First God, Then Neighbour: Rebuilding Hope in a Country
Losing Its Nerve
Canada is secularizing fast. MAiD has grown quickly,
overdose deaths and alcohol harm are stubborn, and volunteering is fading. The
antidote isn’t another program; it’s recovering the first love that once
ordered our loves—God before everything else, then neighbour.
By Jim Taylor, Voice of Nanaimo
Walk down any main street in British
Columbia and you’ll see it—the slump-shouldered shuffle of people numbed by
toxic drugs, the quiet dependence of still-functioning neighbours who can’t
cope without alcohol, and the resigned tone of a country that now treats death
on demand as a compassionate default. We can argue about economics, housing,
healthcare, and policy (and we should). But beneath the statistics sits
something older and deeper: we have severed our roots. In the space of a single
lifetime, Canada has drifted from a broadly Christian frame to a proudly
secular one, and the social consequences are now too obvious to ignore.
A quick
reality check
Over the past two decades, the share of
Canadians with no religious affiliation has roughly doubled, with British
Columbia now the most secular province in the country. During the same period,
medical assistance in dying has expanded to thousands of cases per year; a
national drug-poisoning emergency has taken tens of thousands of lives since
2016; and alcohol remains our costliest substance once you tally health care,
lost productivity, and justice costs. Meanwhile, fewer Canadians report very
good or excellent mental health than a decade ago, and formal volunteering has
fallen sharply since 2018.
You don’t need to be a statistician to
connect the mood. We’re a wealthy country, yet we sound weary and live like
we’re alone. What if the missing piece isn’t primarily a new service or
program, but a recovery of first principles—starting with God?
The
difference church makes (and why it’s not just a “support group”)
There’s a reason recovery programs meet in
church basements: thick communities save lives. But a Christian church is not
merely a social club with nicer coffee. Its first purpose is to worship the
living God and to make disciples of Jesus Christ. Loving neighbour is the
second commandment; it flows from the first—loving God with heart, soul, mind,
and strength. Get the order wrong and you hollow out the very power that makes
Christian community transformative.
When a community puts God first, several
things reliably follow. People discover meaning that suffering can’t erase.
They inherit an identity deeper than mood or circumstance: image-bearers of
God, redeemed and called. They practice habits that create hope—weekly worship,
daily prayer, confession and forgiveness, Word and Sacrament, generosity and
service. Those habits stitch people to God and to one another, creating a web
of belonging strong enough to carry heavy weather.
The
downstream effects that matter in real life
Family: Households anchored in regular
communal worship are more stable over time. Stable marriages and present parents
are still the most reliable anti-poverty program the world has ever found.
Sobriety: Congregations socialize norms that reduce initiation and misuse while
surrounding strugglers with relational accountability and practical help.
Social capital: Churches keep communities stitched together. They generate
volunteers, feed the hungry, host AA and youth groups, welcome newcomers, and
provide the third spaces where strangers become neighbours. Policy: As
religious life thins out, the public square predictably tilts toward
technocratic solutions to suffering—more procedures, fewer people. A thicker
faith presence keeps the focus on care pathways that help people live, not give
up.
‘First God,
then neighbour’ is not a slogan—it’s architecture
Put neighbour first and we inevitably
smuggle in our own preferences as the ultimate good. Put God first and
neighbour-love becomes anchored: not whatever I feel today, but what God
commands and empowers. That order changes the aims (holiness and hope), the
authority (God’s self‑revelation, not consensus), the practices (worship,
repentance, sacrament), the power (grace, not technique), and even our view of
the person (image‑bearers with eternal dignity). The Church exists to worship
God; because of that, it also becomes the most stubbornly hopeful social
institution in town.
What this
means here at home
In Nanaimo, we know these pressures up
close: a toxic drug supply, families under stress, and downtown streets that
feel thinner on trust. The city can’t fix despair by itself. Neither can
nonprofits alone. But a network of God‑first congregations can do what neither
bureaucracy nor philanthropy can—form people who can suffer without despairing,
reconcile without resentment, and serve without superiority. That’s cultural oxygen.
And we’re running low.
A modest
proposal
For churches: Measure belonging, not just
attendance. Put the Word and Sacraments back at the centre. Build recovery
ministries that integrate worship and practical help. Train people for
vocation—holiness at home and work, not just inside church walls. For
neighbours who’ve drifted: Come and see. Try six Sundays in a row. Join a small
group. Volunteer. You don’t have to believe everything on day one, but you’ll
sense quickly whether hope lives here. For civic leaders: Treat faith buildings
like critical social infrastructure. Lower the friction for shared use, long
leases, and partnerships that multiply community benefit. Keep MAiD bounded
while you invest upstream in palliative care, mental‑health access, housing,
and the local webs of meaning that make life livable.
The bottom
line
A society without deep roots cannot carry
heavy weather. Canada’s most reliable root system for hope has been the
Christian faith lived in community. If we want fewer lonely funerals and more
resilient neighbourhoods, the path forward is not nostalgia. It is repentance
and renewal—first God, then neighbour—and the civic courage to say so out loud.
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