Friday, November 14, 2008
George W's theology
http://www.sojo.net/index.cfm?action=magazine.article&issue=soj0309&article=030910
What is the Jesus Pledge?
A movement of Christians from the United States who feel compelled at this time to reaffirm our allegiance to Jesus as Lord and Christ, and the cross as God’s way of overcoming evil. We, therefore, pledge our allegiance to Jesus and the pursuit of God’s kingdom above all else, and renounce allegiances to nation that in any way compromise our calling and identify us with war and the use of force instead of Jesus’ life-giving love displayed in his earthly ministry and in his death for the world on the cross.
Manifesto
We confess that Jesus is Lord, the full revelation of the God of the Old Testament and that before Him every knee will bow. We confess that Jesus is Christ, Israel’s Messiah, and Savior of the world who conquered the power of evil on the cross. We agree with Jesus’ call to undivided allegiance to God: "No one can serve two masters…” (Matt 6:24), and “Love the Lord your God with all your heart…and your neighbor as yourself.” We also reaffirm that: “God so loved the world…” and now sends us with that same love to our society’s outcasts and our country’s enemies. Like Jesus, we must say ‘yes’ to the kingdom of God, and ‘no’ to all allegiances that compromise the furthering of that kingdom.
As followers of Jesus Christ who are citizens of the United States, we are troubled when God’s name is overly identified with our country’s wars and laws through Christians remaining silent or actively promoting them as ordained by God. We believe any union between the name of Jesus and our government and its leaders is both idolatrous and a hindrance to the witness of the Church. Killing our enemies and enforcing dehumanizing laws in the name of God deny Jesus’ call to love our enemies and to join him as a “friend of sinners.” This is the time for genuine, widespread repentance and change.
Pledge
As a follower of Jesus Christ, and in keeping with my baptismal vows:
I renounce allegiances to the world and nation that would lead me to justify the use of violence, war or any type of force that are incompatible with Jesus’ teachings and his witness on the cross. I affirm God’s mission for the Church to serve as ambassadors of the kingdom of God, announcing forgiveness, promoting healing, peace and reconciliation – by loving and blessing those considered our enemies.
I renounce the flesh as it manifests in a spirit of national pride, superiority and self-interest that pursues our nation’s dominance for our own economic and material benefit and security. I affirm that my primary earthly place of belonging, identity and loyalty is in Jesus Christ and his body -- the borderless, worldwide family of God, and embrace his way of humility, service and love of God and neighbor.
I renounce Satan, the accuser and deceiver, and turn from his lie that America is God’s elect ambassador of freedom and Christian values whose mission justifies and requires the sacrifice of human lives. I affirm God’s kingdom as manifested through Jesus’ life, death and resurrection and through his Church empowered by the Holy Spirit.
Action
If you are a citizen of the United States and a follower of Jesus we encourage you to pray the above pledge and click here to add your name to the growing movement of Christians seeking greater faithfulness and commitment. (Website currently under construction. Watch for www.jesuspledge.com and sign the pledge. See also www.bobekblad.com)
Manifesto
We confess that Jesus is Lord, the full revelation of the God of the Old Testament and that before Him every knee will bow. We confess that Jesus is Christ, Israel’s Messiah, and Savior of the world who conquered the power of evil on the cross. We agree with Jesus’ call to undivided allegiance to God: "No one can serve two masters…” (Matt 6:24), and “Love the Lord your God with all your heart…and your neighbor as yourself.” We also reaffirm that: “God so loved the world…” and now sends us with that same love to our society’s outcasts and our country’s enemies. Like Jesus, we must say ‘yes’ to the kingdom of God, and ‘no’ to all allegiances that compromise the furthering of that kingdom.
As followers of Jesus Christ who are citizens of the United States, we are troubled when God’s name is overly identified with our country’s wars and laws through Christians remaining silent or actively promoting them as ordained by God. We believe any union between the name of Jesus and our government and its leaders is both idolatrous and a hindrance to the witness of the Church. Killing our enemies and enforcing dehumanizing laws in the name of God deny Jesus’ call to love our enemies and to join him as a “friend of sinners.” This is the time for genuine, widespread repentance and change.
Pledge
As a follower of Jesus Christ, and in keeping with my baptismal vows:
I renounce allegiances to the world and nation that would lead me to justify the use of violence, war or any type of force that are incompatible with Jesus’ teachings and his witness on the cross. I affirm God’s mission for the Church to serve as ambassadors of the kingdom of God, announcing forgiveness, promoting healing, peace and reconciliation – by loving and blessing those considered our enemies.
I renounce the flesh as it manifests in a spirit of national pride, superiority and self-interest that pursues our nation’s dominance for our own economic and material benefit and security. I affirm that my primary earthly place of belonging, identity and loyalty is in Jesus Christ and his body -- the borderless, worldwide family of God, and embrace his way of humility, service and love of God and neighbor.
