Moral Conduct as the Ministers of God

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Our moral contact is a profound way of manifesting the will of God. The grace of God gives us power to proclaim the Good News to the entire world. The will of God is in us by nature. You and I have decided to manifest this will by serving one another through the virtue of love. The words of St. Paul move my emotions, “a missionary is at the service of all” (Galatians 2: 1 ff). I have seen it being very fundamental to share with you brothers and sisters this beautiful writing. We are a family of God because the Son of Man shared his love to each one of us on the cross. St. Paul continues encouraging us when he says that the way parts of the body coordinate for the benefit of each other, in the same way; each one of us has an important role to play in the church. Pastoral work is a large part of this influential work in inspiring many people.

When we consider ourselves ministers of Christ, there is need to adhere to His values and life style. Let us remind one another some of moral conduct for our pastoral ministry. It is not that I know more than you but just to remind each other for the greater glory of God. We are united together, physically and emotionally, as children of God through His spirit. This concept reminds me as the ideas of a prominent African philosopher John Mbiti, who said, “I am because you are, since you are therefore I am”. This implies that we need to take care of one another. One of the early missionaries said that if the minister has saved his or her soul, he or she has also saved the souls of many. Failure to do so is contrary to the will of God. It precisely means that one cannot give what one does not have. We need to behave well in order to inspire others to adhere to what we proclaim. We should not 'preach water and then drink wine'. We are one in the body and blood of Jesus Christ.

St. Augustine said, “Lord you have created us for you and our souls are restless until they rest in you”. This implies that, all that we do should reflect God’s will. You cannot tell me that our conducts do not matter. Actually, they matter a lot. Good Christian, to save souls, good humanity, and to do the will of God depends on our moral conduct.  Actually, morality can be divided into two parts: subjective and objective. These types can lead to positive or negative growth of spirituality, but it depends on the way we apply them to our real life.

Subjective moral conduct is within us. It is what we refer to as our sub-consciousness, what tells us to behave well. I strongly, remind you, how many times we have been seen misusing this kind of morality. My dear brothers and sisters, it is our duty and role to great peace and harmony in a society, by showing universal love. This will be accomplished if we have peace and harmony within our hearts first. Most of us we have created unfinished war within ourselves. If it is not handled well, it is projected to those who are near us, thus causing a lot of problems in the ministry. That is why the Church has been condemned many times with the issue of sexual abuse and misuse of church funds. We need to solve problems which are within us in order to behave well.

 The unwanted behaviors we project to the physical world can be recognized by others. It is what I called objective morality. To be ministers means to be social or outgoing and to have sense of humor. Most of us we have gone contrary to this. We cannot listen to one another anymore; we see others like objects instead of subjects. We have taken Christians as our source of income where we gain profits for our personal interest. If we claim to be followers of Jesus Christ, we need to follow His footsteps. We have gone against the natural moral law which states that “do good and avoid bad.” Whereas we are acting badly and avoiding to do good. Even the Gospel reminds us about the Golden rule, “do to others what you would like them to do to you”. Let us go back to our first motivations that made us to choose this kind of vocation. I think our ultimate vocation is to be human and serve humanity.

 By breaking these beautiful words, maybe they have been unsympathetic and annoying but it is the first step of changing and turning back to God’s will. It is my greater hope that these words will later be our turning point as the way Saul turned to God’s call on his way to Damascus. He said, “Now, it is not I, Paul living, but Christ living in me” and it is what I can call in layman's language Christification. For you who have read this writing, be the first one to be a positive turn, to be the light of the world and your name will be remembered as the way we are remembering the saints of the church. Know that hope is one thing and change is another thing but working for the same goal.



 Collins Imbusi

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