I had a conversation with a friends Mum this weekend, and, don’t get me wrong, I am not going all ‘religious’ on you, but I think that it is a great shame that the UK has moved away from it’s Christian foundations. Please allow me to explain why.

We live in a greed obsessed society. We want what we cannot afford to have and, as we have seen, those who cannot afford their ‘wants’ resort to other means to ensure that they get them. We loot, whether it is young people on the streets or MP’s who go against the rules that they created in order to make more money. Our marketing is highly consumerised (my spell check tells me that no such word exists but please go with it). If we are not happy with our partner we trade them in for another model, or many have their cake and eat it. Family values have been exchanged for gang alliance. The religion that we worship is the football team that we support. Our nation is fame hungry. We update our Twitter and Facebook status’ in the belief that ‘my story’ is the only story that needs to be heard.

Let’s face it, in many ways, collectively, we have become immoral. Not only are we becoming immoral but our collective moral conscience is slowly being worn down.

Of course, I am not perfect, I am by no means a saint. It would be easy to read this post and agree that ‘they’ are like that. However, I am a firm believer that, wrongly, our morals are flexible when it comes to our own self interests.

So, back to religion. I am not saying that in an age before ours, when the accepted behavior was that families attended Church, was a perfect world. It wasn’t. But there is something about being reminded of good Christian values that reminds us as individuals that we are part of a whole, that the world does not revolve around ‘me’ and our outlook on life changes.

Basic Christian values can be exchanged for a ‘good’ moral code. Gluttony, greed, selfish ambition, pride, jealousy, envy are all common traits in today’s society. However, at least hearing about Christian values, being reminded of them by family, at Church, at school provides our minds with a moral ‘check’, a simple reminder of the way that we should live our lives.

We do not have to subscribe to the whole package. The whole Christian story is not one that we have to believe in, however, at a very basic level, whether purely as a man who existed or as a character in a book, the person of Jesus maintained a life-style that we would all benefit to follow both personally and as a collective.

I have spent some time in some poor countries, Kenya and Fiji, whose residents still remind each other of basic Christian values and, in all honesty, they are seriously humble places to live. I have met people who have nothing, but what they have they would not hesitate to share. I have been involved in business deals (with Tribewanted) where an individuals word is the basis of an agreed contract. I have seen, first hand, communities where they consider each of their children as their own. There is no selfish attitude, only an attitude of greatfulness and otherness.

I know reading this post, people will comment – why does it have to be Christian and not other religious beliefs. I know that there are many perceived flaws in what I am saying because, as individuals, we now have an in-built intolerance to anything relating to ‘God’.

I don’t have all the answers and, in no way, am I suggesting that we should all be going to church on a Sunday morning. I just merely believe that or moral framework has suffered in direct correlation towards a decline in our attitude towards the church and our engagement with anything ‘christian’.

Something has to change, for the sake of individuals, communities and generations to come. If our moral code only reduces, where do we end up?

Please do feel free to comment, add your thoughts, agree, disagree in the comment section below. It would be great to hear, listen, learn!