We must live our Easter

We must live our Easter
By Editor
Monday March 24, 2008 [06:19]

THERE has been an emphasis this Easter on peace, reconciliation, dialogue and indeed on democracy. We therefore need to critically grasp the true meaning of these concepts because if we don’t we will fail to take responsibility for our failure to achieve them; we will look for causes, for reasons in things higher and more powerful than man. One such thing is God, whom we see as the maker, the cause of our condition. Ah, but if God is responsible, man can do nothing.

Many Christians today, thanks be to God, are vigorously reacting against this attitude. But as children, we knew many priests who went out saying: “Be patient. This is God’s will. And anyway, it will earn heaven for you.”

Yet the truth of the matter is that we have to earn our heaven here and now, we ourselves. We have to build our heaven, to fashion it during our lifetime, right now. Salvation is something to achieve, not just to hope for.

How could we make God responsible for this calamity, which we today have to endure? As if absolute love could abandon man to constant victimisation and total destitution.

Whenever men make God responsible for intolerable situations, there is something wrong with their thinking. If God is not because, they whisper, then destiny must be. Human reason at this level easily becomes fatalistic; it sits back and sighs: “Nothing can be done about it.”

For the critical mind, though, for the mind that conscientises itself, beyond this situation there is the future, what we must do, the thing we must create, the historical futurity we must bring into being; and to do that, we must change whatever it is that prevents the humanisation of our fellow humans.

As we examine the structures and the reasons why they are so intolerable, as we expose the oppressive situation, we are forced to a decision: we either commit ourselves or we don’t - but we will have to answer to our consciences for our choice. The process of conscientisation leaves no one with arms folded. It makes some unfold their arms. It leaves others with a guilty feeling, because conscientisation shows us that God wants us to act.

As we conscientise ourselves, we realise that our brothers who don’t eat, who don’t laugh, who don’t sing, who don’t love, who live oppressed, crushed and despised, who are less each day, are suffering all this because of some reality that is causing it. And at that point we join in the action historically by genuinely loving, by having the courage to commit ourselves.

A North American theologian has called those rationalisations “Fake generosities, “ because to escape our guilt feelings we go in for philanthropy, we seek compensation by alms giving, we send cheques to build a church, we make contributions: land for a chapel or a convent for nuns, hoping in that way to buy our peace.

But peace cannot be purchased, it is not for sale; peace has to be lived. And we can’t live our peace without commitment to humans, and our commitment to them can’t exist without their liberation, and their liberation can’t exist without the final transformation of the structures that are dehumanising. There is only one way for us to find peace: to work for it, shoulder to shoulder with our fellow human beings.

But freedom isn’t something that is given. It is something very arduous because nobody gives freedom to anyone else, no one frees another, nobody can even free himself all alone; humans free themselves only in concert, in communion, collaborating on something wrong that they want to correct.

There is an interesting theological parallel to this: no one saves another person, no one saves himself all alone, because only in communion can we save ourselves - or not save ourselves. You don’t save me because my soul, my being, my conscious body is not something that Phiri or Bwalya can save.

We work out our salvation in communion. Each one of us must set out in quest of his salvation, we must do it ourselves. We don’t mean that God hasn’t saved us by the divine presence in history: we are talking now on the human level.

Bringing together all the things we have said, we see that conscientisation is a painful birth. There is no palliative for it like those exercises that women use to avoid birth pangs. Conscientisation also involves an excruciating moment, a tremendously upsetting one, in those who begin to conscientise themselves, the moment they start to be reborn. This is because conscientisation demands an Easter. That is it demands that we die to be reborn again.

Christians must live their Easter, and that too is a utopia. Those who don’t make their Easter, in the sense of dying in order to be reborn, are not real Christians. That is; why Christianity is, for us, such a marvellous doctrine.

And that, as we see it, must be our position, the position of a church that must not forget it is called by its origins to die shivering in the cold.

This is a utopia; it is a denunciation and an announcement with a historical commitment that adds up to heroism in love. Each of us has to give witness, and conscientisation is a summons to do that: to be new each day. Hence it is peace, and it enables us to understand others.

Conscientisation could never be an imposition on others or a manipulation of them. We cannot impose our opinions on someone else; we can only invite others to share, to discuss. To impose on others our ways of not being, would be a real contradiction. For loving is not only a free act, it is an act for freedom. And love that cannot produce more freedom is not love.

The road to social peace must necessarily pass through dialogue, sincere dialogue that seeks truth and goodness. That dialogue must be a meaningful and generous offer of a meeting of good intentions and not a possible justification for continuing to foment dissension.

If we are not open to objective acknowledgement of our situation and events that distress our people then we are not prepared, in a true and Christian way, for reconciliation for the sake of the real, living wholeness of our nation.

If true religion rests on love, it is equally true that loyalty rests on love. Loyalty is a sentiment not a law. It rests on love, not on restraint.

Every human being’s life in this world is inevitably mixed with every other life and, no matter what laws we pass, no matter what precautions we take, unless the people we meet are kindly and decent and human and peace-loving then there is no peace. Peace comes from human beings, rather than from laws and institutions.

We do not believe in the law of hate. We may not be true to our ideals always, but we believe in the law of love, and we believe we can do nothing with hatred. We would like to see a time when man loves his fellow man and forgets about everything that keeps him away from his neighbour.

We therefore join our clergy in advising patience; we advise tolerance; we advise understanding; and we advise all those things, which are necessary for human beings who live together. It is said that peace is a gift of God which God will give to those who ask and work for it.

Therefore, peace for us should both be a gift and a project, that is, it is something that comes to us freely from the hands of God and something that we must also work to obtain. Let us remember that Jesus often said to His followers: “Peace be with you!” But He also said, “Blessed are the peace-makers.” Not the “peace-sayers,” or the “peace-prayers” but the “peace-makers!”

Clearly peace is the fruit of honesty, truth and solidarity. It cannot be reduced to the mere absence of conflict; it is the tranquillity of order. It is the fruit of that right ordering of things with which the divine founder has invested human society and which must be actualised by people thirsting after an ever more perfect reign of justice, fairness and humaneness.

And if peace is to be established, the primary requisite is to eradicate the cause of dissension between people. It is therefore very important to maintain and strengthen democratic structures if we are to enjoy a peaceful and developing future.
As for reconciliation, true reconciliation is to seek and accept forgiveness. Reconciliation cannot remain just mere words; it has to be visible in concrete actions where the government has to show the way. Reconciliation requires that all parties respect each other and that all them in turn recognise and respect the government as a legal institution.

All parties have to be attached to this word of the Lord Jesus: “If you forgive others the wrong they have done to you, your Father will also forgive you” (Matt.6:14-15).
And to guarantee peace, all are called to maturity, tolerance and responsibility. God’s gift of peace, true peace, must be cherished at all costs.