An open letter to all Pastors/ Church leaders in Guyana

May 31, 2016 Letters

Dear Editor,

Perusal of recent letters to the Editor has left me with the impression that the majority of the population tend to believe that we can fix the country by putting the right politicians into power, or by implementing certain economic or social reforms. Let’s face it; the reality of the matter is that our problems go much farther than that. Yes, a moral collapse is gnawing away at the foundations of our society like cancer, and if it continues like it is, unchecked it will inevitably destroy Guyana. Sadly, however, fixing moral decay is by far much more difficult than switching out political parties, because it is in the hearts of so many individual Guyanese. In addition, the truth be told most people do not want to hear anything about a moral collapse because every day Guyanese like to think and believe that things are well on the way to change, and will even continue to improve further once our fiftieth celebration is over. If we are honest with ourselves we see the evidence of this moral collapse all around us every day. Let us look at some of the news stories that we have seen recently
· What would cause youths to premeditate and cause a young first-time visitor, the British teen Dominic Bernard to lose his life in such a cruel manner?
· What would cause a 15 year old female to participate in the murder of Dellon Bardford a father of three?
· What would cause a high school kid to stab his peer on the school premises.
· What would cause a 17 year old to round up her crime posse of four other teenagers, one female as young as fifteen to carry out the robbery/ murder of Guyana- born American University professor, Perry Mars?
· What would cause an adult to sodomize his two year old baby niece?
· What would cause two teenage girls to lure 64-year-old Roger Manikam to the kitchen of his Non Pareil, East Coast home where a boyfriend of one of the girls chopped the pensioner with an axe? One of the teens also confessed to helping in the murder.
· What would cause someone to kill Wesley Holder called “ Oraysha” a male commercial sex worker, and leave his body in St. Phillips Green compound.
· What would cause a father of three from Region Six (East-Berbice- Corentyne) sexually molest a 17 month old baby girl.
· What would cause an adult to not only have unprotected sex with a 13 year old minor but also impregnate her, forcing her to give birth to premature twins?
There are a lot of people who still regard these kinds of stories as isolated incidents, lost in the glitter and glamour of a country currently on the verge of celebrating fifty years of independence from British rule. But then again, who’s being fooled? Do not be fooled they are actually representative of a much larger trend. Like it or leave it. Believe it or not! As a society, we are decaying from the inside out, and we need to start facing the truth if we are ever going to get this turned around. Here are a few more facts about the moral collapse of Guyana that may seem too farfetched to believe.
· Guyana has the fourth highest murder rate in South America (behind Venezuela, Colombia, and Brazil). Guyana’s murder rate is three times higher than that of the United States.
· The murder weapons of choice are handguns, knives, machetes, or “cutlasses”
· Regarding teen pregnancy Guyana has the second highest rate in both the Caribbean and South America according to the state of the World Population2014. Report. 2014.
· Guyana has one of the highest prevalence rates of HIV infection in Latin America and the Caribbean, second only to Haiti.
· In 2014 The World Health Organization named Guyana as having the highest suicide rate in the world.
· More than 60% of female sex abuse victims “are abused by someone known to the child or the child’s family.
· At this point more than half of the children in Guyana are living in a home without a father.
Guyana has become unglued. Currently there is a crying need for morally based, socially cohesive, godly spirituality in our culture and institutional social structure. But, all of us know that no society can effectively legislate and enforce the morality of one’s conscience and moral codes of conduct. Morality must be taught and exemplified within family structures and reinforced in religious and educational institutions, something that is certainly not being done. Guyanese politics has become confusion on top of more confusion because of political polarization. Politics is in the church but should not be of the church. The problem currently facing Guyanese culture is simply this—how do people live in unity and peace with each other from a godly understanding of the Bible, rather than individualized understanding. This is where the church comes in and must stay in, regardless of how and when the billows roll, the anchor should hold.
The church can and must play a profound role in helping to develop a focused, godly moral imperative; by keeping with God’s will of loving Him and loving each other, because the will of God is only realized through love and service to others. In my opinion far too many pastors/ church leaders have been far too silent while the beaver of turpitude gnawed feverishly through our moral foundation. Politics should maximize the common good in our culture by honoring the godly tenets of the Bible.
As a country reveling in the fact that we are 50 years free of colonial rule, let us at the selfsame time celebrate our resolve to save our country from drawing its last breath. No, we cannot allow the place where I drew my first breath, that once knew such greatness, sink to depths that were once unimaginable. Once and for all I appeal to all pastors to answer the call. The writing is already on the wall, but our once great country must not be allowed to fall. There must be continuous orations during the celebrations.
Yvonne Sam

1 thoughts on “An open letter to all Pastors/ Church leaders in Guyana”

Burch01 June 1, 2016 at 5:01 am

Apropos!
You have also correctly identified the only solution. LOVE!
Love for GOD and Love for you fellow-man. That type of love is only possible with an in filling of the HOLY GHOST! Our Nation needs prayers….Lots!…….
Eph. 6:12 (KJV) …. ”For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places”.
Invite Prophet TB Joshua to conduct a crusade!