The Simplicity in Christ-ianity: JUSUS CHRIST WAS A LIBERATION THEOLOGIST: THUS CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY MUST SPEAK OF LIBERATION

Having established that there is indeed THE SPIRIT of the Anti-Christ now reigning in the world it is very important for the Christ-ians to let the Christ in them lead as we navigate these trying times.

Christianity is not a RELIGION for all religious are after the oversabi of men.

Christianity is a RELATIONSHIP between the now-indwelling Christ as well as God the Father and the Son and the believer. You are a believer of the Lord God put Belief in your heart. Not in your head as self-evident from the self-seeking and self-righteous posts that we have in these set of chambers. Your life as a Christ-ian going forward is a measure of your SPIRITUALITY ie your CONNECTIVITY to the things of the Spirit,not the things of the world or the Flesh. For, thou, O Christ-ian, thou art a spiritual being living the human experience. Not a human being searching for a spiritual experience.

Let the Christ in you lead you in Belief+knowledge+Faith+Wisdom+Understanding+Counsel+Stamina+Righteousness+the Love of God as you mature and translate to the divinity that you are.

1 John 3:1-3

New International Version (NIV)

3 See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. ² Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears,^[a] we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.³ All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.

Footnotes:

1. 1 John 3:2 Or when it is made known

On Mon, Apr 28, 2014 at 7:56 PM, noel ebini <noelebini@yahoo.com> wrote:

 

JESUS CHRIST WAS A LIBERATION THEOLOGIST: THUS CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY MUST SPEAK OF LIBERATION

 

                               by: Christmas Atem Ebini

 

 The story is told of a mother who lived in one of the occupied countries during the last World War and who was unable to feed herself and her family.  Its rations were too small, she went out into the country whenever she had a chance to buy some wheat or some cabbage or some potatoes, depending on what was available.  It was toward the end of the war, and the food which farmers were able to sell illegally to people who made demands upon them was usually very little.

 

One day when the mother was on her way back to town after several unsuccessful attempts to get food, a wagon passed by and some beets fell from its load.  She rushed over and tried to grab what she could, but someone else got there at the same time, and the two became involved in a fight.  They might have hurt each other badly if a man had not come up and stopped the quarrel.  When the woman had finally quieted down, the man looked her in the face and asked; “Has your soul been saved?”  Upon which she quipped; “You have not got a soul left when your stomach has been empty for three days!”

 

 From creation to God’s direct interact with the world and man, the issue of liberation in all the forms of human enslavement has been an important focus in God’s plan with the world and man.  Man has been exposed to all forms of enslavement since his creation and even though God’s ultimate goal is concentrated on man’s activities to save his soul, the scriptures does not present a hardcore doctrine for man to engage in activities that will only save his soul but also provides conditions that would create an environment that would take care of the body as a whole in an effort to facilitate the process of saving the soul.

 

Man is everywhere in chains and enslaved.  There has always been a narrow perception each time the concept of enslavement is mentioned.  It is common for ignorance to lead us to view enslavement and people in chains only in the sense of the African people forcefully brought in chains in the white man’s ships and intimidated to work under harsh and sub-human conditions on the plantations of the white men.  We face enslavement of hate, enslavement of poverty, enslavement of ignorance, enslavement of lust and other forms of enslavement that turn to keep man perpetually in chains.  The very essence of the scriptures, in its efforts to save souls, is designed to provide solutions as to how man might free himself from these forms of enslavement.  The Scriptures provide solutions as to how a hungry stomach can be filled, how a painful body can be healed, how a hateful heart can love, how an ignorant mind can learn, how a greedy personality can share and by taking care of all these and more, then may we contemplate the saving of souls.

 

According to David F. Wells, the doing of Theology in the past encompassed three essential aspects in both the church and the academy:  (a) a confessional element, (b) reflection on this confession, and (c) the cultivation of a set of virtues that are grounded in the first two elements.  Confessional is what the church believes, which crystallizes into doctrine and confession must be the center of every Theology which is a knowledge of given in and for the people of God.  Reflection involves the intellectual struggle to understand what it means to be the recipient of God’s word in the present world;  in this we look at God’s disclosure within scripture, making connections between the various parts of scripture in the way God intends in revealing his character, acts and will.  Reflections also looks at the past, in an attempt to gather from God’s working in the church the ballast that will balance it in the storms of the present.  Reflection must also seek to understand the connections between what is confessed and what is any given society, is taken as normative.  The cultivation of a set of virtues constitute a wisdom for life, the kind of wisdom in which Christian practice is built on the pillars of confession and surrounded by reflection.

