A moral break down in Guyana

Oct 11, 2010 Letters

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Dear Editor,
Since the beginning of this year the news in the media has been very disturbing. We have seen the rise of domestic violence and lots of brutal killings, also the rise of the drug trade and the get rich quick syndrome have taken over our nation like a sudden cancer.
Just a few weeks ago a poultry farmer living a few houses away from me down the road chopped up his wife and committed suicide, another young woman in the same village got her cell phone snatched and killed. Around the villages another man stabbed his wife to death. Just recently a Queen’s College female student’s body was found and her mother and lover is charged for her brutal murder. Our suicide rate and domestic violence rate will soon enter the Guinness book of world records because we have fallen morally, spiritually, and academically.
We can clearly see that our problem today is not only economic, it’s moral and spiritual. These problems are not only affecting the illiterates and citizens in poor communities, but it has affected more of our educated people as well from all walks of life, from every religious and social background.
Last year my good friend who was the Administrator of the Palms Mr. Mohamed Yasin shot himself to death. Until today his death remains a mystery to me and many of his literary contemporaries. Mr. Yasin was a very versatile short story writer who had won several awards in the Guyana Annual Short Story contest. His work was also published in the POUI literary journal, Macmillan Writers etc. Another brilliant well educated poetess Aaliyah Bulkan threw herself down the Kaieteur Falls. Had she been alive today she would have been a great literary asset to this nation.
It’s very shocking to know that Aaliyah wrote of her death in the poem ‘’Bare Foot Lady’’ about five years before her death. Mr. Yasin also wrote of his death in many of his poems and stories. Yet the taking of one’s own life is something many of the great religions hate and detested in the eyes of God.
It is my firm view that we are presently suffering from a great moral and spiritual breakdown in our nation. We have moved a step ahead into advanced technology in this era of the internet; but we have lost our sense of real moral and spiritual values for life. When a person can commit suicide that person has a very poor understanding of life from a Godly and spiritual point of view. He/she tells themself that life is ‘’one dead and done’’ they don’t have any spiritual and Godly fear that life doesn’t end in the grave, but life continues on after death and we will be judged by God ultimately who will decide our faithl.
As a Pastor/Reverend I observed that very few people today have a very deep desire for spiritual and moral uplifting in life. Most people today in our society has one common goal that is to go away abroad to get more material things.
When I look around in the churches I can barely count 10 men in most churches. We have only about 5% men attending churches in Guyana or the most 10%. Some of our men today have taken to the rum bottle, gambling, chasing women, pushing drugs and abusing women.
It’s a very dismal list but I have seen domestic violence on every corner of our society. What manner of man will chop up his wife then kill himself? What kind of woman will see her daughter headless body just because of a lover or ‘sweet man’? Why is it an educated man puts a gun to his head and pulls the trigger?
These are questions our politics cannot answer nor our academics though they are trying. The answer to these questions lies in the direct work of Satan or the Devil who is the author of all that we are seeing around us. For some folks the devil is just a cartoon figure like Spiderman, but for the spiritual minded according to Holy Scriptures the devil is very real that is destroying homes and lives in our society. What is needed today in Guyana is a moral and spiritual revival in every home. Families need to go back to church, they need to read their holy books to their children; they need to pray more because a family that prays together stays together.
Our politicians need to go to church and stop playing politics and serve God. Our President ought to be a God fearing person it’s so amazing when I cannot hear the word ‘God’ mentioned in our President’s Speech unlike the American President who would end his speech by saying ‘’May God Bless America’’ why we cannot have the same in Guyana? We have become so blinded by communism and socialism we have lost track of our faith and religious beliefs.
What is absent from our society is the ‘Agape Love’ or the God kind of love. People have become too selfish, only living for themselves. We are seeing everyday husbands beating and abusing wives and children and wives abusing their husbands and children. These things are happening because the love of God is missing from our homes and our hearts. We may have workshops in every village and churches to help people to live a better life but at the end of the day those individuals will have to make a choice to live a God fearing life.
Life is made up of choices either good or bad and because of these choices that are mostly bad ones the entire nation is suffering. We are also faced with a very great problem of illiteracy that has created lots of ignorant bull headed people in our society. Our Ministry of Education is very quick to publish the names and pictures of those who perform well at examinations. If they were to publish the dismal list of failures then we will see where we have declined academically. Students today are not very much interested in education they are interested in brand name clothes and cell phones even though they cannot write a sentence.
Gone are the days when people want to be legally married to live a life of very high moral excellence. Too many people today have child fathers and child mothers that has contributed to a very great moral breakdown in our society. Very few families are interested in church they are more interested in what material benefits they can get from the church rather than serving God faithfully.
What we need in this nation is for people to have a spiritual and moral awareness about life itself. It’s so sad that these things are not taught from our pulpits by many of our so called Bishops, Apostles and false Prophets. They are more interested in the amount of money the church can exploit people of rather than the moral and spiritual welfare of people’s life. Today churches from our major religions look very commercial where the rich associate with the rich, the priest/pastors associate with those who are rich and influential and the ordinary poor people are rejected.
It’s sad for me to say as a Reverend that most of our churches have failed our society and communities today because of the high percentage of domestic violence. The Ministry of Human Services alone cannot handle the job of domestic violence. The church must wake up from her slumber and get out in the streets, house to house to teach and preach to people and assist the poor. Too much of our priests/pastors/pundits, etc. are sleeping because they are too lazy to help this nation.
We probably have more churches than more countries in the Caribbean but our morality is very low its because many of our preachers are too afraid to preach the truth to people; fearing they will lose fame and popularity among their friends.
This fight of domestic violence is a very long and hard battle but we can win it if we work with every member in our church individually. In my church I need to know every member name, where they live, how they live and how I can help them. It’s not only about delivering eloquent sermons on my pulpit. Our late poet Martin Carter wrote: ‘’All are involved/All are consumed’’ all of us will have to work together to combat this cancer of suicide, murder that’s the root of domestic violence in our society.
We need to pray more and talk less.
Rev. Gideon Cecil

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