I renounce Satan, the accuser and deceiver, and turn from his lie that America is God’s elect ambassador of freedom and Christian values whose mission justifies and requires the sacrifice of human lives. I affirm God’s kingdom as manifested through Jesus’ life, death and resurrection and through his Church empowered by the Holy Spirit.
Action
If you are a citizen of the United States and a follower of Jesus we encourage you to pray the above pledge and click here to add your name to the growing movement of Christians seeking greater faithfulness and commitment. (Website currently under construction. Watch for www.jesuspledge.com and sign the pledge. See also www.bobekblad.com)
Monday, November 10, 2008
My personal mission statement
In my life with God among the poor, in community with my brothers and sisters, and in my family I walk in God’s grace, listening deeply and obeying fearlessly, as a man of:
PRAYER...who walks w/ the Holy Spirit in the joy and truth of my Heavenly Father; grateful for his goodness, embrace, freedom and fullness.
VISION...who wages peaceful war against all that is contrary to God and the establishment of his kingdom, and waits in the hope of God’s promised new creation.
PEOPLE...who loves and empowers others as Christ did through humble service and in the power of the Holy Spirit
My life work…is to EQUIP teams and missional churches with (1) theo vision (2) spiritual empowerment, and (3) movement inspiration. To ADVOCATE (1) Jesus Pledge web campaign (2) Peace with justice in the Middle East. As a slum worker I seek to catalyze house churches that follow Jesus and the way of the cross.
Jss21feb2009
PRAYER...who walks w/ the Holy Spirit in the joy and truth of my Heavenly Father; grateful for his goodness, embrace, freedom and fullness.
VISION...who wages peaceful war against all that is contrary to God and the establishment of his kingdom, and waits in the hope of God’s promised new creation.
PEOPLE...who loves and empowers others as Christ did through humble service and in the power of the Holy Spirit
My life work…is to EQUIP teams and missional churches with (1) theo vision (2) spiritual empowerment, and (3) movement inspiration. To ADVOCATE (1) Jesus Pledge web campaign (2) Peace with justice in the Middle East. As a slum worker I seek to catalyze house churches that follow Jesus and the way of the cross.
Jss21feb2009
November 2008
November 2008
Dear friends and family:
Recently, we hosted a visit from four young people that are considering long-term missionary service with InnerCHANGE and our team.
Bryan Carey, is from Virginia. Last year he interrupted his university studies to spend a year in the jungle of Peru. His experience was confirming in one way: he knows now that he is gifted and called to work cross-culturally in places of poverty. What he also discovered is that he wants to pursue that calling in the city, not the jungle.
Beth Carter is a Spanish teacher from Michigan. After teaching for six years, she came to point of knowing that career-wise she needed to either go deeper in her profession as a teacher or jump tracks to something completely new. Her long-term interest in Latin America and short-term trips to the region fed a desire to move herself there.
Jennifer Pare is from Texas, and a recent graduate from Wheaton College’s Master of Arts program in Inter-cultural studies. She spent four months in Brazil last year with a ministry called Word Made Flesh, where God gave her a heart for children in poverty.
Dave McMurray is from Kentucky and a recent graduate of the University of Kentucky. Like some of the others, Dave “found” InnerCHANGE through a recently published book entitled: “The New Friars” by Scott Bessennecker (InterVarsity Press), which highlights several ministries like ours that work in urban slums. Because this is Dave’s first cross-cultural experience he stayed a bit longer than the others.
As you may recall, recruiting has not been without difficulty over the past few years. In spite of the violence and visa constraints, we have found people ready and willing to take on the challenge. Adrienne, KT and Cameron are a testimony to this! Thank God for them!
By the first of November we should know how many of the new candidates will be joining our team, making the move by February or March, 2009. We appreciate your prayers as our team grows and potentially even expands into new barrios. God continues to use us in simple, yet profound ways…with neighborhood children coming to a tutoring program two afternoons each week, and in prayer ministry for the sick and demonized. Doors are opening to minister alongside the local Catholic priest and some of their home groups on our hillside, too. This has been very encouraging. I’m also working hard on my next book! (This one will be in English, too!)
Peace to all!
John and Birgit Shorack
Dear friends and family:
Recently, we hosted a visit from four young people that are considering long-term missionary service with InnerCHANGE and our team.
Bryan Carey, is from Virginia. Last year he interrupted his university studies to spend a year in the jungle of Peru. His experience was confirming in one way: he knows now that he is gifted and called to work cross-culturally in places of poverty. What he also discovered is that he wants to pursue that calling in the city, not the jungle.