 

The world God created and gave Adam to live in has become more complex than the simple setting in the Garden of Eden where the pioneer couples had in front of them the tree of knowledge and the tree of life.  The post-flood world exposed the existence of an invisible passenger aboard Noah’s Ark, one who was not on the checklist God gave to Noah, the tempter or the devil.  The modern world is full of dominated peoples, exploited social classes, despised races and marginalized cultures.  From the freedom of the Garden of Eden to the chains of the southern plantations in America, from abusive colonialism of the African countries to demonic white racist regime in South Africa, man’s only hope for a better life and a healthy community is in the words of God and its promise to liberate.  From the Exodus to The Cross, God’s intentions has always been to liberate the oppressed and the captive.

 

Liberation theology is thus intended as a theology of salvation.  Salvation is God’s unmerited action in history, which God leads beyond itself.  It is God’s gift of definitive life to God’s children, given in a history in which we must build fellowship.The promise of God to Abraham, that was passed on to Isaac and then Jacob, is the same promise that was handed to David, leading to the liberation symbol of Jesus on the cross.  The children of God have been down the line promised freedom, guidance and prosperity.  Abraham was a father through whom the promises were made for many generations to come.  God’s promise focused on liberation because there was no way the abundance of his blessings could be felt and appreciated if the recipients are in slavery or under oppression.  When Jacob’s father-in-law attempted to enslave him as a taskmaster and a con-man, God blessed him and rescued him from the spell of his abuser.

 

Jacob went with the children of Israel to Egypt in a period of hunger in order to benefit from the favors the Egyptians extended to his son Joseph and the hospitality of Pharaoh.  After the death of Jacob and Joseph, the Pharaoh, who knew Joseph and the children of Israel, also died.   The children of the great promise were reduced to slaves and captives and instead of finding themselves in the promised land flowing with milk and honey, they were building roads and houses for the Egyptians and eating their crumbs.  In this situation God did not ask them to build temples or worship structures in their captivity.  Instead he made a prophet in Moses and sent him to liberate them.  The Exodus story remains the symbol of God’s power in liberation and a sign of his promise to come to the help of the oppressed people of the world who call out to him for help.  God left the Marble Palace of Pharoah and settled in the slumps of Goshen.  God led the slaves across the Nile on foot but crushed their masters on golden chariots in the Nile, God refused the worship in the golden temples of beautiful Egypt but accepted the open air worship in the dusty and dry wilderness.

 

As Cardinal Matzinger in September, 1984, instructed:

 

A major fact of our time ought to evoke the reflection of all those who would sincerely work for the true liberation of their brothers:  Millions of our own contemporaries legitimately learn to recover those basic freedoms of which they are deprived by totalitarian and atheistic regimes which came to power by violent and revolutionary means, precisely in the name of the liberation of the people.  This shame of our time cannot be ignored:  while claiming to bring them freedom, these regimes keep whole nations in conditions of servitude which are unworthy of mankind.  Those who, perhaps inadvertently, make themselves accomplices of similar enslavements betray the very poor they mean to help.

 

The mute indifference of Christian missionaries serving in most of the third world countries, in the areas where the violence of totalitarian and atheistic regimes abound against innocent citizens, is an issue that has discredited the genuineness of western Christianity and their local converts in third world countries who are being considered as accomplices to dictatorship.  The Biblical Theological arguments of non-involvement in politics by Christians has reduced the Christian activities in those societies to Sunday church attendances and spiritual sterility.  God could have not gone to South Africa in the ‘70's and stayed in the white neighborhood without going to the ghettos of Soweto.  While the Christians may argue on the non politics of the church, it is disheartening for Christians to say and do nothing when God’s children are victims to the evil practices of any government or system, thus reducing Christianity to nothing more than a club of privileged individuals who talk loud about concepts they know and feel little or nothing about.  Christians are to give to the government that which is the government’s as long as that which is considered the government’s is not in contradiction with the laws and principles of God as should be reflected in the life and practices of the Christian church and Christian life.  At no time is it said that that which is God’s should be sacrificed for convenience to the government when Christians do not stand up and speak out against the evils, the sinfulness, the repressions, the abuse, the torture, the corruption of a government, then the Christians are giving to that government that which is God’s and the Christians would cease to be the light and the salt of the world.  Thus rendering Christianity irrelevant and inconsequential.

 

Let us visit once more Gutierrez in his view on theology and politics: "Human reason has become political reason.  For the contemporary historical consciousness, things political are not only those which one attends to during the free time afforded by his private life; nor are they even a well-defined area of human existence---it is the sphere for the exercise of a critic freedom which is won through history.  It is the universal determinant and the collective arena for human fulfillment---nothing lives outside the political sphere understood in this way.  Everything has a political dimension.  Men enter into relationships among themselves through political means".

