Silent In The
Jesus assumed that his first followers would be hated and persecuted by the unbelieving world, just as he was first hated and persecuted (Jn 15:18).
The reason for this is simple: neither Jesus nor his followers belonged to the world. We are different. If our first loyalty is to God and his kingdom we will be ‘strangers in the world’ (1 Pet 1:1). The degree of this will vary depending on the society we are in, but we are bound to be different. In any society, people who are different in any way are apt to face hostility.
Talk of being hated and persecuted seems far from our local reality. The Religious Harmony Act leaves most Singaporeans reasonably free to practice their respective faiths. Thankfully, we do not face an officially sanctioned totalitarian ideology in which there is a direct clash with religious belief. Some local Christians face a measure of family or institutional hostility and some ostracism for their beliefs. This can be painful but it is not societal persecution in the way that other Christians suffer it.
However, Christians may suffer hostility for other reasons. All societies have evils in their public life. One role of God’s people is to expose these evils in defense of their victims and to help people see their need of Jesus. Thus the prophet Amos spoke against the injustice and extravagance of some in his day, Wilberforce spoke against the profitable slave trade, missionaries in
Do Christians suffer little local hostility because we are largely silent in the public square? Do we leave our faith behind when we share in public debate on moral and social issues? Can we do this? Some years back a non-Christian man wrote of how he took his religious values with him into public debate and how that enriched the debate. That’s a good point. If our identity is Christian we should be respectfully Christian on public issues. Who are we, if we leave our Christian identity behind in public debate?
We are called to be salt and light (Mat 5:13). Let’s not lose our saltiness and dim God’s light by fitting into the world so well that no one notices who we are.
3 comments:
Right on. Why Christian is not silent in the public is because Christ is not silent in the public.
But after establishing that Christians need to engage the public square, we have a harder issue to handle: How??
I think it has everything to do with one's interdisciplinary theological education.
After establishing that Christians need to engage the public square and how they should engage it... the harder issue to handle is: Which issues?
I do not presume that you write this post in the light of the Aware affair, or that it was inspired by those events.
We have a world that we have failed to care for: Southeast Asia's corals will all be extinct by the turn of this century.
We have failed to provide stewardship of the planet, the way we mindlessly consume, to drain the world and future generations of limited resources.
We have failed to protect the poor: Globally the rich-poor divide has worsened in the years since 1980. In Singapore, the Gini co-efficient has been moving in the wrong direction as well.
We have failed to protect the hungry: Africa is set to go into a worse food crisis than ever.
I hope, when future generations ask us where we were when the earth was dying, people were starving, the poor were getting poorer, that our answer wouldn't be: "Fighting the homosexuals" or "defending our Christian values". There are more pressing issues that demand our immediate attention as Christians.
Instead of silence or the contrary when thinking about being salt/light, perhaps we can frame the issue somewhat differently and from there grapple with the "how" question posed by Sze.
In the service of any cause or institution, an additional "servant" will probably always be welcome, or at least more welcome than a potential "lord/boss". I learn this best when I approach scriptures as precedent - God came to earth in the guise of a lowly servant. As such, becoming a servant and dutifully serving in one capacity or another, even menial roles, and learning the landscape - intellectual and social, and praying for wisdom to gently communicate our Christian convictions would probably be a good start. It provides an opportunity to accumulate all forms of necessary capital, including goodwill ...
Imagine if Josie and co. had done this - serve and listen - and then slowly come to intelligently and informatively bear on the issues at stake, matters may have taken a different turn...
So perhaps, "service in the public square" should precede our voices, much less strident and bold action.
Leaven this with the necessary element of love ...variously expressed ...
I am sure a loving servant has a good chance of being welcomed almost anywhere. And here I will note the difference between acts of service and being a servant - even arrogant bosses can serve on occasion. But to take on the identity of a servant involves much more than that ...what do you think?
Is this a plausible "how"? But perhaps evangelicals who busy themselves extracting principles from Scripture have missed what might be gained from approaching scriptures as precedent ...
and then perhaps they will know that we are his disciples ...
Post a Comment