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Insight on the News

Religious Freedom in China?

● In recent months it has been suggested that China is becoming more tolerant of religious freedom. But an article in Peking’s “People’s Daily” has declared that all worship of supernatural forces is superstition.

“Liberty” magazine reported that recently published guidelines for reopening any place of worship in China include the following: (1) Do not propagate religion to anyone under 18 years of age; (2) do not propagate religion to any government cadres; (3) religious activities are to be carried out only in places approved for such meetings; (4) do not propagate any religion outside the churches or temples; (5) do not have any contact with religious organizations outside China; (6) do not accept any financial help from foreign organizations; (7) all speeches and religious educational materials must first be approved by the Religious Affairs Bureau; (8) no religious meetings should be held in homes.

Teach Children to Work

● Professor Alice Rossi sociologist at the University of Massachusetts urges parents to put children back to work in the home. She said: “To feel needed and useful is as important as to feel loved. Yet our child-rearing ideas have stressed only love and the child’s need to play, neglecting the work children can do as readily and probably more safely in an urban apartment than a rural farmhouse.” That work can include helping to cook and set the tables, doing dishes, cleaning, taking out the garbage and doing many other things.

Dr. Rossi noted that work may interfere with a child’s television viewing and talking on the telephone, but assured that this would be in the child’s best interests. Certainly work and discipline help build character and prepare children for the realities of life. This agrees with the Bible proverb that says: “Train up a boy according to the way for him; even when he grows old he will not turn aside from it.”​—Prov. 22:6.

Failure of “New Morality”

● Some people in modern times have felt that mankind would be much happier being liberated from prudish notions about sexual morality, such as the Bible’s commands against fornication and adultery. (1 Cor. 6:9, 10) However, after years of observing the results of this kind of “liberation,” disenchantment has set in with many thinking people.

For example, in the “Express” of Easton, Pennsylvania, columnist Joseph Sobran states: “Like most revolutions and utopias, the sexual one went awry. . . . my strong impression is that the new morality hasn’t increased the sum total of human bliss. The rates of divorce, abortion and venereal disease are up, up, up, and the pornography trade . . . seems to me to testify not to more romance but to more intense loneliness, of a somewhat morbid and sordid kind. It’s time to insist that the promises of the sexual utopians have been as false as those of the social utopians, and as disastrous.”

Damaging Lotteries

● An article by D. McCormack Smyth in the Toronto “Star” called attention to the damaging character of gambling by means of lotteries. It said: “Through their promotion of lotteries governments are appealing to one of the lowest human qualities​—greed. They are contributing to the corruption, not improvement, of human life,” and they “create an atmosphere attractive to organized crime.”

Mr. Smyth also stated: “Lotteries foster disrespect for a social concept which is central in a free society: Individuals must not seek consciously to profit from the misfortunes of others. . . . Lotteries are damaging to the incentive to work and productivity.” That observation is similar to the Bible’s view of work when it states: “Let the stealer steal no more, but rather let him do hard work, doing with his hands what is good work, that he may have something to distribute to someone in need.”​—Eph. 4:28.

The article concludes: “We must recognize lotteries for what they are​—anti-human and anti-social.”