\u201cShould I stay or should I go?\u201d (The Clash).\u00a0 Since the Referendum in June 2016, we have seen families, our nation and Parliament divided by different opinions over Europe. But\u2014as\u00a0\u00a0 written in a statement by CofE Bishops in December 2018\u2014\u201dat the heart of the Christian message is Jesus\u2019 command to love our\u00a0\u00a0 neighbour. This includes those with whom we agree and disagree: at home, in Europe and further afield.\u201d<\/p>\n
As we celebrate St Valentine\u2019s Day this month, how can we conduct this debate in a loving way? The Apostle Peter reminds us: \u2018Show proper respect to everyone, love the family of believers, fear God, honour the emperor.\u2019 (1 Peter 2:17).<\/p>\n
Respect everyone: However much we may disagree with another people\u2019s perspective, we should respect them as people. This applies even if they don\u2019t respect our views!<\/p>\n
Love the church: among the family of believers there should be an even greater respect for each other!0 The way we treat each other not only reveals the depth of our love; it will also cause people to glorify God and want to be part of the family.<\/p>\n
Fear God: we must demonstrate our allegiance to God by\u00a0\u00a0 putting Him first and following His leading. Of course, this doesn\u2019t stop Christians from having different opinions to each other.<\/p>\n
Honour those in authority: we are called to honour those who are in authority over us \u2018for the Lord\u2019s sake\u2019. Even when we disagree with their decisions and actions, we should keep our respect and not speak ill of them.<\/p>\n
Peter is calling us to live with the freedom to make up our own mind on Europe, while listening to what others say. \u2018A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none. A Christian is a\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all.\u2019 (Martin Luther).<\/p>\n
Rev Paul Hardingham writing in parishpump.co.uk<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cShould I stay or should I go?\u201d (The Clash).\u00a0 Since the Referendum in June 2016, we have seen families, our nation and Parliament divided by different opinions over Europe. But\u2014as\u00a0\u00a0 written in a statement by CofE Bishops in December 2018\u2014\u201dat the heart of the Christian message is Jesus\u2019 command to love our\u00a0\u00a0 neighbour. This includes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":1005,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"Phone_number(s)":"","email_address":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3,35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-letters","category-more-pages"],"mb":[],"mfb_rest_fields":["title"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nwbchurches.org.uk\/stanley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nwbchurches.org.uk\/stanley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nwbchurches.org.uk\/stanley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nwbchurches.org.uk\/stanley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nwbchurches.org.uk\/stanley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1188"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nwbchurches.org.uk\/stanley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1188\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1189,"href":"https:\/\/nwbchurches.org.uk\/stanley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1188\/revisions\/1189"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nwbchurches.org.uk\/stanley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1005"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nwbchurches.org.uk\/stanley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nwbchurches.org.uk\/stanley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nwbchurches.org.uk\/stanley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}