How can we share God’s message in a corrupt society?

By first understanding the causes instead of only treating the symptoms. New laws and more police alone do not heal a society. What is missing is a morality that applies to all people and grows from an inner sense of responsibility before God.

A doctor only treats an illness once he has understood it. It is the same with a society. Again and again messengers have called people to what is good, and again and again people have fallen back. Why? Joy and pleasure are not bad in themselves. God created beautiful things for His servants. It becomes bad when pleasure turns into an addiction and comes at the expense of others. Then right and wrong are forgotten.

Many responses to decline stay on the surface. Laws are changed and the police are given more power. But the police are themselves part of the same society. The deeper causes lie elsewhere. Someone who suffers pain and humiliation as a child often carries bitterness that may break out later. Media that probe every private life and show everything also shape what a society considers normal.

Above all, what is missing is a morality that truly applies to everyone. A morality that distinguishes by origin, skin colour or point of the compass is not morality. This includes a clear understanding of freedom. My freedom to swing my hand ends where the other person’s nose begins. And as long as people feel answerable only to human laws and not to God, no genuine sense of responsibility can grow. The parable of the ship above shows that no one may drill a hole in the hull just because it is his own place.

For the individual, this means speaking calmly and wisely, not politically, and searching for what is right together with people from every walk of life. Most of all, you must live what you invite others to. As the verse above says, no one is more convincing than someone who calls to God and does good himself.