 

Our lives, even our worship and spiritual lives are depended on the political climates and wishes of politicians, who may wish to give us freedom to worship and practice Christianity or out rightly prohibit us from serving our Lord.  A Christian who does not engage in an act to reject political decisions or political regimes that make it difficult for God to be freely worshiped by the Christian church is not in fact a Christian of the New Testament texture.  Whatever one may think about the political stance or political neutrality of Jesus Christ himself, which was obviously not one of mute indifference and passive accomplice since he engaged in activities that challenged the pervasive practices of the political authorities, it seems evident that his commandments of love and his countless examples and admonitions concerning the issue in the gospels must be translated to reflect the activities of liberation theology in this era when real-life love has taken on political forms.  Any Christian who says there is no relationship between theology and politics, on the simple fact that such relationship is not stated in the scriptures and thus present the Christian engagement in the face of human sufferings and problems to almsgiving and Sunday church attendance, is seriously distorting the gospel message.  The message in the scriptures is giving hope to the slaves and repressed and comfort to the poor and the sick.  The message gives them the strength and the courage to stand up and face the brutal cowardice of their slave master or taskmaster. 

 

The scriptures or gospel is an instrument from God to the poor and the oppressed to use in calling out to God to help liberate them: I have surely seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt and have heard their cry reason of their taskmasters; for I know their sorrows; and I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land unto a good land and a large one, unto a land flowing with milk and honey---Now, therefore, behold, the cry of the children of Israel is come unto me; and I have also seen the oppression where with the Egyptians oppress them.

 

The liberation activities of God and his example in Egypt is not an accident.  Every act and everything God has done since creation is intended to set practical examples and set precedence for the world to know of the possibilities and opportunities available to the people of the world to use.  All God wants us to do is to call out to him and he will be there to liberate us.  Liberation theology rallies the oppressed people to call out to God.  Liberation theologians preach the active and practical word of God to the people, that which is intended to give them courage to shun” evil repression”.  The chapter of the Egyptian liberation was never closed but remains open and liberation theology is taping from it as required and prescribed by God. 

 

It is no secret that the modern earthly leaders of the church have tended to direct the activities of the Christian community according to limitations in their individual faith and spiritual engagement which is also based on their privileged experiences in that material life that turns to treat aspects of divine liberation such as the Exodus narrative as a distant “entertainment narrative” good for Sunday school lectures with no obvious attachment but as Jose Miquez Bonino puts it: "It seems evident that we talk of liberation because we have some awareness - lesser or greater - of oppression.  Things are not right as they are; at least they are not right for us.  Those for whom things are perfectly “all right” - an integrated cosmos of personal, social, and natural reality where everything fits perfectly - would not develop a reflection about liberation.  A reflection about liberation, however, can only exist where the awareness of oppression is coupled with an awareness of the possibility of freedom from oppression - a hope, a dream, a restlessness, an expectation that things as they are ought to and can be changed.  Which one of these two sides appear first is a matter for discussion.  What seems clear is that both together are the presuppositions for a reflection about the liberation.  For that reflection to be a theology, there must be in it a reference to a transcendent dimension.  In other words the idea is that God is interested in oppression and liberation and therefore, a relation to that God has to do with the way we think and act in relation to oppression and liberation".

 

The greatest gift we get from Christianity is the hope and promise that we should expect our lives and the way we would be living after life on this earth to be much better.  The crucifixion of the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross was a symbol for the Christians, a symbol to show how far Christians must be prepared to go with the fight against sin, against evil governments, against evil systems and to show the extent of our strengths as Christians to crush and defeat evil systems in the name of Jesus Christ.  The death on the cross and God’s sacrifice of an only Son, was not intended for us to fill glass-stained window buildings filled with appointed elders and deacons and the circulation of Sunday collection baskets.  It was intended for us to stand up and say no to the system of apartheid, to say no to the Nazi’s, to say no to the Ku Klux Klan, to say no to the republican neglect of the poor, to say no to the greed and the exploitation of the third world by the G7 nations.  Jesus Christ called the people in their numbers in the fields and the mountains and taught them sermons on how they would or could liberate themselves and when they were weary, he did not just show compassion for them but he did practical things to ease their troubles.  He fed them when they were hungry, he cared for them when the were sick, he raised them when they were dead, he rebuked them when they sinned, he comforted them when they mourned and he assured them and gave them hope when they were worried and confused.  Liberation theology takes the word of God to the very place where it was intended:  for the poor and the oppressed.  Jesus himself said that the whole had no need for a doctor but the sick.  He said he came to bring light to those who were in darkness.  If everyone was free and whole in the world, God would have not sent his son to liberate but since there was slavery and all forms of evil in the world, God’s son came to provide a means for liberation, repentance and freedom.