Beth Carter is a Spanish teacher from Michigan. After teaching for six years, she came to point of knowing that career-wise she needed to either go deeper in her profession as a teacher or jump tracks to something completely new. Her long-term interest in Latin America and short-term trips to the region fed a desire to move herself there.
Jennifer Pare is from Texas, and a recent graduate from Wheaton College’s Master of Arts program in Inter-cultural studies. She spent four months in Brazil last year with a ministry called Word Made Flesh, where God gave her a heart for children in poverty.
Dave McMurray is from Kentucky and a recent graduate of the University of Kentucky. Like some of the others, Dave “found” InnerCHANGE through a recently published book entitled: “The New Friars” by Scott Bessennecker (InterVarsity Press), which highlights several ministries like ours that work in urban slums. Because this is Dave’s first cross-cultural experience he stayed a bit longer than the others.
As you may recall, recruiting has not been without difficulty over the past few years. In spite of the violence and visa constraints, we have found people ready and willing to take on the challenge. Adrienne, KT and Cameron are a testimony to this! Thank God for them!
By the first of November we should know how many of the new candidates will be joining our team, making the move by February or March, 2009. We appreciate your prayers as our team grows and potentially even expands into new barrios. God continues to use us in simple, yet profound ways…with neighborhood children coming to a tutoring program two afternoons each week, and in prayer ministry for the sick and demonized. Doors are opening to minister alongside the local Catholic priest and some of their home groups on our hillside, too. This has been very encouraging. I’m also working hard on my next book! (This one will be in English, too!)
Peace to all!
John and Birgit Shorack
October 2008
October 2008
Dear friends and family:
When Padre Pablo (Father Paul), the priest from the local parish, read Danza Divina (the book I self-published in February) he immediately invited me to join me for a special meeting. I call the meeting special because it was a gathering of his people, at a critical moment, and he wanted me (and InnerCHANGE) to be a part of it. Pablo picked me up in his personal, rather run down jeep. He picked me up because the meeting was held in my neighborhood, yet in a particular section higher on the hill that I’d never been to. When we pulled into a narrow alleyway which seemed to appear out of nowhere, we were greeted with friendly waves and ‘gritos’ (yells) of welcome. With the help of some young men Pablo managed so squeeze his car enough to one side of the path to allow the flow of pedestrians.
The purpose of the house meeting was to re-start two of their small, neighborhood bible groups. For most of the meeting I just sat there, at Pablo’s side, watching him do his work. I didn’t really know what to expect. What I did know was that Pablo trusted me enough to be there with him, and he wanted his people to know me.
At one point in the meeting, as the group was expressing their desire to go out weekly to visit homes, Pablo invited me to speak. “Hermano Juan y su equipo tienen mucha experiencia en eso.” (Brother John and his team and a lot of experience doing that.) This was the first and only chance I had to speak in the meeting. I didn’t know what I would say until the words came out of my mouth. “In our experience of visiting homes, one of the things we’ve encountered is people with spirits.” With a few more words I explained what I meant, which wasn’t hard. Virtually every head in the room was nodding in obvious resonance. They, too, knew of about demonic spirits.
The following week, teammate KT McClure and I went to a follow-up meeting in another home on the hillside. This time we met in a more in-depth, personal way with six women who are the core group of one of the re-started neighborhood bible groups. The leader of the group, a woman named María, probably approaching 60 years of age, was open to us. Because of what I shared the week before in the larger gathering, she said this to me (in front of her group): “Every time I try to do my personal prayers, an evil spirit manifests and stops me. Will you pray for me?”
We arranged a time for her to come to our office to receive prayer. God is so good. In short, KT and I were able to minister deliverance from the evil spirits that had been tormenting María. Then, God went even further. María’s daughter, Carmen, complained of a painful, aching in both arms from her neck to her hands. She had not experienced any relief from the pain for over three months. She asked for prayer. As we prayed for Carmen, I saw in my spirit that Jesus was present, standing behind Carmen and with loving arms touching each shoulder at the place of her physical pain. When I spoke this out to Carmen, she literally jumped up from her chair, turned to me with the biggest smile on her face and proclaimed: “That’s exactly what he’s doing!” Not only was Carmen’s pain gone, she was doused in God’s love for her! Pretty cool! Before they left, Carmen said to her mother: “Thanks to this experience with Brother John and KT, if any more evil spirits bother you, now we can take care of them ourselves. We know how to pray.”
Even before this exciting episode with María and her daughter, María had invited me to do a monthly teaching/training with her group once we returned from our summer furlough in the US. Please pray for this wonderful open door, that God would continue to move with his love and his power…that many would turn and know Him!
Thanks for your partnership in the gospel!
