Contents
![[Cover of Issue 92]](cover.jpg)
Editorial
World
Are you rich? Stupid question. Students are never rich. They have loans, yes, but no-one living in a single room in Goodricke C can be rich.
But count the number of water taps in the building you live in. If the answer is one or more, you’re amongst the richest seventh of the world’s population. What’s more, you’re probably helping to perpetuate that situation without even knowing it. If you ever pay tax in your life, you’ll be subsidising the sale of weapons to third world countries. The next time you buy some fruit at Costcutter, you’re benefiting from trade rules loaded in the favour of western consumers and against the countries where the produce was grown.
What’s to be done? Over the next few pages, people reflect on how they’ve put their Christian faith into action, whether that be through campaigning for trade justice in Brighton or running a holiday club in Romania. On a more sombre note, David Jones writes about his summer job with a difference.
Of course, none of us can do much. That’s not the point, though. The point is that Jesus said, “Whatever you do to the least of my brothers, that you do unto me” (Matthew 25:45). Can we really stand before our Creator, the God who made us, guided us, supported us and died for us, and tell him that we weren’t grateful enough for all He had given us to do the least bit for Him or anyone else?
Greg Melia
A Fair Trade?
Why go on mission?
A call to arms
A concept of guilt
Saint or Singer?
The Christis Good Church Guide
Choosing a Congregation
Life
We are all chasing immortality. This driving-force has led to presidential assassinations and worse. Some of us have children so that our thoughts/ beliefs/DNA will live on within them. Some of us seek immortality through achievement, some of us will die alone and be forgotten within weeks. All of us are uncomfortably aware that in fifty years time every constituent part of us will be gone, destroyed by life, and it is only through a belief in our immortality (on earth or in heaven) that we can be content with this.
Meanwhile, our obsession with misery is only making things worse. An actor from Eastenders was recently quoted as saying “ours is the most popular soap because it has the highest density of misery per minute”. If you want to be remembered today, smile — misery is the grey default where we reside when we can’t be bothered to think for ourselves (not smiling is easier than smiling because for a third of your life you will be asleep and not smiling — smile to prove you’re awake, alive, and appreciating it!). What is more, a smile is the currency we pay the world in for making us happy, it’s infectious and others will smile back at you.
So in this early stage of what may be a new phase of your life, remember that the greatest achievement you can manage at York might just be to improve the life of one of your fellows. And in the long run, I’d rather be known for making people happy than for anything else.
David Jones