Jubilee Centre has requested the government to include in its agenda for National Indaba gathering the issue of Moral Values. We have requested that the Indaba define the moral values that hold us united as a nation. We are concerned that there is too much politicking in the nation. Similarly, we are concerned about the words of hate and malice falling off the tongues of our leaders and journalists that are supposed to be defenders and executors of moral values. We are praying that the participants leave the Indaba as a united community who have offered each other forgiveness for wrong done in the past, reconciled and ready to restitute where possible.
As a nation that has declared itself Christian, it means that we are bound to God through the ten moral commandments and scores of statutes, laws, and precepts He has given in the Bible. Therefore, if we want to be true to what we confess, then it is about time we declared that every person is made in the image God and therefore has intrinsic dignity, which must be respected. This is regardless of their race, religion, color, caste, culture, class, sex, or moral or criminal status. Our government must come out of this Indaba with a clear understanding that its primary purpose is to preserve the lives of its innocent citizens by protecting them wherever possible from violent criminals and foreign oppressors.
The hope to do something about our slipping moral values is in the hands of Christians who embrace the true teaching of biblical, historic Christianity. Christians with a common belief in God as the supreme Creator must speak out as the Zambiaðs conscience. We who believe that God is the lawgiver of the Ten Commandments, which is normally held to be the standard for civil and personal morality, must speak out.
When we have a conscience as a nation, politicians who place their hands on the Bible as they are sworn in will know that the church and the people of Zambia will call them to account when they pass legislation or transact government business in any manner that degrade the moral standard that we have bound ourselves to.
The test of the seriousness of this Indaba will be seen in the kind of people who will be invited to attend the Indaba. Are politicians aware or do they care for the efforts Christians are making to raise the standards of the moral condition of our nation? Are those who will be invited committed to the rule of law? Do they understand that one day they too would stand before the King of kings and the Judge of judges? Pray for the success of the National Indaba.
Lawrence Temfwe
