Another General Assembly of the Church of Scotland has come and gone. For most people, the one ''highlight'' of the week was the decision to accept, ''as a last resort'', money from the National Lottery to help maintain and repair our church buildings, while at the same time condemning gambling!
What are we to make of such an extraordinary decision? We are told that necessity requires us to face up to the harsh realities facing the Kirk. Buildings need money, money is in short supply, so let us accept whatever ''gifts'' of money are offered to us. If we have to get into bed with the profits from gambling, so be it; it is possible after all to love God and mammon!
Strong views are held on the National Lottery, and people are entitled to hold and practise whatever views they hold. But we are talking here about a professedly Christian Church, a Church which still, in principle, believes gambling to be wrong. This decision by the General Assembly will simply confirm to Christians who take the Bible seriously that principle has once again been sacrificed on the altar of expediency; that biblical teaching has once again been sidestepped in favour of pragmatism.
Will the Church of Scotland ever learn that you don't influence the world by becoming like the world? So what if our fine buildings fall into ruin? It might help to remind us that the Church is the believing people of God and free us to give all our energies to evangelism and not to building maintenance.
The General Assembly has decided to accept money from the National Lottery. Thankfully a Christian's conscience is not bound by the General Assembly, only by the Word of God.
Rev Ian Hamilton,
Church of Scotland Manse,
Newmilns.
May 24.
THE approval by the Church of Scotland General Assembly to accept Lottery monies is yet another sign of a Church trying to function without God.
For the believing, practising Christian, participation of any kind in the Lottery is wrong on three counts.
Principally, it is a blatant denial of the sovereign power of God and the promises He makes to His people.
Secondly, true worship and service to God are not, and never can be, based on monetary and material values.
Thirdly, professing Christians should not be in support of a disguised tax which imposes its greatest burden on the poorest and most gullible.
To let Jeremiah sum up: ''The shepherds are senseless and do not inquire of the Lord; so they do not prosper and all their flock is scattered.''
Sheila Morrison,
21 Union Avenue, Ayr. May 19.
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