Christians, in obedience to Jesus, convert hate into peace, enmity into love, and doing harm into doing good. Why? Because we are Bethlehem people, we are Calvary people, and empty tomb people – we believe in a love that has entered the abyss and the darkness and has emerged as radiant life giving light.
What we teach and show our children determines the next generation’s loves, hates and commitments. In a world of refugees and terrorists, Facebook and Twitter, war and violent hatreds, Christians are called to be witnesses to the Kingdom of God. We are summoned to pray the Lord's Prayer, not as pre-film advert, but as subversive Gospel, as alternative worldview, as our way of showing we are followers of the crucified King, worshippers of the Lamb slain.
At this time of year, we know that Jesus knows about being a refugee, fleeing from massacre at Bethlehem. Our Saviour met all the world’s hatred head on at Calvary. Our Lord triumphed over hate, violence, evil and death at the empty tomb. Bethlehem and Calvary point to the God in the light of whose Holy Love we view the evil realities and tragedies of Paris. And for Christians the future doesn;t belong with the battle cries of religious power seekers of whatever faith, nor the battle strategists of whatever sides in our world's conflicts, but to a garden where once early in the morning as the sun rose, the Son rose. And power was redefined, the power of love over love of power. Bethlehem, Calvary, a garden - the geography of reconciliation and redemption.
In a world afraid of radicalisation we are called to redeem and convert that word into another kind of radicalisation - of the command to love our neighbours, and that means opening ourselves to the grace of the God, and to that Holy Love which transforms fear into love for our enemies. The cross is where the radical love of God goes to the root of human evil and creation's brokenness and heals it. "While we were still God’s enemies C died for us. In a world awash with fear and suspicion, a world of enemies, hatred, terrorism, refugees and shattered communities, the Christian church, the Body of Christ is called to practice, perform, embody and live out the principles that convert hatred to peace - mercy, neighbourliness, hospitality, peaceable speech, the Golden Rule, and the four imperatives to love, do good, bless and pray for those who are seen as enemy.
If anyone is in Christ - New creation! The Christian is born again, born from above, a child of the Father. Followers of Jesus are lights in a dark universe, lights of the world born to radiate the love of God, to speak forgiveness, to talk not hate speech but love speech. Welcomed by God Christians live out of trust, not fear, practising not rejection and exclusion but welcome and friendship. As children of the Father Christians resist stereo-type and caricature, encountering each person, every other, with respect and dignity because each person is created in the image of God. Hate is not the last word, it isn't even close - holiness, love, mercy, forgiveness, peace have the higher claim because they speak the nature of God. And underlying all of these, the sovereign grace of the God whose Holy Love is the light that shineth in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
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These previous posts on hate are attempts to help towards a Christian way of thinking about the cruelties and tragedies, the atrocities and ccyles of violence that so disfigure our world. They are not so much an answer, or answers; they are more by way of prayerful considerations, thoughtfulness about Christian obedience and witness in an age where if we are not careful hate, mistrust and a toxic siege mentality will create spirals of exclusion, hostility and violence.
Thanks for this series, Jim. The resolution is truly present in the Anointed (your C above) who gave his life for the life of the world. I think this is the essence of the Old Testament also, an obedience to such self-giving that is marked in the character of God as revealed through the actions of Yahweh and through his instruction (Torah) to Israel for the sake of the whole world. (Psalm 146 is a good summary).
Our obedience - hearing and doing as this God does - is vital. A friend of mine once summed up the Gospel in two words from Jesus: follow me.
We must be angry at the destruction of life and beauty taken up by those who engage in the current rhetoric (including our enemy), but our anger must not simply move to our taking vengeance. We must hate this enemy, whether in us or not, with a perfect hatred, as Psalm 139 notes, a hatred that responds to the correction of ourselves by the Spirit of the God and Father of our Lord Jesus.
I look on Daesh as a mirror reflecting our own national and international corporate errors. Chomsky was interviewed recently and pointed directly to the 2nd Iraq war as an immediate cause of the current crises (though not its root cause).
I think for the UK and for the US, as here in Canada, that our corporate mind (and individuals following it if it so acts or standing against it if it does not) must act towards the refugees to alleviate some suffering and we must also contain the evil unleashed against us by violence if necessary, but not necessarily by violence. And we must also dismantle, through the power of the cross, the fear and self-interest that we have put first in our lives. This will teach our heart some compassion, or so I hope. I work to be able to say this in other than what will be seen as superficial 'Christian' memes, true though they are. It is in this sense that the adjective Christian and the action of a Christian must reflect the mind of the one who emptied himself. This is also possible for those who are not so called but who fear God and who "in every nation ... work righteousness, [and are therefore] accepted with him."
Again, thank you
Posted by: Bob MacDonald | November 25, 2015 at 06:00 PM