John and Birgit Shorack
Dear friends and family:
When Padre Pablo (Father Paul), the priest from the local parish, read Danza Divina (the book I self-published in February) he immediately invited me to join me for a special meeting. I call the meeting special because it was a gathering of his people, at a critical moment, and he wanted me (and InnerCHANGE) to be a part of it. Pablo picked me up in his personal, rather run down jeep. He picked me up because the meeting was held in my neighborhood, yet in a particular section higher on the hill that I’d never been to. When we pulled into a narrow alleyway which seemed to appear out of nowhere, we were greeted with friendly waves and ‘gritos’ (yells) of welcome. With the help of some young men Pablo managed so squeeze his car enough to one side of the path to allow the flow of pedestrians.
The purpose of the house meeting was to re-start two of their small, neighborhood bible groups. For most of the meeting I just sat there, at Pablo’s side, watching him do his work. I didn’t really know what to expect. What I did know was that Pablo trusted me enough to be there with him, and he wanted his people to know me.
At one point in the meeting, as the group was expressing their desire to go out weekly to visit homes, Pablo invited me to speak. “Hermano Juan y su equipo tienen mucha experiencia en eso.” (Brother John and his team and a lot of experience doing that.) This was the first and only chance I had to speak in the meeting. I didn’t know what I would say until the words came out of my mouth. “In our experience of visiting homes, one of the things we’ve encountered is people with spirits.” With a few more words I explained what I meant, which wasn’t hard. Virtually every head in the room was nodding in obvious resonance. They, too, knew of about demonic spirits.
The following week, teammate KT McClure and I went to a follow-up meeting in another home on the hillside. This time we met in a more in-depth, personal way with six women who are the core group of one of the re-started neighborhood bible groups. The leader of the group, a woman named María, probably approaching 60 years of age, was open to us. Because of what I shared the week before in the larger gathering, she said this to me (in front of her group): “Every time I try to do my personal prayers, an evil spirit manifests and stops me. Will you pray for me?”
We arranged a time for her to come to our office to receive prayer. God is so good. In short, KT and I were able to minister deliverance from the evil spirits that had been tormenting María. Then, God went even further. María’s daughter, Carmen, complained of a painful, aching in both arms from her neck to her hands. She had not experienced any relief from the pain for over three months. She asked for prayer. As we prayed for Carmen, I saw in my spirit that Jesus was present, standing behind Carmen and with loving arms touching each shoulder at the place of her physical pain. When I spoke this out to Carmen, she literally jumped up from her chair, turned to me with the biggest smile on her face and proclaimed: “That’s exactly what he’s doing!” Not only was Carmen’s pain gone, she was doused in God’s love for her! Pretty cool! Before they left, Carmen said to her mother: “Thanks to this experience with Brother John and KT, if any more evil spirits bother you, now we can take care of them ourselves. We know how to pray.”
Even before this exciting episode with María and her daughter, María had invited me to do a monthly teaching/training with her group once we returned from our summer furlough in the US. Please pray for this wonderful open door, that God would continue to move with his love and his power…that many would turn and know Him!
Thanks for your partnership in the gospel!
John and Birgit Shorack
September 2008
September 2008
Dear friends and family:
As you know our family has been in the US for the summer, taking a much needed furlough and vacation from the ministry in Venezuela. Among the visits we’ve made in August, we spent one week at Camp Cedar Glen in So. California at a gathering of InnerCHANGE missionaries worldwide. We had a beautiful time worshipping God, getting re-connected and re-affirming our “family ties” as a missionary community. In fact, the retreat was a chance for us to take a deeper look at what we mean when we describe ourselves as a “Christian order among the poor.” I want to take this chance to give you a glimpse into this, too.
InnerCHANGE was founded in 1985 when John Hayes moved himself onto an overcrowded and overlooked street in Santa Ana, CA, teeming with Cambodian refugees. Shortly after we joined InnerCHANGE in 1992, John Hayes began describing InnerCHANGE’s calling as both missionary and prophetic. What he meant by that was that our ministry among the poor has two faces, if you will. The missionary face displays the mercy of God in the streets and byways of the world’s forgotten places, raising up disciples of Jesus and forming communities of His kingdom. The other face, what we call our prophetic current, is simply, yet profoundly, using our lives to call the Church continually back to God’s intentions for the poor.
The Samaritan in Jesus’ parable embodies these two currents beautifully, reaching out in mercy and ministering God’s love to the injured in the road, while also prophetically, with his actions, providing the priest and Levite with a sovereign opportunity to examine their ways and they hearts.
Interestingly enough, in the late 90s our founder discovered that we as InnerCHANGE were also the injured one, the needy one in the road. In a very real sense, the intensity of the ministry, the pain and sorrows that we’ve encountered along the way, forced us to move deeper into what we’ve now recognized as our third current; the contemplative current.
