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Following Jesus in nonviolent struggle for justice and peace, we love our neighbors and enemies as God loves us all, becoming a peace church to share in Gods work to save the world.

Vision: The World Could Turn, Could Repent

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ECAPC Vision

6th of 7 in a series.

6.   The World could Turn, Could Repent

    This slogan, or motto, of Every Church A Peace Church says that the church could turn the world toward peace. What is mean by that turning? What would it be? And how difficult is that?

    In the words of Jesus, the word for turning is “repent.” To repent means simply, and painfully and profoundly, to change your way of thinking. It means to change your mind.   To turn the world toward peace would be to see the world turn away from some ways of thinking and acting, and toward other ways of thinking and acting.

    Of course, as we said above, this turning must first be modeled by the church in its own life as a community. It is futile, and would be wrong-headed in any case, to try to change the world if the church has not first changed, or to change the world more than we have changed the church. So this becomes a warning not to imagine that it is easier to change the world than it is to change the church. The difference between church and world might not be that great, in any case, but as long as we use both words and assume some kind of distinction, let us be clear that the world will not change more easily than the church will change. Some liberal efforts in the past, and fundamentalist efforts in the present, to control humans or the world by controlling the levers of government have looked like efforts to reform the world when efforts to reform the church had failed. The church must be the change it wants to see.

    There is something to be turned from, and to, in every time and place. In our time we can surely see envy, greed and blame as enemies of peace from which we need to turn. And let us be honest, these are in the church as well as the world.

    Envy, or imitative desire, drives the economy of this land. Getting ahead of the Joneses is more than a cliché--it is a desperately powerful engine of conflict and animosity, though it may cloak itself in the most innocent of phrases and outward appearances.

    Greed is the twin sister of envy. In the words of Wendell Berry, Americans have a philosophy which says “if some is good, too much is better.” Whether you are talking of food, clothing, shelter, travel, technology, entertainment or fame, too much instead of some describes our culture. Sow envy and greed, and soon you reap conflict and satiation. Dissatisfaction and disease prevail.   Who is to blame? We look for a scapegoat.

    Blame seeks a scapegoat. Somebody has got to pay for all this trouble. We find somebody to blame, individually in our personal relationships, politically in our global relationships,. See a threat. Make an enemy. Deal with an enemy. How?   Which shall it be--annihilation or isolation? A bomb or a wall?   These people are so bad they must be killed. Somebody must be sacrificed.   An execution. A war. Either will do. We make ourselves feel better by showing, as we think, how much worse the enemy is than we are.

    From these ways of death we are called to turn to the ways of life and peace, in Jesus. We look now at those ways.

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