Dear Editor,

The year 2016 was a vile, murderous and wicked year. Jamaicans demonstrated their weaknesses in yielding to the devil to solve their social, business and family problems.

People seemingly didn’t try to get help from a neutral friend, counsellor or mediator to pacify, solve or eliminate their problems. They just acted in a devilish, revengeful way by being jury and executioner, with the accompanying pain and death.

Now the political, civic and business leaders all ‘bawl’ out, “Where is the church? Where are the men/women of the cloth?”

Guess what? They all need to look in the mirror of their own lives and ask that question to the image that they see. It is so easy to point the finger (the lick-pot finger) but conveniently cast a blind eye on whom the other fingers (long man, ring man) are pointed — their own bodies.

The Church is not a beautiful concrete structure or wooden building, tent, kingdom hall, temple, or synagogue over there. The Church is the human beings who congregate on Saturdays/Sundays to worship God, Jehovah, Yahweh, Allah, Buddha, Yeshua, or whatever name we refer to the supreme master in our thinking and lives.

By whatever job certification that we are namely teacher, salesperson, unemployed, doctor, pilot, lawyer, politician, chemist, farmer, electrician, hairdresser, tailor, computer analyst, taxi operator, or any other group of workers, the Church is us — the people.

How many of those Jamaicans who keep shouting out, crying out, and bawling out go into one of the aforementioned buildings weekly, except for funerals, weddings and school graduation exercises?

Evil, cruel and revengeful thoughts are generated from within human beings; therefore, those same human beings can generate, create and demonstrate love, kindness, loyalty, and respect.

Be the lover that you want in your life. Be the caregiver that you expect others to be. Be that human being that you would like to go to bed and awake with in the morning.

Start the change, remembering that the image in the mirror is the Church — you.

Hugh Innis

Montego Bay, St James

cybermore.cafe@gmail.com