 

Thanks to liberation theology, the black people in America and other parts of the world where the white people lived in ignorance of hate, the American society is gradually learning how to co-habit in a mix-multi-cultural setting.  The black worship during the deep and dark moments of white-shame was a spiritual experience of the truth of black life.  The spirituality of it allowed the people to encounter the presence of divine spirit in their midst.  This worship, with the presence of the sprit makes authentic the experience of freedom by empowering the oppressed people with courage and strength to bear witness in their present existence, looking forward to God’s future deliverance.  The South African experience is still fresh in our minds.  Some of the western Christian churches that collaborated with the racist South African regime to discriminate against the South African majority blacks and other races, should realize and recognize the strength and mission of God in liberating the poor.  If they are a people who can learn anything from ignorance, hypocrisy and bigotry, then what they must have learned is that God is no respecter of color, persons, bigots, nor users.  God’s mission is to attend to the poor and the oppressed.  He stands ever ready to come at the command of those seeking liberation and to those who call out to his name.  In total agreement with what Richard Shaull had to say, there must emerge a new church and new ministries to give back to the church and Christianity its originally intended mission, that of saving, loving and liberating:

 

When oppressed people become aware of their oppression, take up the struggle for liberation, and reconnect with their religious heritage, they often find that it takes on new meaning and vitality.  The Bible speaks a new and compelling word and comes to play an important role in orienting their life journey.  Faith is reborn as they live a new experience of transcendence in the midst of daily life and struggle.  Their lives are renewed and sustained in a new community of faith, and the Christian story becomes their story as they experience joy and hope in the midst of conflict and persecution.  Because of these developments, we may find ourselves today at the beginning of a new era in Christian history, a new Kairos in which the Holy Spirit is present once again as the spirit of novelty and creativity.

 

How can I, a true son of God, who claims to be a beholder of the faith, engulf myself in comfort, peace, freedom, wealth, waste, opportunities, sublime happiness, laughter and convenience of Sunday church activities and eat with brethren who are privileged with food, wealth, family, comfort, expensive Bibles and arrogance of earthly existence while we comfort the poor with lip service, while we refuse to concern ourselves with the widows and the orphans, while we choose to discriminate against those whose sin has turned into perverse lifestyle of homosexuality instead of attracting them with our Christian love, while we ignore and condemn the drug addicts without extending, while children are starved and their parents killed by demonic governments.  How can we as Christians sit down and do nothing to all the political abuse that God’s children are subject to throughout the world.  How can we be concerned with incorporating God’s church as a business company with the government, with the dubious intentions of protecting our material and worldly possessions, but attempt at refusing to use the power of God’s word and his grace in liberating the poor, in comforting the widow and the orphan, in freeing the captive and in rescuing the oppressed from the tortures of the oppressor.  Liberation theology rejects this form of personal and selfish considerations, our lust for power, and worldly favors and the desire for wealth.  Liberation theology presents the true life of Christ as a practical lifestyle for a true Christian, that of sacrifice and self-denial.  As John Calvin put it:  “Show me a single person who does not believe in the Lord’s law of self-denial who can willingly practice a life of virtue!”

 

The same Calvin put things this way: "All who have not been influenced by the principle of self-denial and yet have followed virtue have done so out of a love of praise.  Even those philosophers who have contended that virtue is desirable for its own sake have been puffed up with so much arrogance that it is evident they desire virtue for no other reason that to give them a chance to exercise pride."

 

Issues on the means used by the oppressed to liberate themselves from the oppressors might not sound logical to the oppressor.  White Christians who are born into generations of racist oppressors justify the evil acts of slavery with dubious quotations and logical interpretations of biblical verses but the only logic that sounds right to the oppressed is that they should believe and have hopes that God is going to liberate them from the hands of their oppressors.  From when it was started in the contemporary sense, black theology was and is understood as a Christian theological reflection upon black struggles for justice and liberation and since the black people received no support from white Christians, they searched deeply into their history and the gospel to find theological basis for their commitment to set the black people free from oppression and slavery. 

 

As Nicholas Wolterstoff commented: "Through all the dark days of its existence, there is one way in which the church has remained the sacrament of the effective pointed to a new day:  Down through the ages it has been the bearer of the Bible --The word of God, Jesus of Nazareth.  The church has borne that word even when the actual bearers were corrupt.  And thereby, often to its surprise and its distress, it has sown the seeds of resistance and hope among the blacks of South Africa, among the peasants of South Africa, and indeed throughout the world".

 

 

 

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