I have been a Councillor now for a year and a month and a bit. I have been through long periods in my life of thinking I know it all. I hope this honesty grabs you.
In between these long periods I have had periods of what I shall call ‘understanding’.
In the last two or three months I have been experiencing one of those periods of understanding. And, surprisingly (to me) these revelations have come entirely from sources outside of the Council.
I’ve come to question (amongst other things) whether religion is always a bad thing, whether some aspects of my politics could do with softening (but not Cameronising), whether consultation has value (I believe it doesn’t generally, the way it is carried out by civil servants), whether corruption is so engrained that politics has any hope, whether it is a good idea to take time over things (I now think it is more than I did) etc.
I hope to explain this a little more coherently later on. In the meantime, I would welcome comments on any issue above and I’ll hopefully learn as much from those as I have from a couple of friends recently.
And thank you to those friends who will know who they are.
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#1 by Alex Fear on June 22nd, 2007 - 8:50 pm
A thoughtful post Gav.
It’s always good for us to question our own motives and it takes courage to actually be honest about it. I’ve occasionally looked at my own blogs and had doubts or wondered if it was too much (inevitably I press on stubbornly).
I think religion, just like governments, sports, media organisations and private companies, has the potential to become corrupted. I’ve seen much hypocrisy and wrongdoing in my 10 years in the church.
However I have also had the wisdom to understand that it’s not Gods intention or his desire. The root of the problem is that the church is full of human beings- fallible human beings. But the design for the Christian church, provided by Jesus, it’s founder, is to be a blessing to the world- salt (removes bitterness) and light (in the darkness). And I’ve seen great examples of this also in the church.
I can’t speak for other religions but I know this is how it is for Christianity.
My problem is I find it very easy to be cynical. I think cynicism has it’s place, I think cynics have the ability to see truth, but cynicism only seeks to find problems, never offer solutions.
In religion and politics, I reckon we need to not only point out error but to offer alternative ways of doing it.