Electing for truth and justice -Feb 1, 2005

By Frank Regan

Moments of crisis are those in which it is necessary to choose divergent paths or different options. One cannot stay at the junction. Indecision is not a possibility. We live in a critical time, a kairos moment. It has several facets: the political, the ecological, the economic, the global and the theological.

We are at a political crossroads. It seems to be only months until we are in a national election. Those of us who marched for peace (in the face of war with Iraq) on 15 February 2003 will remember that Tony Blair told us that we had blood on our hands.

He and his government arrogantly dismissed the voice of more than one million fellow-citizens and went to war. Nor do we forget how he accepted sexed-up intelligence upon which he justified his war stance. Nor can we forget that those weapons of mass destruction do not exist.

A moment of crisis is a moment of danger or of opportunity. When we go to the polls as Christians, as people of a faith which struggles for justice, how will we vote in the presence of the God of the poor? What message do we want to send? What sort of leadership do we need? These are critical and theological questions. At this juncture, which path will we choose?

26 December 2004 witnessed one of the greatest ecological disasters of all time, the South Asia Tsunami. Once again humankind saw that our planet lives a history of its own; that it is subject to the laws and vagaries of its own massive and mysterious existence; that as human beings we are guests sitting at the table of what the planet and its marvellous life systems share with us. We have much to learn about our morphic and spiritual relatedness to the earth.

We are a life system in relationship with the other life systems. We have to think seriously about the warming of our planet, about how to preserve and defend the infinitely diverse organisms which the God of creation has given us stewardship over. As humans we are the moral conscience and spiritual awareness of the earth. And we are priests mediating between God and creation, which so many billions of years ago he made and blessed because it was good; indeed we read that “it was very good.”

Jeffrey Sachs, chief economic consultant to the United Nations, has referred to the "silent tsunami" of hunger sending waves through Africa. Waves which drown the lives of 210,000 people every single week. We live in the face of a huge humanitarian crisis whose resolution hinges on what road we take in this moment of economic decisions.

This year the decisions we take may have a lasting effect on the middle-term fate of our planet and its inhabitants. As Christians we are called to be prophets, denouncing in word and deed the social sin of selfishness and mindless destruction in which we are implicitly involved. And we also announce a hope that the Magnificat will some day be sung by all.

Our crisis is global -- not just in terms of its scope, but in terms of engagement with the powers and dominations who rule the planet. Mr Bush was crowned once again in the midst of an uproarious three-day shindig. With his hand on the Bible, the book of life, he swore to uphold the values and freedoms of the USA. He ended the short ceremony with the words,"...so help me God." God indeed help our helpless world!

We are in the presence of a gargantuan power which aspires to "full spectrum domination" (Pentagon-speak) of the whole world. That power is quartered in more that 700 military installations outside territorial US. It can employ its hard power with its military hardware, or its soft power with its lifestyle, its merchandise, its cinema, its foods and drinks, its language, and so on. For whom will we opt? Who will lead us away from the abyss? Who will speak to us from out of the Apocalypse: "Look, I make all things new" (Revelation 21.6)?

Our crisis is theological. How do we speak of God in times like this? Who is this God of ours whose centre is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere? How does God exercise God's full-spectrum love?

Or is the crisis ecclesiastical? We do not need a church which has the answers. We have been repeating those answers to the point of boredom and cliché. We need a church which raises the questions for a full humanity that we are still constructing and for a Reign of God whose sign is the peace which is grace of God's Reign.

Moments of crisis are also moments of truth. The options we make at this moment in our history will reveal the truth of who we are as a people, a nation and a church. We insist on hope, but we cannot be lulled into optimism. There is no reason for optimism. Just look around you. This is a time for decisions: political, ecological, economic, global and theological. It is our actions which will give testimony and accounting of the Hope which enlivens us and of the truth we want to live.