The question of personal and community morality
and the Belfast Agreement was a theme in the debate on Radio
Ulster's Sunday Sequence, November 6, between the Rev. David
Cooper, Methodist minister and Paddy Roche, the UKUP politician.
The speakers, articulate and fully committed to their YES
and NO, acceptance and rejection of the Agreement, were competent
to argue their cases with vigour and the clear intention to
convince their hearers of the accuracy, honesty and reasonableness
of their submissions. While the debate earned appreciation
of its presentation of views, sometimes agreeable in mutual
acceptance - violence is totally condemned and the possession
of illegal weapons not to be countenanced - a distinction
surfaced between them in their different attitudes to forgiveness
and repentance. The use of Biblical and theological quotations
to strengthen their arguments provided the evidence of a Christian
approach to the subject and the proof that contrary opinions
can be backed by scriptural quotes. It is so often a matter
of selection and interpretation and of their use to emphasise
a point which is believed to be strengthened from such a source.
To what extent the scriptures are valued in our secularised
society is a question dependent on what has been retained
of a Christian heritage once common to all of us. There was
in this debate the underlining of Christian attitude to forgiveness,
when it is effective and operative. The forgiveness of God
for the sinner was illustrated by Cooper in the story Jesus
told of the Prodigal Son and the loving father who forgave
him unconditionally for his sins, and Roche's emphasis on
repentance for sin as a condition of forgiveness. He quoted
Paul in "Romans". We were made to think again of
the love of God and the wrath of God in His treatment of sinners
- and repentant and the unrepentant. And of the reality that
the Belfast Agreement accommodates those whose horrific crimes
were proved beyond doubt while repentance for them remains
unspoken. Do we accept the plea that the terrorists have changed
and are now worthy of our trust and confidence and to be suited
for government? This is the crux of a most pressing problem.
Do we forgive those who terroristed us while they hold on
to their weaponry to cause us to continue to question their
peaceable intentions? People who say YES are denying a democratic
pronciple that those who govern us must be wholly committed
to the peace which unreservedly condemns violence and the
threat of violence. We may seek to answer the questions and
to do, as some suggest, trust in the promises of Sinn Fein/I.R.A.
until they become actualities. There is the evidence that
God changes people - the evidence for that is all around us
in changed lives - but without repentance for sins committed
and the evidence of a new life, we have to question the attitudes
and motivations of those who now claim to be different people.
Whatever happens and the pressures from all directions is
to reach agreement on the Agreement and the setting up of
a devolved administration for Northern Ireland there remains
a problem with those who have yet to prove their commitment
to peace, not what they say but as to how they act with others
is a new politcal environment. The long drawn out review of
the Agreement wearied people. They were frustrated that agreement
was so elusive. Unionists condemned the unwillingness of republicans
to act to meet the demands reasonable and rational that should
be acceptable to all who want lasting peace and the devolution
which could bring about the making of a society acceptable
to all its law-abiding citizens.
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