Inculcating living values in our society

SUNDAY SERMON - When you look at a country like Rwanda which is emerging from a post-conflict era, you are likely to be overwhelmed by the sheer amount of energy that needs to be directed towards rebuilding the country from its war-torn image to a glorious future where peace and prosperity can live side by side. The task of building a new ethos transcends the mere affirmation of the principles of political governance, but cuts into the overall development of human beings – their physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual dimensions. The values of co-existence, behaviour, thought formation, feelings and actions need to be emphasized. The Christian values are summarised in the golden doctrine of “Do unto others, what you expect others to do unto you” It is the duty of our education system and Christian preachers to ensure that these values are transmitted to the young population attending our churches and the school system. The inculcation of a new ethos will only be as useful as the values that help to sustain it. We must ensure that we only transmit those values that will promote the establishment of a civil society of human beings; a society that upholds the tenets of conflict resolution, dialogue and cooperation. Starting with our educational system, you will realize that it is the primary level to the transformation of society. The school is an agent between the family and the state. The family is the basic unit of a social structure, and the state is the planner, organiser, and administrator. The school can be viewed as the transformative mechanism that has historically adapted itself to the present and future needs of both the family and society. The school system should come up with a holistic education which does not only offer theoretical solutions, but develops strategies which focus on resolving all sorts of issues in order to encourage the pupils’ self-confidence, self-esteem, and independence. Young people who develop self-assurance are thereafter able to question, discern, choose and are also able to achieve a clear direction in their lives. My view is that learning is not a banking process where students learn new things by memorizing them to await the day of examination so that they could retrieve the answers. Students coming out of a system that encourages acquisition of knowledge, banking the acquired knowledge and regurgitating it during exams will find that they are social misfits in a volatile and changing society. There is need therefore to emphasise on those life changing values. These can only be useful if the delivery system is conscious of the fact that the aim is to transform society, to create a society of civilized people, and to ensure human conflicts are reduced to a minimum. The christian churches should be the moral barometer of society. The preachers should be conversant with the paradigm shift in social relations. They should be able to prepare their sermons in such away that the members of their congregation can be able to acquire the transforming values that help to sustain the essence of co-existence, dialogue and cooperation. I am often perplexed at the fact that many people who attend church services every week come out not changed enough to help haul society from the abyss of social degradation. You will still find that people still do not care enough even when they see quite a number of conflicts in the various social groupings. The street people have nobody attending to their problems; Taxi-men feeling disadvantaged; School going children walking long distances and in poor weather to schools; Women carrying baskets of fruits and other foodstuffs on their head facing constant harassment by the local militia; A large number of our people going to bed without food; Large number of younger people idling the day away without hope. We can avoid this callousness and moral decadence only if we have the school system and the church, the two institutions charged with propagating erudition and moral values, take up the fight to infuse in their members the living values. “Do unto others what you would want others to do to you” This is the embodiment of the new paradigm shift and the yardstick that needs to characterize our teachings and preaching. Ends