The King who washes feet

washing-feetPeter looked on with horror as the person who he had recognised as the Son of the Living God, got up from a meal they were sharing, took off his clothes and wrapped a towel around himself. He poured water into a basin and did the job of the lowliest of servants as he started  to wash the feet of his disciples and dry them with his towel.

Peter was in a turmoil. How could his Lord, Master and Teacher stoop so low and be a servant? How can I let him wash my feet? I should have washed his feet when we first arrived but I thought one of the others would do it.

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The Poverty of Riches

Poverty right next to tourist hotel in Sri Lanka
Poverty right next to tourist hotel in Sri Lanka

We normally think about poverty as being caused by a lack of money. Yet it is quite possible to be rich in terms of money and yet incredibly poor in other areas. My passion is to see a world free from the effects of absolute poverty, a world which doesn’t have a billion people surviving on less than $1 a day. Yet I am very aware that defining poverty is not about numbers and statistics, but about a lack of resources in multiple areas such as capital, earning capacity, freedom, health, faith, education, love, family, companionship and community.

I remember, 20 or so years back visiting Nigeria and speaking to people we would certainly class as extremely poor. I must have appeared to be very rich to them. But there was one particular area where I was poor compared to many of them. I cannot go into details, but no sum of money could rectify one particular situation Christine and I were faced with.

Measuring Poverty

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No more “Us” and “Them”

No more us and themI was brought up to believe that Christians would always be a minority and that we had to defend ourselves from the ‘world’ and from those who would try to destroy our faith and steal our values and beliefs. Our church was like a castle with the drawbridge up. If only we can hang on till Jesus comes and judges our enemies, then will be saved, but everyone else will be for ever punished in Hell.

We tried our best to drag others in but every Sunday the gospel was preached largely to the already converted. “Come and join us,” was the message: “Sign on the dotted line, believe what we believe, stop smoking, drinking and dancing and we will accept you as one of us”.

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Should Britain leave the EU?

Britain and the EU
Should we stay, or should we go?

Should the United Kingdom remain a part of the European union or should we leave? This is worth debating, but the people of Britain need to look at the arguments for or against coolly and logically without the emotional campaigning by people, and a political party (UKIP), who have hijacked the issue.

If we had a referendum now, I must admit that I simply do not know how I would vote. I can see that the U.K. is probably stronger as a part of the E.U. but as well as being British, I regard myself as a World Citizen and do not easily associate with a group of rich countries at the expense of poorer countries throughout the world.
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Popular articles from my blog

Wordpress statsI started blogging just over 2 years ago and try to add one article a week. I write about what I feel passionate about. Most of my posts are categorised as “Justice”, “Compassion” and “Poverty”. Inevitably I touch on politics and am not afraid of being controversial. My articles are influenced by my faith as a Christian but I do not intend to be exclusive and fully appreciate that some of my readers will have other faiths or have no particular faith.

WordPress tells me that I have had 20,000 ‘hits’ in the last two years, about 200 every week. Of course I cannot tell who my readers are, and whether they have actually read every word. 60% of my readers are from the UK or USA but I have had hits from 163 different countries of the world.

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Where does injustice come from ?

inequalityI have been writing about some of the injustices I see in the world and aim to campaign to reduce it’s impact. Part of the answer is to have stronger laws and stronger law enforcement to eliminate them. Another part of the answer is to make people aware so that injustice becomes unacceptable. But what is the root cause of injustice? There is no avoiding the fact that we are dealing with human nature at the deepest level.

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Slavery in 21st Century Britain

Slavery in BritainThere are 27 Million slaves throughout the world. But before we, in Britain, point the finger we must ask why we tolerate 10,000 or more slaves in the United Kingdom today. We need stronger laws to rank human trafficking alongside kidnapping and murder. We also need more vigilance on the part of the police, officials, social workers and the public as a whole to spot the signs of workers in conditions of restricted liberty.

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34 Slaves work for me!

ChainsIf I told you that I have 34 slaves working for me, you would be rightly shocked. “What a hypocrite”, you might well say, “Fancy writing all those blogs about justice and compassion and yet using slave labour to support his life-style!”.

I have just typed in some personal deals into a survey by slaveryfootprint.org. The computer makes some assumptions on the products I buy and came up with an astonishing figure of 34 slaves being involved in the manufacture. Christine and I are a semi-retired couple, living in an average house, sharing a car, living on an around average UK Income. With different parameters you may find that you ’employ’ 100+ slaves.

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