COMMUNITY SERVICE

Lake County Mail, Issue 26, 19 November 1947, Page 3

COMMUNITY SERVICE

Election day is here, and you will probably have cast your vote for the men who are to serve your community as councillors for the next three years. These men are often much maligned people who are accused of having sought office for personal aggrandisement. But how rarely that is true! They are men who have (undertaken a responsibility to the community in which they live and where they earn their living. They have an interest in the well-being of their town. But, you say, what has this to do with religion. Just this. The Christian faith is in the world and not of it; yet the world is also constituted, or that part of it in which we live, that it calls for the voluntary services of men and women. Serving on a council can be in a true sense a vocation, one in which service is rendered to God by rendering it to His people. Of course. I know, that personal aggrandisement can, and sometimes is, the main motive, but this does not hold good in the mapority of cases. The unit of life is the family, and a community is or should be a family on a larger scale, with this difference that we have, in a democratic country, the right of choosing our “ city fathers.” Man was never meant to live alone, and living in a community as he does means some form of law and government, which In turn, means some means of administering the law, and governing the community with particular care of the locality’s pecularities. Christian Economists To perform these duties adequately we need people to serve on local bodies of varying and many gifts. We need economists and builders, professicnal and trades people,, all bringing into the common fund their varying gifts. But above all, and as the only means of salvation to a chaotic world, we need Christ. Therefore, .'we need Christian economists, men who will serve their community because they are first and foremost Christians, and whatever they do will be <jione to the glory of God, Men ‘ who will not tolerate such social evils as slums, not only because it is bad for the health of the nation, but primarily because such dark places are contrary to the will of God and the brotherhood of man. It is customary in some places that on the Sunday following an election the local body goes as a unit to a church (generally the church to which the Mayor belongs) to dedicate their service to Almighty God. It is a custom which could well be universally applied. Let us neither forget, nor minimise the energy and the time these men put into the work of governing. They neither expect bouquets or halos for what they do, they sometimes make mistakes, but they do try to serve the community. Why, in some places, is such difficulty met with in securing half a dozen men to serve as councillors? If you were asked what would be your reason for declining such an invitation? Is it selfishness in one form or another? St. Paul’s Advice For the community in which they serve by governing, St. Paul had some > sound advice. To the Christians in Rome, right in the thick of the governing centre of the civilised world of that day he wrote: “Every subject must obey the Government authorities, for no authority exists apart from God; the existing authorities have been constituted by God.” (Romans 13: 1, Moffat’s Translation.) Does that mean blind obedience? No. Does that mean that the government in power is always and in every case right? No. Does that mean the domination of the many by the few? No. What it does mean is that if the government is trying to carry out the will ol God (and not their own pet theories)), and we, too, are trying to carry out the will of God in our lives, we will find that God can use the authorities as well as the people, and all things will work together for good. In short, it means that all, bo'h governors and governed alike, must do all to the glory of God.