It seems that just when the average citizen might be thinking that things could not get much worse in Trinidad and Tobago another incident takes place that mystifies.

Discord at the highest levels in our land, abuse of our children, a total disregard for the sacredness of human life are the kinds of stories that have dominated the front pages of the dailies in the past two weeks. Great is the intolerance all around.

Where there is intolerance, there is gross disrespect, a lack of caring, indifference — no love.

Within these weeks, we have welcomed home our Soca Warriors and sent them off once more: this time to Germany to participate in the finals of the World Cup.

When the team qualified for the finals by defeating Bahrain on their home ground, in November last year, and sent the country into euphoria, we expressed the hope in this paper that the messages which the victory sent to the nation might serve to bring about a new resolve in the country. Indeed, this was also the hope of the team, expressed by Dennis Lawrence on arrival at Piarco International Airport.

Any transformation of our land will not happen simply by wishing it or by the successes of the Soca Warriors. No one should have expected that the thrill of success would have made a difference to the country. That was not our expectation.

What we hoped for was that the commitment, the spirit of the victorious team, might urge the people of our country to a similar kind of resolve. A team that did not have the will to succeed; a group of players that were not united would have failed.

Jesus’ command

How committed are we as a people to true unity and to love is the question that must be asked in the general disarray and intolerance that exists in our land.

“Love one another as I have loved you,” is Jesus’ command to his disciples (John 15:12). The love that our country needs is the love made evident in Christ. It is God’s love. “Remain in my love,” says Jesus. “If you keep my commandments you will remain in my love” (John 15: 9,10).

God’s love brings its own wonder. It is the astonishment of the Jewish believers who see God’s love, breaking down barriers and enfolding the Gentiles in ways that could not have been imagined earlier (cf Acts 10). Our country needs a hunger and thirst for such wonder and astonishment.

As believers we have the assurance that the love to which we are called is achievable. It is what must give us hope in this time of great discord. But it must also remind us of the grave responsibility we do have to give that love expression in our everyday living.

All our Church communities, every Christian family must find ways to make the keeping of Jesus’ commandment more evident. “You did not choose me,” Jesus reminds the Church’s faithful in this weekend’s Gospel. “I chose you; and I commissioned you to go out and to bear fruit, fruit that will last” (John 15: 16).

As long as Christian believers hesitate to bear witness to the love that Jesus commands, we ought hardly be astonished at the destruction around us; at those who are willing to trivialize their lives, and the lives of other people to get even.