We are worshipping mammon and our children, like us, pampered and spoilt, may have to live with the consequences

However we need to be careful we don’t raise him to the level of deification, and above criticism.

In ancient Rome people did that and it came back to haunt them. All politicians are flawed, some more than others, quite often we only learn that with the passage of time, one more reason why the prime minister needs our prayers, and for us to question, and maintain a sense of perspective.

If ever we needed level heads that were open to reason we need them now.

These are serious and frightening times and we need to be careful our emotions don’t outrun reason and descend into mass hysteria.

We need to keep our emotions in check, hold our government to account, and submit our leaders and their policies to public scrutiny: obey, but not without question.

Our parents and grandparents made sacrifices that we might enjoy a quality of life they could not have dreamed of. Not only have we enjoyed it, we have abused it and fashioned it into an idol.

Now it is seriously threatened will our gods act to save us?

If nothing else positive comes out of this crisis it might tear down our idols, and restore in us a sense of what is really important in life. It might even reconnect us with our fathers’ God. Sadly, even now, there is no evidence of that.

More cause for concern, we have passed on this faith to our children, and that’s only the Christians! Like a drug it seems to enhance our quality of life, but it’s a distortion that robs it of any real meaning.

We are worshipping mammon and our children, like us, pampered and spoilt, may have to live with the consequences.

That will be our legacy to them.

God help them if the government has called this wrong. For their sake we need to be careful we don’t encourage the government to initiate policies from which the nation will never recover.

Clive Maxwell, Bleary