What is your vision of a just world?
What does it mean to have lives transformed? What does the kingdom of God on earth look?
It’s often easy for churches to talk about things like discipleship, God’s will and reaching out to communities. Last month I talked about advocacy as an invitation into something bigger, a vision for loving communities. What does that look like?
In the past few weeks I have been interested in seeing a few Christian groups outlining what they think this means.
The first was a speech by Pope Francis where he, among other things, said this:
(Thanks to Michael Frost for the image)
The full speech and summary can be found here:
The second document was from the Uniting Church, as they launched their “Vision on a Just Australia” looked like. While the full statement is 41 pages and includes 16 building blocks for a just Australia, they summarise it in the following way:
Our Vision:
We see a nation where each person and all creation can flourish and enjoy abundant life.
The Uniting Church in Australia believes the whole world is God’s good creation. Each person is made in God’s image and is deeply loved by God. In Jesus, God is completing the reconciliation and renewal of the whole creation.
Our vision, grounded in the life and mission of Jesus, is for a nation which:
is characterised by love for one another, of peace with justice, of healing and reconciliation, of welcome and inclusion.
recognises the equality and dignity of each person.
recognises coexistent sovereignty of First Peoples, has enshrined a First Nations voice and is committed to truth telling about our history.
takes seriously our responsibility to care for the whole of creation.
is outward looking, a generous and compassionate contributor to a just world.
Words and full document and explanation can be found at: https://uniting.church/a-vision-for-a-just-australia/
I know for many people, the ideas and phrases here invoke ideas about politics and the way that society functions. Many of us have grown up in church environments where being transformed into disciples of Jesus was about inviting people into a particular community and often unspoken (or loudly spoken) expectations about the type of lifestyle and values people adhere to.
So why do we bring this up? Because one of things I keep coming back to when thinking about the topics we are raising on this blog, is that our assumed knowledge matters. The way we speak matters. The way we define words matter. And yet, there seems to be no shortage of words that we use interchangeably. We have seen time and time again on this blog, stopping to think through our assumptions is really important as we think about what it means to love our neighbours well. As I said in our monthly round up, we often throw around words like charity, justice, donations, advocacy and activism, without thinking about our assumptions that sit behind those words.
This raises a bunch of questions for me and I’d love to begin to unpack some of our assumptions. So I’d love to hear your thoughts:
Do these lists incorporate things that you think the church should be interested in or not? Why/Why not?
What assumptions are the people who made this list making about justice and how society operates?
Do these things align with your understanding of justice? What does justice mean to you?
Are there any biblical basis for these things on this list? If so, what bible verses do you think represent these?
Is there a link between discipleship and justice and politics?
If you had to list other things on these lists, what would you include?
