The Rev Graham Sykes, Chaplain to the Bishop of Oxford, Diocese of Oxford, writes:

 

Like many people I have been shocked and horrified by the plight of the Nigerian girls kidnapped by the Boko Haram group simply to prevent them receiving an education.

The picture of a group of them, standing with looks of abject fear on their faces as it was claimed that they had ‘converted to Islam’, simply turned the knife of distress in my stomach.

For the majority of the human race, faith is a very important part of being human. At the heart of Christian, Jewish and Muslim understanding is that human beings are made in the image of God the creator as set out in the book of Genesis.

I have often reflected on exactly what that means. Every human being is so different – we have different shaped bodies, different skin tones, hair colours, hair types and some are male and some are female.

So being made in the image of God is not entirely about physicality. This led me to enquire about the nature of God because it is God’s nature that humanity reflects.

God is creator so humans are creative. God is love and so human beings love. God is free and so human beings are free. If we are free we have as much freedom as God in what we choose to do and be. We can choose how we understand God and how we relate to God in prayer.

We can choose not to believe or relate to God and God does not intervene in these choices in any coercive way, for to do so would be a denial of the freedom God has written into us.

God’s way of calling us to faith is by invitation, by wooing, by asking us to spend time with God in prayer and worship. So while voluntarily changing your religion or coming to new faith is one thing, coercing or bullying any human being into any religion has nothing to do with God. I’d go as far as calling it blasphemy because it goes against the nature of the creator and the image of the creator within us. So our thoughts and prayers are with those girls, their families and all within the national and international community who seek to restore their God-given freedom to choose for themselves.