Chapter 1 - “Biblical Faith and the Reality of Social Evil” – now I may need to go back and read this again, as on the first read I was dealing with some serious turbulence (literally, not metaphorically). But I think he was talking about the potential sources for the need of Christian Ethics i.e. the evil/darkness which inhabits the comos, and which is a source of societies poor and oppressed.

Chapter 2 – “God’s Grace and Our Action” – I remember this chapter much more, because rather than turbulence, I was sitting in bed with a yellow highlighter, trying to get my head around it all. Mott’s argues (and nails it) that the reason for a Christian ethic, out of which Christian Action MUST come is in response to the grace of God.

We love because God loved us. The content, the nature of God’s grace determines the content and nature of our acts. Our response is love because God’s grace is manifest as love….however, God’s benevolent act does not merely “inspire” a response, it actually creates the ability to respond – it is both the reason and the power of the response. (pgs 28 & 32)

The response that he writes about, is our response to, action to and love for the poor. He goes on to say, that ‘the reception of God’s grace will affect our attitudes toward the weak and oppressed and needy – those for whom we have the power to do good as God did for us.’ (p37)

Chapter 3 – “Love and Society” – I’m only about three pages into this chapter, but it follows on nicely from God’s grace and love of Chapter 2. But it does raise an issue early on, which featured in discussions that Cutler and I had with one of our Chaplains here. And that is about love, Mott writes “The capacity to love is a gift of God, but more than that, it is activated by the action of love upon us. We receive love from beyond ourselves or we do not have it at all. If a child is not loved, he or she is deprived of the capacity to love” (pg 40)

That the raises the questions like, how can someone who has never known love, understand the idea of Christian love, that God is love; how can they follow the commandment to love one another, when they have never been loved? Here sits the call for action from followers of Jesus Christ. We must be able to love others, particularly the un-loveable, so that they can begin to know and understand the love of God.

This book is going to be interesting and challenging!!

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