In such a situation, where the Church has both to affirm what is godly in a culture but also to challenge what is mistaken or wilfully wrong, how are we to recognise the Church's mission and ministry?

We are faced with an overwhelming loss of personal and social integration: it has long been recognised that people are alienated from one another. The more individualistic society becomes, the more distanced we are from our neighbours. We are alienated from the natural environment around us because we see it only as something to be exploited to fulfil our own needs and not, as the Bible does, as having a destiny of its own. There is even an inner cleavage in ourselves such that our moral, spiritual, emotional and intellectual aspects are not working in harmony but, sometimes, against one another. Most fundamentally, we are alienated from the very ground of our being, the source of our existence and the One who gives us meaning and direction. 

Alienation brings anxiety about life itself and the perceived threat to it. There is also, however, a sense of guilt, of not being what we have been called to be, of acting against our nature but being unable to atone for it. Such anxiety often leads to addiction. We seek to suppress it, to turn away from it and to deny it in enforced jollity and escapism. Addiction, whether to alcohol or drugs or to destructive behaviour or relationships, can be a way of forgetting, for a time, our real problems. 

The Church's work has to address this personal and social situation which so many face. It cannot do this by simply repackaging the nostrums of social science or by imitating the methods of secular therapies. While the Church must be ever attentive to whatever is claimed as knowledge, it must also bring the Gospel of Jesus Christ to bear on the opportunities and problems of contemporary culture. 

One of our great needs is to get out of the rut in which we are stuck and to start again. Repentance is a decidedly unfashionable term these days, but it is central to the Church's call to people everywhere. To know that we are forgiven deals with one of the basic reasons for the anxiety (or angst) experienced by so many. We are forgiven because Jesus Christ has, once again, opened the way for friendship with God. Instead of seeing the universe as indifferent or even as hostile to us, we can now see it as suffused and patterned by love. Such love is not only about the fulfilment of my desires or to do with my personal history, but with seeking the good, indeed, the best for the Other, whether neighbour or stranger, friend or enemy. It is this experience of forgiveness and friendship which leads to a greater integration of our own personalities, whatever our quirks, experiences or even traumas.