Sascha Wil­son

As dark­ness pre­vails in the coun­try in dif­fer­ent forms, a Pres­by­ter­ian priest is call­ing on the church and chris­tians to get off the fence and make a change

In his ser­mon at the Mara­bel­la Pres­by­ter­ian Church, Rev Kendrick Sook­nar­ine lament­ed that many peo­ple in the coun­try choose to play with dark­ness in­stead of try­ing to re­move it.

“Evil lurks in the dark­ness but we seem to en­joy the game. We know that it can de­stroy us but we are not ready to give it up, so the dark­ness con­tin­ues.”

Al­so touch­ing on the vi­o­lence in the coun­try, he said, “There is dark­ness in the fact that we do not re­spect oth­er peo­ple lives in so­ci­ety. For a small na­tion we have a hor­ri­bly high mur­der rate and it seems that at present there are more and more peo­ple who are ready to take ad­van­tage of our weak­er woman and young girls. And so our young girls have to now protest and tell us that there is a dark­ness that we are ac­cept­ing and that the young girl can­not walk the the streets any­more. That is a shame­ful thing, that is a painful thing.”

He said an­oth­er form of dark­ness is the fail­ure of par­ents to put light in the hearts of their chil­dren and the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem which is fail­ing the chil­dren.

“There is dark­ness when we fail to teach the chil­dren good habits. There is dark­ness when we fail to teach the chil­dren how to re­spect oth­ers. There is the dark­ness in the fail­ure of the school sys­tem to cre­ate good cit­i­zens. They may be part­ly ed­u­cat­ed but our schools have failed to pro­duce good cit­i­zens.” He said the var­i­ous fi­nan­cial schemes whether it is called, sou sou or pyra­mid, were al­so a form of dark­ness. “There are dark morals where cor­rup­tion is the or­der of the day,” he added.

Know­ing that sty­ro­foam is de­stroy­ing the en­vi­ron­ment, he said Trinida­di­ans still choose to use a lot of it and that is al­so a form of dark­ness.

He urged chris­tians and the church com­mu­ni­ty to stand up against dark­ness.

He said, “As a church, as a chris­t­ian we have an in­di­vid­ual re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to walk the path of hon­esty and truth. As a church com­mu­ni­ty we have re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to stand up­right and truth­ful in our so­ci­ety and we have to stop be­ing com­fort­able and on the fence. It’s ei­ther you walk­ing in the light or you walk­ing in the dark­ness. We need to get off the fence and we need to stand in the light.” In the 1960’s, he said, Rev Rev Mar­tin Luther King taught us that on­ly light can dis­pel the dark­ness. “Hate can­not over­come hate, vi­o­lence can­not re­move vi­o­lence. On­ly love can over­come hate and on­ly non-vi­o­lence or peace can re­move the vi­o­lence from our so­ci­ety.”

Sook­nar­ine told the con­gre­ga­tion that if they did not have the light of Je­sus then they would be walk­ing blind­ly down the path of de­struc­tion.

“We have to make per­son­al de­ci­sions and per­son­al choic­es to change who we are,” he added.