LOVE IS THE REASON
Christian compassion and the challenge of
secularism
By David Potter MBE
Prospects / Care. 118 pages. £7.00
ISBN 978 0 905 195 179
As I write this review, the news headlines are about 19 residents who died amid neglect and hunger while staff falsified medical records at a care home for the elderly. This did not happen in some poverty-stricken faraway ex-Communist bloc state but in the UK. We should be ashamed.
The current horror stories which seem to be continually emerging from even within the NHS of how we fail to look after vulnerable people is a hot topic and one to which Christians ought to be tuned in.
David Potter, who has nurtured the caring organisation Prospects since its inception, writes not to deny that secular people can provide good care, but to restate a Christian vision for care in a secular society. The heart of the book explains from Scripture and from experience how Christians should have a different understanding of a person’s value, and of freedom, justice and hope from that of their mostly humanist colleagues. This takes us in a somewhat different direction to that of the ‘rights’ agenda which at present dominates politics and so many care organisations. He also probes wisely into what might lie ahead for our society. In the midst of it all, the key theme for Christians must be Christ-like love.
This is a stimulating and timely book which every thinking Christian would do well to read.
