How should we decide where to put our X ?

Wednesday night at the Crown on the eve of the General Election Grayden led a discussion on how we should decide where to put our X.

We looked at three Old Testament prophets, Amos, Micah and Isaiah in order to see what lessons we could learn to apply to politics in Britain in 2010.

What were the subjects that the prophets spoke about? – Land, labour, capital, wages, debt, taxes, justice, equity, immigrants, courts, other peoples and races, economic divisions and social injustice – all relevant for today.

From Amos we learned that it is bad for society when the distribution of wealth is becoming more and more unequal.

The lessons from Isaiah are that people who work should not be poor and that we are all called to seek justice.

The lesson we learn from Micah for international relations is that if we want peace we must work for justice.

After that we discussed the following questions.

1. What do you think of my comment that “people who work should not be poor”?

2. Is the widening earnings gap between the very rich and the rest bad for society?

3. Do we need a new ethical option, conservative in personal values, radical for social justice?

4. Why have so many people lost the concept of “the common good”?

Ten people discussed two of the forbidden subjects – religion and politics and we all still remain firm friends!