In fact, we’ve discovered that it’s the dynamic interplay of these three currents – the missionary, the prophetic and the contemplative – that best expresses the unique gift we believe God has given us and best explains what we mean by “Christian order among the poor.” (Historically, Catholics orders have called that unique ‘gift’ given to a community its ‘charism’ – in case that word is familiar to some.)
Why share this with you?
From our journey as InnerCHANGE, spanning now almost 25 years and only hinted at above, you can see how we the missionaries have needed time to understand more precisely what God has been crafting us into. As our friends and family, standing with us all these years, we know it hasn’t always been easy for you to understand what InnerCHANGE is either. Yet you’ve always believed in us! Thank you!
Please remember us in your prayers as we turn a big corner in September when our oldest daughter, Johanna, begins her studies at Seattle Pacific University and the rest of us return to Venezuela.
Peace,
John and Birgit
Dear friends and family:
As you know our family has been in the US for the summer, taking a much needed furlough and vacation from the ministry in Venezuela. Among the visits we’ve made in August, we spent one week at Camp Cedar Glen in So. California at a gathering of InnerCHANGE missionaries worldwide. We had a beautiful time worshipping God, getting re-connected and re-affirming our “family ties” as a missionary community. In fact, the retreat was a chance for us to take a deeper look at what we mean when we describe ourselves as a “Christian order among the poor.” I want to take this chance to give you a glimpse into this, too.
InnerCHANGE was founded in 1985 when John Hayes moved himself onto an overcrowded and overlooked street in Santa Ana, CA, teeming with Cambodian refugees. Shortly after we joined InnerCHANGE in 1992, John Hayes began describing InnerCHANGE’s calling as both missionary and prophetic. What he meant by that was that our ministry among the poor has two faces, if you will. The missionary face displays the mercy of God in the streets and byways of the world’s forgotten places, raising up disciples of Jesus and forming communities of His kingdom. The other face, what we call our prophetic current, is simply, yet profoundly, using our lives to call the Church continually back to God’s intentions for the poor.
The Samaritan in Jesus’ parable embodies these two currents beautifully, reaching out in mercy and ministering God’s love to the injured in the road, while also prophetically, with his actions, providing the priest and Levite with a sovereign opportunity to examine their ways and they hearts.
Interestingly enough, in the late 90s our founder discovered that we as InnerCHANGE were also the injured one, the needy one in the road. In a very real sense, the intensity of the ministry, the pain and sorrows that we’ve encountered along the way, forced us to move deeper into what we’ve now recognized as our third current; the contemplative current.
In fact, we’ve discovered that it’s the dynamic interplay of these three currents – the missionary, the prophetic and the contemplative – that best expresses the unique gift we believe God has given us and best explains what we mean by “Christian order among the poor.” (Historically, Catholics orders have called that unique ‘gift’ given to a community its ‘charism’ – in case that word is familiar to some.)
Why share this with you?
From our journey as InnerCHANGE, spanning now almost 25 years and only hinted at above, you can see how we the missionaries have needed time to understand more precisely what God has been crafting us into. As our friends and family, standing with us all these years, we know it hasn’t always been easy for you to understand what InnerCHANGE is either. Yet you’ve always believed in us! Thank you!
Please remember us in your prayers as we turn a big corner in September when our oldest daughter, Johanna, begins her studies at Seattle Pacific University and the rest of us return to Venezuela.
Peace,
John and Birgit
A View from the Other Side of the Globe
A view from the other side of the globe
It is a few days after the first anniversary of the tragic events of 11 September 2001, and with fear and trembling I took the decision to write something that represents a perspective on world happenings from the other side of the globe.
Perhaps there has never been a time during my lifetime when the opinions of the rest of the world have diverged so markedly from the opinions of the government of USA. This hurts me a lot because many Christians in the Third World are very upset and I believe this is adding fuel to the serious gap developing between Christians in the Third World and in the USA.
In fact when I hear some of our Christian leaders speak about America I fear they may have slipped into the sin of racism. This must not be, for we all belong to one body. If one part of the body remains angry with another it hurts itself.
This hurts me especially because some of the happiest years in my life were spent as a student in USA. I owe so much of what I am to Christians there. Most of my mentors are Americans, and so are many of my closest and most valued friends.
At the heart of this crisis is the sense that is developing among Christian leaders here that it is impossible for Christians in the West, especially in the USA, to understand what is happening in the rest of the world. There is a wish that they would listen to us, and ask, ‘What do people in those countries feel?’
There is a growing frustration coming from a suspicion that American Christians are listening only to what American experts say about the situation in the world outside their borders. They fear that these experts depend on research rather than the Christian method of incarnational identification and that therefore they miss hearing the heart-cry of the people.
