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Welcome to the Ethics Centre website of The Salvation Army in Canada and Bermuda.

Whither the Weather....

Well, it's been a drizzly and cool Spring up here in Winnipeg, my home town. 

Folks are not just getting restless, we're getting mad.  Somewhere deep in our bones we feel it's just not RIGHT. 

We had a cold winter.  That, we're used to.  That, we expect.  The universe is not doing anything it shouldn't do when January is frigid in Winnipeg. The fact that we Prairie people can put up with -40C is a point of pride.  When others [read: Torontonians, Vancouverites, etc.] may make fun of us, we just remind ourselves of this fact:  we who live in Winnipeg are a superior strain of humanity!

But, come on; it's now June!  We DESERVE better than this.  We've EARNED our warm, sunny days.

This is all just silliness, of course.  Jesus had maybe been hearing indignant grumps like me when he said, "God makes the rain fall on the just and the unjust." 

To suggest that Kansans are better people than Kenyans because they get better weather or that Glaswegians are morally inferior to Grecians because they have worse weather is bunk.  And yet, who doesn't think that way some of the time? 

Which has had me wondering....if we so get it wrong by linking the quality of the weather with the moral character of the people living in a certain place, where else do we unthinkingly get it wrong in connecting conditions of life with people's character?  Poverty with Sloth; Wealth with Integrity? Cleanliness with Godliness; HIV with Lust; Birth defects with  Sin?