God of Peace and Justice
http://www.jrdkirk.com/2014/07/17/god-peace-justice/
This weekend I’m giving a talk on the God of Peace and Justice.
As if on cue, the writing of this talk is now punctuated by news that Israel has launched a ground invasion into Gaza and rumors are swirling that a passenger (!) jet was “blown out of the sky” by a missile near the Russian-Ukranian border.
I find myself at a loss.
As someone whose citizenship and home lies within the nation that has created unprovoked war in Iraq, that ensconced itself in over a decade of combat in Afghanistan, and that is in the business of killing people around the world by dropping bombs by remote controlled “drones,” what can I possibly say?
America has no moral ground to stand on in opposing violence around the world. We have not found a better way to be agents of peace.
It is times like these that underscore the impossible dream that is the reign of God. The idea of power that does not seize power, the vision of a people who do not take their own revenge, who believe that life is found in giving it away rather than seizing it–that vision is an impossible dream.
We’ve caught glimpses of it, though. Gandhi opened up a better world in India. Martin Luther King, Jr. pushed opened the door to a better world here in the U.S.
I ask the question of where God might be in all this. What difference does God make?
One answer comes from the mirror that gets held up to us as American Christians when we want to speak, but the hypocrisy of doing so shines forth in headlines about our own country’s drone activity.
We cannot speak because we have not pursued a better way. We have not pursued a better way because we have baptized the story of militarism and of nationalism rather than telling a better story enlightened by the narrative of Jesus.
Put differently, if the Christians in America believed that God’s route to peace and justice was the way of the crucified Christ rather than the crucifying Romans, America, and we who are Americans, would have some sort of footing from which to critique the devastation that other countries cause.
This beings me to a second dynamic.
I sub-titled my blog “Telling the story of the story-bound God.” God did a dangerous thing when God bound Godself to humanity. It was a decision to allow God’s name, God’s character, God’s reputation, be bound up with God’s people.
If God appears absent on the world stage due to the inflammations of war and injustice, it is because God’s people have not embraced and lived out the story of God as king of peace.
Finally, I don’t think that any particular conflict is proliferating due to a misapprehension of the identity of God by one or both parties. These wars are not clearly wars about religion or driven by religion.
However, there is a transformation that the gospel story demands of us in how we see the “other.” There is a call to be like God who causes the sun to shine and the rain to fall on the just and the unjust.
We are not called to the naive denial that there is injustice, or that we have a true enemy, but we are called to pray for and love such perpetrators.
More than that, we are to follow in the way of the God who, in Christ, reconciled all things to himself, and be agents of such reconciliation. The gospel story looks like enemies being won over through sacrificial love.
We need to be wary of taking sides in these conflicts, and in so doing accept the economies of power that the world is handing us.
That is to say, there is a gospel answer in there, somewhere. There is a way that God has made Godself known which says both that the world is not, right now, the world as God would have it to be, and which says at the same time that God has shown us a better way and patiently woos us toward it.
If only we will listen. If only we will follow.
The complicated question of how we as not only Christians but citizens are to live in a world where this dream of Kingdom come has not been realized, well, that’s another question as well.
As if on cue, the writing of this talk is now punctuated by news that Israel has launched a ground invasion into Gaza and rumors are swirling that a passenger (!) jet was “blown out of the sky” by a missile near the Russian-Ukranian border.
I find myself at a loss.
As someone whose citizenship and home lies within the nation that has created unprovoked war in Iraq, that ensconced itself in over a decade of combat in Afghanistan, and that is in the business of killing people around the world by dropping bombs by remote controlled “drones,” what can I possibly say?
America has no moral ground to stand on in opposing violence around the world. We have not found a better way to be agents of peace.
It is times like these that underscore the impossible dream that is the reign of God. The idea of power that does not seize power, the vision of a people who do not take their own revenge, who believe that life is found in giving it away rather than seizing it–that vision is an impossible dream.
We’ve caught glimpses of it, though. Gandhi opened up a better world in India. Martin Luther King, Jr. pushed opened the door to a better world here in the U.S.
I ask the question of where God might be in all this. What difference does God make?
One answer comes from the mirror that gets held up to us as American Christians when we want to speak, but the hypocrisy of doing so shines forth in headlines about our own country’s drone activity.
We cannot speak because we have not pursued a better way. We have not pursued a better way because we have baptized the story of militarism and of nationalism rather than telling a better story enlightened by the narrative of Jesus.
Put differently, if the Christians in America believed that God’s route to peace and justice was the way of the crucified Christ rather than the crucifying Romans, America, and we who are Americans, would have some sort of footing from which to critique the devastation that other countries cause.
This beings me to a second dynamic.
I sub-titled my blog “Telling the story of the story-bound God.” God did a dangerous thing when God bound Godself to humanity. It was a decision to allow God’s name, God’s character, God’s reputation, be bound up with God’s people.
If God appears absent on the world stage due to the inflammations of war and injustice, it is because God’s people have not embraced and lived out the story of God as king of peace.
Finally, I don’t think that any particular conflict is proliferating due to a misapprehension of the identity of God by one or both parties. These wars are not clearly wars about religion or driven by religion.
However, there is a transformation that the gospel story demands of us in how we see the “other.” There is a call to be like God who causes the sun to shine and the rain to fall on the just and the unjust.
We are not called to the naive denial that there is injustice, or that we have a true enemy, but we are called to pray for and love such perpetrators.
More than that, we are to follow in the way of the God who, in Christ, reconciled all things to himself, and be agents of such reconciliation. The gospel story looks like enemies being won over through sacrificial love.
We need to be wary of taking sides in these conflicts, and in so doing accept the economies of power that the world is handing us.
That is to say, there is a gospel answer in there, somewhere. There is a way that God has made Godself known which says both that the world is not, right now, the world as God would have it to be, and which says at the same time that God has shown us a better way and patiently woos us toward it.
If only we will listen. If only we will follow.
The complicated question of how we as not only Christians but citizens are to live in a world where this dream of Kingdom come has not been realized, well, that’s another question as well.
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