As one who has lived happily in both these worlds, I thought that for the sake of the unity of the body of Christ and the desire to see American Christians develop a sense of listening to the rest of the world, I would write down some of my reflections.
Terrorism is the violent response to what the terrorists see as a threat to the freedom and the rights of their people. This perception may be correct or incorrect. The means they use to achieve their ends are certainly wrong, but some of their anger may be justified.
Christians are people who must be skilled in listening in love to their neighbours; even if these neighbours are their enemies, for the Bible asks us to love our enemies. Therefore when a group resorts to terrorism, Christians should be concentrating on answering the question, ‘Why are they so angry?’ That is the question I wished most for the West to ask after the events of 11 September 2001.
Many here believe that these events were a direct response to the humiliation the Muslims have faced during the past few decades over successive defeats they have endured as the West has marched towards the domination of the world.
The Gulf war of 1991 and the continued bombardment of Iraq since then are two such defeats. But there are several other defeats. One is the Western dominance in trade and economics. It is called globalisation, but in order to survive developing nations have been forced to bow down to the Western agenda with its individualism and competitiveness.
The Muslim countries that are doing well economically have, in order to survive in a global economy dominated by Western values, adopted economic systems that other Muslims consider anti-Islamic. The Islamic extremists are very angry that Muslims have made so many concessions to this dominance of the world by the West.
Then there is the dominance of Western culture through the media. Some of the values portrayed there directly oppose Asian values such as costly commitment to family, lifelong faithfulness to spouse, and community solidarity as opposed to individualism.
Then there is the proliferation of pornography and other sexual deviations, which has hit our people without the preparation through a gradual sexual revolution that the West experienced. It has hit the East suddenly in its full-blown form and our people here have not developed defences to cope with it. They have got sucked in.
Recently I heard about a poor 15-year-old boy who has seen 500-600 pornographic videos. My son told me of a 17-year-old Muslim classmate who has downloaded and saved two gigabytes of pornography from Western webites.
Now, the Muslims – rightly or wrongly – blame all of this on the West. Personally I do not blame only the West for the rise of pornography etc. I believe that all people everywhere are naturally evil and immoral and liable to take steps that send their nations on a downward spiral.
But what I am presenting here is the way the extremists think. To them the West is evil and immoral but so powerful that they cannot fight its insidious influence on them. They feel they are losing the battle for the maintenance of what they believe is their ‘superior’ culture.
Personally I do not think that any culture is superior to another. All cultures have their good and bad points. But the Muslims believe their culture is superior because they think its features were dictated by God and reported verbatim in the Koran. So the Muslim extremists are humiliated over these defeats and some of them are responding by hitting out violently in anger.
Now there is a lot of talk about another war. The Muslims see this as another threat from the West. And each time this war talk is intensified the Christians in countries like Pakistan get hit. The trigger for many of the attacks on Christian compounds recently in Pakistan is the present initiatives and statements of Western leaders.
The Western leaders say they are fighting evil. The Muslim extremists feel that the West is evil and that they must protect righteousness by battling the West. So they hit targets that they associate with the West.
I do not know the answer to the complex problems of the world. I do not know the answer to the problem of Iraq and its campaigns against the West, or to its stockpiles of Anthrax and gas that can be used in chemical warfare.
However, even if the government of a poorer country officially backs a Western war effort against another poorer nation like Iraq, often a majority of the people in that country will oppose it. They would say that their government needed to back America because it would be economically suicidal not to, as America has so much economic power. This is how many people in poorer nations felt when their governments backed the Gulf war of the early 1990s.
My heart yearns to see the Muslims accepting Christ as their Saviour. To me working towards that goal is one of the most important agendas in the world today. Governments come and go; powers wax and wane, but the response of people to the gospel of Christ determines their eternal destiny.
That is a choice between heaven and hell – not just for a few decades but forever and ever. This is why I believe that world evangelisation is the most important cause in the world today. It has to do with eternity. The Church must put that first, and whatever hinders that must be dealt with.
Therefore whatever governments may do, I want to appeal to the Church to be careful about lending its support to Western military initiatives. Individuals will need to go out to war as obedient subjects of their country. But the Church must be careful about official endorsement of things that may hurt the huge segment of the body of Christ in the rest of the world.
Think of the eternal agenda. It looks like perceptions of what is right and wrong are very different among Christians in the West and in the East. Therefore, as members of the body of Christ, please think of what the Christians in the poorer nations are thinking and going through.
Paul said that he became weak to reach the weak (1 Corinthians 9:22). The Muslims see themselves as threatened by the strength of the West. I think that if we are to reach them with the gospel we will have to identify with their sense of weakness. We will have to become weak ourselves.
If they see the Christians as strong people coming to hit them, then they will hate us and oppose our gospel even more. This is why it may be necessary for the Church to divorce itself from the power of the West, which much of the rest of the world resents.
