Riots in England

It has been a  depressing business watching the news media in the last few days. There is no doubt that once the violence in our cities  is under control,politicians and others need to work hard to understand why these disturbances happened and how we can prevent them happening again.
I suspect the causes are many;ranging from poverty to  greed, to boredom to poor parenting skills, and many other things.
Simon Jones makes some interesting points on his blog here particularly the fact that we are all to blame and we all have a part to play in making things better.

This is especially  true of the church whose calling is not simply to be a community at a time when so communities are falling apart, but a community whose task is to build God's Kingdom and share Jesus love with our neighbours, who are made in God's image and loved by him whether they  are criminals or the victims of crime.

I would make one more point.  It is this: The western world has already jettisoned God or appears to be in the process of doing so.We have declared we can live without Him ,but the problem is we have not replaced Him .There is no meta narrative by which we live our lives, and for many no sense of right and wrong, of good and bad.
That is to be expected
It would be naive to think Christian ethics will survive for long in a soceity which has stopped believing in the Christian gospel.
The truth is God is real and we were created for Him.We need Him.There can be no authentic substitute ,nothing else and noone else can satisfy.
The youing people of the UK are like  young people everywhere .They want to know their lives matter ,that they count ,that they are significant .

Our young people need a reason to live a reason that brings  meaning and purpose.

Only Jesus can satisfy that need.