
the display of religious symbols would be prohibited within the premises and
perimeter of offices, departments and bureaus, including publicly-owned spaces
and corridors within such places.
Dagupan Archbishop Socrates Villegas strongly
reacted to the proposed law, “There’s separation of church and state but
there’s no separation of God and man. It’s crazy because if you separate the
body from the soul, what do you create? A dead man. If you separate the soul of
the nation from the nation, what do you have? A dead nation,” He further stated
that losing our soul as a nation would be “the real downfall.”
Mgr. Anthony Figueirdo, addressing
US Catholics said, "The Holy
Father spoke of the challenges in marriage, in family life, in growing
secularization, in education, but I think there was a common theme amidst all
the challenges: that where God does not exist, where he is taken out of
culture, civilisation itself begins to disintegrate."
Christians must at all times be
vanguards of the world. As much as we are at war against sin, so must we be at
war against the low-intensity, yet lethal secularisation.
I like this post. It is great - educative, enlightening and interesting.
ReplyDeleteIt pains a serious Christian to find that our day's world is simply not interested in God - to the extent that people who go about with His Word now seem odd and deserve severe rebuke.
In the eighties and nineties, I didn't consider myself fully dressed until I carried my New Testament or pocket-size Bible with me. Nobody attacked me (in Nigeria) for this, even with all the Muslims and unchristian 'Christians' around me. The only problem I encountered was some people asked to be given the Bibles. They
must think I was receiving a regular supply of copies of the Holy Book from USA or somewhere.
Now I don't go about with physical Bibles but my regular companions - mobile phone set and laptop - contains many translations of the Bible, Bible commentaries and dictionaries. In a word, I find it hard to separate myself from the habit of going around with the Word of God.
Now it seems strange that going around with the Word of God in so-called civilized and Christian countries now attract the ire of company and government authorities.
But let the Philippines legislator Raymond Palatino (who proposed the banning of religious images in public offices) and people in high places like him know that they are incapable of killing the Word of God.
The God-haters of the Bible time tried hard but failed. The Spanish inquisition and other anti-Christ groups did their best but failed. God's word has the ability to overcome the enemies of God who are trampling on it.