In a similar vein, it is necessary for the Church to divorce itself from statements like, ‘We are the greatest nation on earth’ because our religion tells us, ‘In humility consider others better than yourselves’ (Philippians 2:3). These are all vital issues that churches in the West need to think about if they are to be involved in missions.
While the Bible does speak about war, it also talks a lot about the need to be peacemakers. I hope that in this time when many in the West are speaking about war, Christians will concentrate on peace and through that make inroads into the Muslim communities as people who are not their enemies but their friends.
I believe that when the West took the side of the Muslims against the Orthodox Christians in the conflict in the former Yugoslavia it did a great thing for the cause of the gospel because, whether we like it or not, the West is associated with Christianity in the minds of many people.
In the past few years of war in Sri Lanka I have often had to take stands that go directly against that of my government and of the majority of the Sinhalese (my ethnic group) people. I have to always tell myself that I am a Christian first and only then a Sinhalese. This is a thing that Christians must always be doing.
Sometimes on matters of war and peace sincere Christians will disagree with each other. My hero John Wesley, who sided with Britain in the revolutionary war, disagreed with another hero, the American Methodist leader Francis Asbury, who supported the American independence struggle.
I think that, out of solidarity with the Christians in the developing world, Western Christians need to be reluctant about giving blanket support to military initiatives against non-western powers. I believe such an approach will help in speeding the work of the gospel among non-Christians, especially the Muslims.
If the Muslims know that, though the West is attacking some of their nations, many Christians are opposing those attacks, they may conclude that the Christians are not their enemy, and they may become more open to the message of the gospel.
Ajith Fernando
National Director for Youth for Christ, Sri Lanka
It is a few days after the first anniversary of the tragic events of 11 September 2001, and with fear and trembling I took the decision to write something that represents a perspective on world happenings from the other side of the globe.
Perhaps there has never been a time during my lifetime when the opinions of the rest of the world have diverged so markedly from the opinions of the government of USA. This hurts me a lot because many Christians in the Third World are very upset and I believe this is adding fuel to the serious gap developing between Christians in the Third World and in the USA.
In fact when I hear some of our Christian leaders speak about America I fear they may have slipped into the sin of racism. This must not be, for we all belong to one body. If one part of the body remains angry with another it hurts itself.
This hurts me especially because some of the happiest years in my life were spent as a student in USA. I owe so much of what I am to Christians there. Most of my mentors are Americans, and so are many of my closest and most valued friends.
At the heart of this crisis is the sense that is developing among Christian leaders here that it is impossible for Christians in the West, especially in the USA, to understand what is happening in the rest of the world. There is a wish that they would listen to us, and ask, ‘What do people in those countries feel?’
There is a growing frustration coming from a suspicion that American Christians are listening only to what American experts say about the situation in the world outside their borders. They fear that these experts depend on research rather than the Christian method of incarnational identification and that therefore they miss hearing the heart-cry of the people.
As one who has lived happily in both these worlds, I thought that for the sake of the unity of the body of Christ and the desire to see American Christians develop a sense of listening to the rest of the world, I would write down some of my reflections.
Terrorism is the violent response to what the terrorists see as a threat to the freedom and the rights of their people. This perception may be correct or incorrect. The means they use to achieve their ends are certainly wrong, but some of their anger may be justified.
Christians are people who must be skilled in listening in love to their neighbours; even if these neighbours are their enemies, for the Bible asks us to love our enemies. Therefore when a group resorts to terrorism, Christians should be concentrating on answering the question, ‘Why are they so angry?’ That is the question I wished most for the West to ask after the events of 11 September 2001.
Many here believe that these events were a direct response to the humiliation the Muslims have faced during the past few decades over successive defeats they have endured as the West has marched towards the domination of the world.
The Gulf war of 1991 and the continued bombardment of Iraq since then are two such defeats. But there are several other defeats. One is the Western dominance in trade and economics. It is called globalisation, but in order to survive developing nations have been forced to bow down to the Western agenda with its individualism and competitiveness.
The Muslim countries that are doing well economically have, in order to survive in a global economy dominated by Western values, adopted economic systems that other Muslims consider anti-Islamic. The Islamic extremists are very angry that Muslims have made so many concessions to this dominance of the world by the West.
Then there is the dominance of Western culture through the media. Some of the values portrayed there directly oppose Asian values such as costly commitment to family, lifelong faithfulness to spouse, and community solidarity as opposed to individualism.
Then there is the proliferation of pornography and other sexual deviations, which has hit our people without the preparation through a gradual sexual revolution that the West experienced. It has hit the East suddenly in its full-blown form and our people here have not developed defences to cope with it. They have got sucked in.
