At the BCNZ chapel last week our principal Mark Strom gave a great address on William Wilberforce using clips from the upcoming movie on his life and speaking about the need for us as the people of God to take on great social issues of our day as he did with slavery. I asked at the end of the chapel what the social issue of our day is. On a global scale there are some monster social issues like poverty, human rights, disease, child-oppression, slavery, oppression of women, the legacy of war, global warming and more. Perhaps poverty and the death of a child every 3 seconds is the greatest problem the world faces. On a national level there is the growing divide between rich and poor and the associated problems of illness, life-expectancy, illiteracy, family violence and violence against children and other issues and especially among Maori and Pacific Islanders. Yet for me perhaps the biggest issue certainly in the west, remains abortion. The Scriptures speak of God working in a human lif...
The blog of Mark Keown, New Testament lecturer at Laidlaw College, Auckland, New Zealand. It involves comments on theology, life, sport and whatever comes into Mark's random mind.