Gimme Your 2 Cents!
Many of you guys know that I believe the church starts with the disciple in society, mobilizing the entire body, engaging the domains through vocations to be salt and light in a fallen world. Core to this is an understanding of the power of the seed of the Gospel of the Kingdom that when planted it really makes a difference. This week I’ll be meeting with several people brainstorming, debating, evaluating what the best approaches for Christians to be a part of the solution and the not the problem in the Israeli-Palestinean conflict. I may not be blogging much - but I’ll be checking the comments - what do you think the church in America should do to be a part of “peace” in that part of the world?
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Sep 5, 2007 at 09:10 AM
I believe it starts by being a "servant to all". Bernard of Clairvaux said, "Learn the lesson that, if you are to do the work of a prophet, what you need is not a scepter but a hoe. I always like to ask "what do the followers of Christ in that part of the world need us to do to help them serve and bring Christ peace to their homeland."
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Sep 5, 2007 at 10:49 AM
A shared identity of some Christians, Jews, Muslims, and others is their vocational identity as engineers (similar reasoning should apply, at least in part to other secular professions).
An Isaeli engineer and Palnestrian one are likely adversarial in views of history, politics or religion. But if they are tasked to provide clean water to a West Bank village, they should be on same side of table, talking as engineering, referring to a common body of engineering knowledge and a common code of engineering ethics.
In fact, they might both belong to ASCE, world's largest professional society for civil engineers, or other engineering professional society. What other organization might they commonly belong to about an important aspect of their lives that operates by democratic rules, based in human rights?
My point (based on being an active member of several major engineering professional societies for many years, including numerous leadership positions at local and national levels) is that if only 10 to 20 Christian (or other) engineers who belonged to one of these societies were, in an organized fashion, advocate these societies take constructive positions on a two-state solution in mid-east, they would likely succeed.
But that means Christians have to be willing to be an organized influence in other spheres of their lives and cannot make arguments just based on faith, they have to make arguments based on other reasons to non-Christians too.
They also have to open to experiencing some degree of opposition in their professions, which is the real "deal-breaker" in my experience - Christians in a given profession are unwilling to do anything in an organized fashion to "rock boats" to be a salt and light influence in their profession if it might result in any degree of economic loss or risk to them.
So when does Bob Roberts "go on record" that Christians who are priviledged to have membership status in a recognized secular profession as engineering should be an organized influence within it, to be "salt and light" to uplift that profession and its service to the public and the creatted order, even if it might result in some degree of adversity, persecution, or loss of career standing or status for some of those Christians?
Till the "Bob Roberts" of church start using their prophetic/leadership roles in this way, nothing should be expected to change.
Joe Carson, PE
President, Affiliation of Christian Engineers
Knoxville, TN
Sep 5, 2007 at 09:53 PM
Bob,
It's interesting to take a look at the Twelve whom Jesus called into a special, intimate, rabbinical relationship: Matthew a tax collector and servant of the Roman governor; Simon a Zealot and rebel against Rome; Peter, Andrew, James, and John were fishermen; Thomas was a skeptic; Judas Iscariot was the only Judean; and the Twelve were diverse in other ways. I think this is significant in relation to your question, considering the wide diversity represented in the Middle East: Christians, secular Jews, religious Jews (who are diverse themselves, Arabs, etc. It will take a Jesus movement to bring peace to the Middle East. Only one group can be a catalyst for a Jesus movement: transformational followers of Christ. Your question has piqued a real interest. As I prayerfully consider a city for our church to adopt, might it be one in the Middle East? Interesting.
Sep 6, 2007 at 06:25 PM
Shane Claiborne has some interesting things to say about issues like this...although seemingly crazy and "RADICAL" they line up strangly close with the Gospel of Jeus. Here's a little chunk i enjoy reading weekly from his book:
“If we are crazy it is because we refuse to be crazy in the same way that the world has gone crazy. After all, what’s crazier: one person owning the same amount of money as the combined economies of twenty three countries, or suggesting that if we shared, there would be enough for everyone? What is crazier: spending billions of dollars on a defense shield, or suggesting that we share our billions so we don’t need a defense shield? What is crazier: maintaining arms contracts with 154 countries while asking the world to disarm its weapons of mass destruction, or suggesting that we lead the world in disarmament by refusing to deal weapons with over half of the world by emptying the world’s largest stockpile here at home? What’s crazy is that in the U.S., less than 6 percent of the world’s population, consumes nearly half of the world’s resources, and that the average American consumes as much as 520 Ethiopians do, while obesity is declared a ‘national health crisis’. ” -Shane Claiborne-
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