Recently I heard about a poor 15-year-old boy who has seen 500-600 pornographic videos. My son told me of a 17-year-old Muslim classmate who has downloaded and saved two gigabytes of pornography from Western webites.
Now, the Muslims – rightly or wrongly – blame all of this on the West. Personally I do not blame only the West for the rise of pornography etc. I believe that all people everywhere are naturally evil and immoral and liable to take steps that send their nations on a downward spiral.
But what I am presenting here is the way the extremists think. To them the West is evil and immoral but so powerful that they cannot fight its insidious influence on them. They feel they are losing the battle for the maintenance of what they believe is their ‘superior’ culture.
Personally I do not think that any culture is superior to another. All cultures have their good and bad points. But the Muslims believe their culture is superior because they think its features were dictated by God and reported verbatim in the Koran. So the Muslim extremists are humiliated over these defeats and some of them are responding by hitting out violently in anger.
Now there is a lot of talk about another war. The Muslims see this as another threat from the West. And each time this war talk is intensified the Christians in countries like Pakistan get hit. The trigger for many of the attacks on Christian compounds recently in Pakistan is the present initiatives and statements of Western leaders.
The Western leaders say they are fighting evil. The Muslim extremists feel that the West is evil and that they must protect righteousness by battling the West. So they hit targets that they associate with the West.
I do not know the answer to the complex problems of the world. I do not know the answer to the problem of Iraq and its campaigns against the West, or to its stockpiles of Anthrax and gas that can be used in chemical warfare.
However, even if the government of a poorer country officially backs a Western war effort against another poorer nation like Iraq, often a majority of the people in that country will oppose it. They would say that their government needed to back America because it would be economically suicidal not to, as America has so much economic power. This is how many people in poorer nations felt when their governments backed the Gulf war of the early 1990s.
My heart yearns to see the Muslims accepting Christ as their Saviour. To me working towards that goal is one of the most important agendas in the world today. Governments come and go; powers wax and wane, but the response of people to the gospel of Christ determines their eternal destiny.
That is a choice between heaven and hell – not just for a few decades but forever and ever. This is why I believe that world evangelisation is the most important cause in the world today. It has to do with eternity. The Church must put that first, and whatever hinders that must be dealt with.
Therefore whatever governments may do, I want to appeal to the Church to be careful about lending its support to Western military initiatives. Individuals will need to go out to war as obedient subjects of their country. But the Church must be careful about official endorsement of things that may hurt the huge segment of the body of Christ in the rest of the world.
Think of the eternal agenda. It looks like perceptions of what is right and wrong are very different among Christians in the West and in the East. Therefore, as members of the body of Christ, please think of what the Christians in the poorer nations are thinking and going through.
Paul said that he became weak to reach the weak (1 Corinthians 9:22). The Muslims see themselves as threatened by the strength of the West. I think that if we are to reach them with the gospel we will have to identify with their sense of weakness. We will have to become weak ourselves.
If they see the Christians as strong people coming to hit them, then they will hate us and oppose our gospel even more. This is why it may be necessary for the Church to divorce itself from the power of the West, which much of the rest of the world resents.
In a similar vein, it is necessary for the Church to divorce itself from statements like, ‘We are the greatest nation on earth’ because our religion tells us, ‘In humility consider others better than yourselves’ (Philippians 2:3). These are all vital issues that churches in the West need to think about if they are to be involved in missions.
While the Bible does speak about war, it also talks a lot about the need to be peacemakers. I hope that in this time when many in the West are speaking about war, Christians will concentrate on peace and through that make inroads into the Muslim communities as people who are not their enemies but their friends.
I believe that when the West took the side of the Muslims against the Orthodox Christians in the conflict in the former Yugoslavia it did a great thing for the cause of the gospel because, whether we like it or not, the West is associated with Christianity in the minds of many people.
In the past few years of war in Sri Lanka I have often had to take stands that go directly against that of my government and of the majority of the Sinhalese (my ethnic group) people. I have to always tell myself that I am a Christian first and only then a Sinhalese. This is a thing that Christians must always be doing.
Sometimes on matters of war and peace sincere Christians will disagree with each other. My hero John Wesley, who sided with Britain in the revolutionary war, disagreed with another hero, the American Methodist leader Francis Asbury, who supported the American independence struggle.
I think that, out of solidarity with the Christians in the developing world, Western Christians need to be reluctant about giving blanket support to military initiatives against non-western powers. I believe such an approach will help in speeding the work of the gospel among non-Christians, especially the Muslims.
If the Muslims know that, though the West is attacking some of their nations, many Christians are opposing those attacks, they may conclude that the Christians are not their enemy, and they may become more open to the message of the gospel.
Ajith Fernando
National Director for Youth for Christ, Sri Lanka
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