Pastor urges public officers to eschew greed
The Interim Superintendent of the Holy Apostolic Reformed Church of Ghana (HARC), Bishop Dr Thomas Okpoti, has urged public officers to eschew greed and focus on their service to the public instead.
He said economic inequality was growing wider and that it was time for public officers to think of long-term solutions to bridge the gap rather than being self-centred.
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Launch
Bishop Dr Okpoti was speaking at the launch of the church’s constitution in Accra.
“Look at Ghana today and when you see the suffering, the pain and how people are really struggling to put food on their table, how people are forcing and putting pressure on themselves just to get their children through school, and then you look at our public officers, the kind of display of wealth and you compare it to the ordinary people, you ask yourself ‘what is going on?’ because the gap is too much and it is not motivating people to be hardworking,” he said.
He said for a country with many Christians in public service, there was the need for them to emulate Christ in their daily endeavours.
He added that although greed had existed since creation, Christians who occupied public offices must make it a personal initiative to exhibit self-discipline in order to resist it.
“Greed is a distraction which moves people in places of authority to think about themselves, and I think as Christians, the only way out of this is self-discipline,” he pointed out.
He stressed the need for public officers to review their approach to serving the public.
“We need to get to a point where we will serve the community for God to bless us in return,” he added.
Constitution
He explained that the church’s decision to draft a constitution was to ensure that its members were guided to emulate Christ, adding: “this will ensure that the church will be that light that Jesus wants it to be.”
“A constitution that allows us to serve the people and our society and a constitution that will allow us not to just consider people who come to church as the people only called by God, but for us to look beyond the walls of the church, and this is what has necessitated a new constitution for the church,” he said.
