By FIDELIS SUKINA
I remember back when I was small, when my mum would take me
to church on Sundays, I attended Sunday school and after church we’d met our
relatives, and other children and we’d play and wait for the adults to finish
their conversations before going home.
I grew up in a family where my mother was a strong catholic;
she was a catechist and member of several devotional groups.
I was baptized in the same church I still go to in Port
Moresby Mary Queen of the Pacific North Waigani.
When I was aged between nine and twelve, I always enjoyed
going to church and listening to the catechist during Sunday school, and when I
reached age twelve I was an Altar Boy and every Sunday I’d sit through the
whole service.
But after I left my beloved church for University, and came
back each year for holidays, the empty spaces started becoming noticeable.
I am also guilty of not attending service regularly, like
most people in modern day Papua New Guinea; something’s may have become more
serious or important than Sunday service.
Christians are baptized and are expected, to abide by the
Ten Commandments, and one of commandments being to keep holy the Sabbath day.
I went on a drive with my dad to Morata a suburb in Port
Moresby and saw it for myself, drunkards on Sunday Morning.
According to NCDC Law
liquor stores should be closed on a Sunday, but in front of the stores young
men and women were drinking away to local hits on the stereo, provided by the
shop owners, I wondered if these people were Catholics.
I sometimes think we are just too lazy to attend church but
not lazy to booze and Face Book throughout Sunday morning, I see people packing
up the night clubs in numbers on a Saturday night, and perhaps they forgot
church was tomorrow?
We call ourselves a Christian country but, westernization
has taken over the very generation that will uphold the Christian faith. But
wait was it not westernization which bought us Christianity.
In a 2011 survey in Australia by Peter Wild.kinson,
DMiss.(PUG), BE, A Senior Research Fellow at the Australian Institute of
Multicultural Affairs, and Guest Lecturer in Missiology at Yarra Theological
Union.
Found out that only 10% of the total catholic population of
5,000,000 in Australia was attending Sunday service on a regular basis and
church goers aged 15-24 represented the lowest numbers.
I don’t know what the numbers are like in Papua New Guinea,
but let’s just hope it does not go down that road.
The Catholic Church holds one of the biggest populations in
Christian Papua New Guinea.
But the sad reality is that only the small and the middle
aged are seen at church in numbers on Sunday.
Perhaps living a Christian life is too much to handle, with
the stress of work and family obligations, we rarely have time to pray with the
family.
Sunday service is the only time some of us have with God, to
reflect and see if what we were doing during the week was right in the eyes of
God and the community.
Our local priest during one of his sermons, said people have
strayed away from the church because they see it as normal,
He said people see others doing it and regard it as not being
sinful. Because of the majority taking part in all sorts of activities regarded
as sin, example getting drunk and swearing, fighting, domestic violence and of
course skipping Sunday Service.
These have become normal in our society, and we tend to
ignore it because it has become part of our daily lives.
All I know is that sin is sin, and whatever the bible says
is sin, I know I have wronged.
All I can say is morality and ethical standards cannot take
a Christian to heaven unless he or she abides by the Ten Commandments.
But there is no measure of a perfect Christian, let’s just
hope we keep the faith alive and help pray for each other to enter the kingdom
of heaven.
No comments:
Post a Comment