Let there be peace!
Most weeks when life is not too crazy i send out an email message called ‘Thort For The Week’. Basically a sermon/message/thought for the week that relates to God and following Jesus or wrestling with some aspect of faith.
This week i asked my friend Ashley Visagie if i could use a Facebook status he wrote as my thort and he said yes… but when i looked up the passage he had been referring to in the prophecies of Jeremiah in the Old Testament, i figured it needed to be a blog post as well, cos more eyes need to see this.
SPOILER: this is a little creepy…
Dear friends,
Greetings in the name of Jesus Christ.
This week’s thort comes courtesy of Ashley Visagie, a friend of mine who is making a tremendous difference in Cape Town and the world through education, game-playing, sharing his great wisdom and doing work on identity, reconciliation and so much more…
“Christians should stop talking about peace when there is no peace. I think the more we continue to reduce peace to some kind of esoteric religious experience, the more we neuter the texts.
We need to engage more deeply with the writings of the prophets and begin to understand that peace and justice have very concrete, tangible and real world outcomes.
It is quite irrelevant to talk about peace when we do not engage in making peace. In ignoring the call to action in the texts, we make God into a distant being that has little to do with our politics and our human condition, and at the same time shirk the responsibility we have to live out the texts…being the hands and feet of God.
If God has got nothing to do with poverty and the politics of this world and if we remain unwilling to engage in manner that requires real sacrifice from our comfortable lifestyle, then truly, we serve a dead God.” [Ashley Visagie]
The passage he is referring to is from Jeremiah 6:
13 “From the least to the greatest,
all are greedy for gain;
prophets and priests alike,
all practice deceit.
14 They dress the wound of my people
as though it were not serious.
‘Peace, peace,’ they say,
when there is no peace.
15 Are they ashamed of their detestable conduct?
No, they have no shame at all;
they do not even know how to blush.
So they will fall among the fallen;
they will be brought down when I punish them,”
says the Lord.
16 This is what the Lord says:
“Stand at the crossroads and look;
ask for the ancient paths,
ask where the good way is, and walk in it,
and you will find rest for your souls.
There is so much in there already but go and read the whole chapter…
It’s interesting that this is written in the context of a people ignoring God’s word [v.10]
To whom can I speak and give warning?
Who will listen to me?
Their ears are closed
so they cannot hear.
The word of the Lord is offensive to them;
they find no pleasure in it.
And maybe also that the punishment He prophecies sounds remarkably reminiscent [v.12]:
Their houses will be turned over to others,
together with their fields and their wives,
when I stretch out my hand
against those who live in the land,”
declares the Lord.
It is amazing to me how neatly this slots into a South African context of 2017.
As well as how strongly some people will recognise this and how others will be totally oblivious or loudly declaring “It isn’t so!”
If you’re looking for dinner conversations this week, this should be enough to get you started.
= = = = =
i think what gets me as followers of Jesus are that our greatest command is a mesh of two commands which look like:
Love the Lord your God with all your Heart and Strength and Soul and Mind [the mind part suggesting it’s okay and perhaps even mandatory to use our brains] and to Love your neighbour as yourself…
When it’s so so so so so so so so so so obvious we clearly don’t love our neighbour as ourselves, or seem to [for the most part] have much of a problem with that being the case.
This baffles me every single day – christians online arguing to get out of loving their neighbours or asking in desparation when they have done enough of the loving of the neighbours.
It’s forever people, especially cos Jesus in His infinite wisdom [and i suspect knowing how most of us would respond] said that we would always have the poor with us…
People arguing that the Good News or the Gospel is anything else but that which includes this very significant piece of working towards being the answer to the prayer we pray of ‘Your Kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven’.
But as a friend of mine once wrote:
“Christians should stop talking about peace when there is no peace. I think the more we continue to reduce peace to some kind of esoteric religious experience, the more we neuter the texts.
We need to engage more deeply with the writings of the prophets and begin to understand that peace and justice have very concrete, tangible and real world outcomes.
It is quite irrelevant to talk about peace when we do not engage in making peace. In ignoring the call to action in the texts, we make God into a distant being that has little to do with our politics and our human condition, and at the same time shirk the responsibility we have to live out the texts…being the hands and feet of God.
