Christian Comment with Brian Stanley, Randwick Church Local Ministry Team

I WAS visiting family in France after Christmas, when President Francois Hollande gave his New Year aims for 2015.

Sadly, his ‘Hope and the re-affirmation of the Rights of Man’ proved ironic following the terrorist attacks in Paris.

Here we rarely discuss the practical application of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, basic tenets of the French Republic.

We don’t of course believe we are free to kill anyone whose views we disagree with; but we do too little about that political football Equality, despite our archbishops’ essays and the news that one per cent of the population now owns half of the world’s wealth.

Are most apathetic?

Even in a Week of Christian Unity Britain has not mirrored the millions across France demonstrating their ‘solidarity’.

However, some over-react.

In an echo of 9/11 in US, one response has been to espouse Fear more than Hope, with all the dangers of revenge that provokes.

And when it comes to solutions others turn to Fatalism (you can’t get rid of evil) instead of Faith, or even worse, Hate instead of Love.

So what should be our Christian approach to the discussions which we must have with friends and neighbours?

Yes, uphold Roosevelt’s four freedoms – freedom of speech, of religion, from want and from fear; but acknowledge that these freedoms are inter-dependent: i.e freedom of speech does not give us the right to create fear in others.

We teach our children to value other people not bully them.

And our laws since Moses have tried to encourage communities to live in harmony.

Even war hero Churchill said, ‘jaw-jaw is better than war-war.’

So we must be confident that it is God’s ‘Truth that sets us Free’; that ‘perfect Love drives out Fear’; that we must always be ready to ‘give an answer for the Hope that is in us’, that perhaps the most important equality is that all people are ‘Equal in the sight of God.’

And, as one of the climbers of the Dawn Wall said, “To persevere I have learnt to turn fear and doubt into Inspiration.”