I’ve just seen a brief section of a Sunday morning show on BBC1 this
morning that offends me … as a human

The programme was talking about children who had been orphaned due to their
parents having the HIV/AIDS virus in Africa. A touching story that grabbed my
attention immediately.  Some shots of a couple of littl eboys helping each other
to put their shoes on was shown, pulling at the heart strings further.

Then, we cut to a couple sitting on top of a four-wheel drive who were
talking about how they came over on a Honeymoon and saw the children and felt
they had to help. A beautiful story and a most honourable sentiment, I’m sure.
However, they said “As Christians, we had to help”.

“As Christians?” what about “As Humans”? So I, who am not a
follower of Christianity, would walk on by? You should help as humans, with the
assurance of your faith. You do not need faith to experience sympathy, empathy
or compassion. Faith may help, but it certainly is not a pre-requisite. It’s
almost as if these people were justifying their actions, and their faith, in
one.

To look at another faith, Buddhism also says that compassion, kindness and
respect should be exhibitied at all times, particularly to those in need. But
these are based on human nature, not a as a tenat of a particular
religion, which infers that other people and faiths would not exhibit those same
attitudes.

And that is why I won’t watch such programmes on a Sunday morning. I missed
the Dalai Lama, too. Though why he would think the UN should move to Russia does confuse me somewhat. It’s hard enough keeping corruptionout of the UN without moving it to Russia, which is currently experiencing it’s own corruption
scandals – particularly with regards the Litvinenko affair.