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Monday this week saw the 73rd anniversary of the dropping of an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. I joined other civic leaders in Manchester for a short, and entirely non-religious, annual ceremony. Poems, survivor accounts, and the brutal facts of the event, were read out. The shock of so much death and destruction never loses its impact; and the words of the current mayor of Hiroshima, conveyed to us, reminded us of the real and present danger of nuclear weapons in 2018, especially as the tensions between Iran and the USA mount up again. Three days after that first atomic attack, in addressing the people of the USA about what had happened, President Harry Truman described Hiroshima not as the populous city that it undoubtedly was, but as “a military base”, a target, he explained, that had been chosen to avoid, as far as possible the “killing of civilians”. In other parts of this programme we might call that “fake news”. It’s possible that Truman twisted the truth because he knew that the use of nuclear weapons lies open to public, ethical challenge. But that challenge cannot be left until the heat of warfare. The motivation behind a country choosing to possess, and be prepared to use, such arms (until a time when every nation can agree to destroy its stocks), needs constant scrutiny; scrutiny not solely from military and ministers but by society as a whole. For motive matters. Jesus notably challenged those who claimed their motivation to be putting God first when they were actually trying to wriggle out of the duty owed to their parents; a duty that goes right back to the Ten Commandments. His example spurs me on to keep asking uncomfortable questions about motive, especially when, as at present, any public attempt to start a conversation about the reasons for our own nuclear arsenal can be treated as verging on unpatriotic. Those among us who hold the laudable belief that nuclear weapons keep the peace, need to be watchful lest that justification has quietly been replaced in some quarters by an argument for the perceived status missiles afford. From Teheran to Pyongyang, and yes, from Washington to Westminster, the rationale of deterrence, I believe, must never become subservient to the pursuit of bragging rights. The possession of such weaponry, and the capacity to use it, must not be viewed as the entrance ticket to the nation state equivalent of football’s Premier League. Our world, Britain’s dedicated military personnel, and the 225,000 dead of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, honoured in Manchester and across the globe this week, deserve a far better justification for our persistence in holding on to our weapons than that.