The Danger of Issues

At this point I need to say a word about the difference between issues, causes, and mission.  Today there are many groups of people.  There are clubs, there are political parties.  There are many forms and types of issue-oriented groups: against nuclear armament, against racism, against this or that.  There is a danger, in issue-oriented groups not based on community, that the enemy is seen as being the one outside of the group.  The world gets divided between “the good” and “the bad.”  We are among the good; the others are the bad.  In issue-oriented groups, the enemy is always outside.  We must struggle against all those who are outside of our group, all those who are of the other party.

True community is different because of the realization that the evil is inside – not just inside that community but inside me.  I cannot think of taking the speck of dust out of my neighbor’s eye unless I’m working on the log in my own.  Evil is here in me.  Warfare is inside my own community, and I am called to be an agent of peace there.  But warfare is also in me and I am called to seek wholeness inside of myself.  Healing begins here, in myself.  If I am growing toward wholeness, then I’ll be an agent of wholeness.  If our community is an agent of wholeness, then it will be a source of life for the world around it.”

-Jean Vanier, From Brokenness to Community pg. 50-

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A Primary Calling

To work for a healing, restorative justice – whether in individual relationships, or international relations, or anywhere in between – is therefore a primary Christian calling. It determines one whole sphere of Christian behavior. Violence and personal vengeance are ruled out, as the New Testament makes abundantly clear. Every Christian is called to work, at every level of life, for a world in which reconciliation and restoration are put into practice, and so to anticipate that day when God will indeed put everything to rights.”

-N.T. Wright, Simply Christian pg. 226-

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