Reader objects to luxury toursDear editor,
As a member of the Holy Trinity Anglican Church in London, Ontario, I receive the Anglican Journal. I appreciate the depth of your reporting on the problems in our societal living conditions, at home and in a wider world.
However, I object to the luxury tours that are advertised on the back page of the Journal. I have learned from other Christians who have sailed on such a trip that passengers are pampered.
I am not motivated by jealousy. I sailed back and forth to Southeast Asia. I looked out on to a peaceful, moonlit Indian Ocean at night with sentimental music coming from the deckhouse of the ship and it was a delightful experience.
I did live two years in the tropics and I witnessed the marginal existence of the ordinary Asiatic inhabitant. At that time I was callous, because Jesus Christ did not live and reign in my heart, so I observed the misery and squalor of my fellow man from the safety of my privileged social status.
If I had the courage to share the good news of God’s love and His promise of salvation with the poor and desperate inhabitants in any country, then I would have to live like them, hungry and with a lack of medical aids.
Jesus, the Son of God, did indeed eat and drink with publicans and sinners so that he could learn the language of despair, and that language has a few swear words in it.
To sum it up, dear editor, I do not want to be pampered on a luxury ship and sail along a foreign coast, separated from the troubled lives of other people beyond the coastline.
Jan Devries
London, Ont.
