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The following is the monthly letter from the Rector as it appears in the
July 2008 edition of St Nicolas Cranleigh Parish Church Magazine:

In the marriage service the couple say to one another: ‘With my body I honour you and all that I have I share with you’. Our bodies are so intertwined with the gift of marriage and the honouring of one another in this sacred union, as indeed in the consummation of marriage. The words themselves remind us of Scriptural passages which state that as God has given us life our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit. How we treat one another reflects in a deep way our respect for God and all things that he has made.

Our modern society is struggling with morality and ethical values – on one hand we strive to uphold God-given values, whilst on the other our wills are very often selfish and self-indulgent. The abuse of our bodies is so apparent today and I believe this reflects an emptiness in our inner being and a lack of awareness of deep spiritual truth. Obesity, greed and comfort feeding are often substitutes for loneliness and lack of self-worth. Binge drinking, which causes social interaction lacking in all grace and beauty, must result in later damage to individual lives. The increase in violent crime on our streets, especially amongst teenagers, is disturbing and again powerfully illustrates our disregard both for human dignity and our relationship with God.

Recently in Parliament we have debated the Embryology Bill once more, with some wanting to reduce the timescale for legal abortion, whilst others wish to keep the status quo of 24 weeks. This last example highlights for me our moral vacuum when it comes to human dignity. Seeing illustrations of a foetus which has been aborted filled me with revulsion. A creation of God, unwanted by man, is murdered in the womb, cut up and drawn out in a way that is frankly barbaric, without any sensitivity for human life. On the other hand, a child who is born only a few weeks later and is smothered by a parent brings cries of ‘Murder!’ and the call for a jail sentence. We are willing to condemn this, and yet there is a difference of only a few weeks between the two. Where is the morality in all this?

We have manufactured a ‘convenient’ society, which seeks a way out without disturbing our consciences, and the Church stands back and says little about taking away a created life which is holy and honoured by God. We turn aside and are unwilling to stand up for what is clearly wrong and to state that such behaviour is unacceptable within the tenets of the Christian faith.

Our attitude is also about the avoiding of responsibility. When parents do not take responsibility for the care and education of their children, those young people may persist in binge drinking because they are bored, and engage in what I would call under-age sex, because of a lack of guidance and mutual respect for human nature. We seek to blame the Government, or the police, for these crimes, without looking at the root causes of a breakdown in responsibility and care.

How do people learn to respect one another if there is no respect within our homes? How can we understand the importance of human dignity when we have little understanding of our God, who loves us more than we will every know? Our society is restless and reckless, and until we learn to establish firm foundations of love and trust within the home, we cannot expect to rid our society from such growing horrors and the de-valuing of life. It must begin with the way we care for our children within the nurturing of a home with a mother and a father, under-girded by a belief that we shall be held responsible at the judgement day for what we have or have not done in the life that we have been given by God to live.

Nigel Nicholson