If God has got nothing to do with poverty and the politics of this world and if we remain unwilling to engage in manner that requires real sacrifice from our comfortable lifestyle, then truly, we serve a dead God.” [Ashley Visagie]
I think the problem here is our neighbours keep having large families and then looking to us to help…take for instance in 1900, population was equal for white and black…then boom… now they looking to be fed. So what do you think we can do? Shouldn’t the elephant in the room (overpopulation) be addressed first before anything could even begin to work. Give up half your house… then what give up another half until you’re left with a postage stamp…
Jerry, your problem and your answer is too simplistic… and your comment reeks of Us vs Them – so firstly i would suggest you find yourself some black friends and get to know their and hear their stories and share your own… and once your ‘they’ has developed into a ‘we’ then you will see this country’s problems as all of our problems, although problems that were largely generated historically by white people and so we have some work to do before we fix all the mess we have made.
Break bread with some people – make some new friends – your life will explode and become so much bigger…
Instead of always wanting other people’s houses, how about building their own?
There doesn’t seem to be much incentive to stay here if they want to take our houses. Time to start looking at emigration. Maybe do a topic on “should we give up our houses” with a smile on our faces? I live in a million rand house (R250 000 in 1995), bought it over about 20 years. I’m 48 now, and it was only paid off when I was 45.
You can’t be serious about houses and wifes getting taken (raped)… really?
So why must it get taken? I think your post is a bit of fearmongering and worrysome. Explain.
Stop talking about Us vs Them and we can engage a little more deeply Jerry. Honestly, if you can’t get to that point then please emigrate and do the rest of us a favour. Your very language betrays your heart – build deeper relationships with people who don’t look like you and you will be more willing to engage in solutions that benefit all of us rather than just me and mine… honestly, it’s not helpful.
Okay agreed we must make more friends with people of colour.
But do you agree that its bad idea to talk about wives and houses getting taken?
“Their houses will be turned over to others,
together with their fields and their wives,”
This sounds like rape and plunder. Are you suggesting we take up arms? This type of talk can only bring fear.
Its best to leave that out dont you think?
I’ll seek out more people of color to be friends with. But I wont be giving up my house to anyone, not white and not black either. Thanks for the advice, but please clear up the “wives” thing, you are pushing it here.
That’s great Jerry and it will only enrich your life. i am not suggesting that people take houses or wives but the point of sharing that passage was that it was the punishment that God spoke out against those who were living unjustly towards those who lived around them. So a loud call to all of us to be more aware of what needs to be done and what we are doing to become makers of peace because even God’s patience can be seen to run out if we blatantly refuse to change and keep living for ourselves…
I hear what you saying, but there is not too much else the normal middle class family can do here. Too busy with work and too little cash. I can become friends with people of color at the office and my street, but beside that not sure. Punish with rape is a bit harsh dont you think? I think nothing can justify rape.
Ja, you’re pretty much not listening when it comes to the rape thing. i never suggested that as an option. Rape is never a good thing.
But there is a lot the average middle class family can do – firstly, take a moment to realise that middle class is a bit of a misnomer as if you are writing this on a computer and have access to a vehicle that puts you in the top 3% or so of earners in the entire world… let that change your perspective a bit – in terms of how you choose to spend your money [where and how you live] and then add to that resources, skills, time and opportunities to network and there is so much you can do…
Have you learned the predominant african language in your region? That’s a great place to start. As opposed to expecting the majority of people in this country to address you in their second or third or even fifth or seventh languages…
Hello all,
I take offence to this partiarchal misogynist view that women are assets to be “taken”. How can this be preached in a modern world?
hey Monique – thank you for stopping by and your offence is completely justifiable – as i see it, those texts were written to the people at the time in the context of the time using language that fit in with how life was lived back then [i don’t believe God sees women as assets either now or then] so ja, maybe not a great example for me to use without speaking into that kind of context which is definitely problematic…
Women are not the “property” of men as is insinuated in much of the Bible and Quran. I’m not sure how you can bring about the decolonisation as well as prevent the mysoginist viewpoints so prevalent in our society by quoting texts which actually promote racism, mysoginy etc.?