The Gods of Our Time

All of us involved in these turbulent times need to reassess what reference to God should mean and what it should exclude. Or has "God" become a meaningless term, like a hat that is shapeless because it has been worn by too many heads? Should it be discarded? Does God have a future? Perhaps this is a question that we should pose if civilisation itself is to have a future. The airing of such matters is long overdue and the issues involved are far too serious to be muzzled by political correctness and muted by an over-sensitive press. Reference to God has been made time and again to justify acts of the most callous brutality. If the justification is valid, is this God a worthy subject of worship? If the justification is invalid, it must be unambiguously opposed and denounced by all right-minded people, of whatever religious persuasion, and by all those who still value freedom of thought and expression. What we may well find to be the darkness of our times demands a response, and the author takes the opportunity to reflect upon this darkness in the light of his mother's life and the memories associated with it and the feelings evoked by it. It is to be fervently hoped that the book is much easier to read than it has been to write, since the loss of his mother was the occasion of much emotional pain and heart-searching. His reflections are designed to be mind-searching and thought-provoking, to give food to thought in an age in which, as much as ever before, thought is all too often subservient to material acquisition or jealous resentment. Thoughtfulness, in the deeper sense, has never been a popular pursuit, yet it is needed now more than ever, while there may still be time to make a difference in the right direction. Love can take us forwards, hatred can only block the paths that love dictates.