A Tale of Two Politicians, and of Redemption

30 04 2012

Injustice smells. There is a nauseating odor to it: toxic, enraging, sad. And when we see someone who cheated and betrayed, someone who let us down, it is hard to find satisfaction more pleasing to our guts than to beat him up, to make him pay for his sins.

Two politicians made me think of this last week. The first was John Edwards, an once-promising American presidential candidate, charming in his looks and in his words, but who betrayed his terminally ill wife and lied about. Caught right in the middle of his presidential campaign, Edwards faced last week his trial. But as Washington Post contributor Christ Cillizza pointed out, it was a trial more about feelings than legal procedures: “This trial — regardless of the outcome — amounts to one last chance for the public to express its disdain for a man who cheated on his terminally ill wife, lied about it, fathered a child out of wedlock, lied about it and is now left searching for some strands of redemption or, at least, forgiveness.” It is another chance to look at a man who fell, fell from really high up, and make him pay.

The second politician, Charles Colson, had an even more spectacular fall: the Watergate disgrace, maybe the most famous corruption scandal of modern politics, when Colson helped a team of then-president Richard Nixon’s reelection committee to break into and tap the offices of his political opponents. Colson and others were sent to prison for this, but then he underwent a conversion, narrated in his bestseller Born Again, and became a devout Christian. Colson then dedicated the second part of his life to start a ministry that reaches out to prisoners, and become a major evangelical leader.

The thing is: Colson died last week, and, curiously, his obituaries at major newspapers have varied in tone. Some narrated the whole of his life, and praised his conversion and the good he made after it. Others, however, were cynical, and implied that his life change was just smokescreen, that Colson remained the Watergate dirty trickster for all his life, that the redemption of such a treacherous man could not possibly be true. How could it?

Redemption is hard to believe in. It really is. Especially because it is such a personal matter: I am treacherous too, I’m the one deserving condemnation, and I can’t possibly believe that I could find redemption. An observer of the reactions to Colson’s death put it well: “When you read those who smirk and dismiss the Chuck Colson conversion, …  [r]ead a subtext that belongs to all of us: the fear that the criminal conspiracy we’ve all been a part of will be exposed, and just can’t be forgiven. Read the undercurrent of those who find it hard to believe that one can be not just pardoned, but “born again… That’s indeed hard to believe.”

But what if redemption is possible? What if people like Edwards or Colson can really be forgiven and start anew? What if I can be forgiven? What if I can end this life with my head raised high, with no finger pointing at me, redeemed by the grace of Christ, and have something like the following scenario for Colson’s death be true also for me?

I have to believe that when Chuck Colson opened his eyes in the moments after death that he didn’t hear anything about break-ins or dirty tricks or guilty consciences. I have to believe Mr. Colson heard a Galilean voice saying, “I was in prison and you visited me” (Matt. 25:36). I have to believe that he stood before his Creator with a new record, a new life transcript, one that belonged not to himself but to a Judean day-laborer who is now the ruler of the cosmos… That’s good news for guilty consciences, good news for recovering hatchet men and women like us.

Indeed it is good news, almost too good to be true. But true it is, and deliciously, liberatingly, scintillatingly good too. Redemption is possible, not despite the greatness of our sins, but because of the greatness of Jesus’ grace for us.

René Breuel


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Categories : The Heart of Faith

Social Justice

27 01 2012

I was taking a walk at a park when I saw Claudio from the distance. I walked toward him to begin a conversation. He was clearly a ragamuffin and seemed to have some level of mental disorder. I greeted him and asked his name. I remember asking: “Do you have any food to eat?” “I knock at people’s door and eat what they give me” Claudio calmly replied. His eyes seemed distant and his answers were concise. We spoke briefly and I offered help.  He refused any assistance and soon decided to walk away.

A few days later my heart sank once again. My brother told me he had given a pair of shoes he no longer wore to the man who watches over the cars parked on the streets near a university campus. The man’s reaction was one of overwhelmed joy and gratitude (perhaps the same as the one most of us would have if somebody gave us us  us a Ferrari).

You and I live in a world marked by profound social injustice.

According to a study commissioned by the United Nations food agency, about one third of all food produced for human consumption in the world today is wasted or lost. At the same time, according to the World Health Organization, hunger is the single most serious threat to the world’s public health. Around 25000 people die of hunger or hunger-related causes every day, including 6 million children every year.

How does this make you feel? I guess one of the most common reactions in people who genuinely consider or face social injustice is a sense of revolt and revulsion. We want to rightly shout: “This is not fair!” Don’t you agree?

But why is it not fair? Who are we to say this condition is unjust? Though it may seem cruel to even ask these questions, I do it for the sole purpose of reminding us that an absolute outside pattern is necessary for any situation to be considered just or unjust.

As C. S. Lewis expressed: “My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?”[1]

The reality of God, therefore, is what offers humanity a criterion to live by and enables us to determine what is and what is not just. This includes social issues. If the global social injustice breaks our heart, it is because first and foremost it breaks God’s heart. When we cry: “it’s not right!” We are but echoing the cry of God.

There are literally hundreds of references in the bible to God’s concern for social justice. Among them are: “Learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow’s cause.”[2] “For I, the LORD, love justice”[3]. “This is what the LORD Almighty says: ‘Administer true justice; show mercy and compassion to one another.”[4]

God not only speaks against social injustice, he also chose to immerse himself in this reality through the incarnation of Jesus, the God-Son. And moreover, through the death and resurrection of Jesus he inaugurated an injustice-free kingdom which will be fully established after Christ’s second coming. When this happens, the bible affirms, there “…will be no more death, or mourning or crying or pain.”[5]

Undoubtedly we must do whatever we can, wherever we can and whenever we can do to eliminate any form of social injustice in the world. But we are not alone on this mission. There’s a God through whom we know what social justice should look like, who has spoken so clearly regarding it and who is establishing a fully just kingdom for those who belong to him.

Hélder Favarin

[1] C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity.

[2] Isaiah 1:17

[3] Isaiah 61:8

[4] Zechariah 7:9

[5] Rev. 21:4


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Christmas in the New Year

30 12 2011

While Christmas decorations are starting to come down and the world’s attention is turned to the celebration of the new year, I am still immersed in Christmas. Many people where we live try to observe the entire Christmas season—all twelve days of it—as a time of celebration, feasting, and reflection.  Amid all the figurines and pictures of Baby Jesus and Santa, the Christmas trees and lights, and the banners reading “Joy to the World” and “Peace on Earth” that continue to surround us, it is easy to think of Christmas as a holiday of babies and presents, a holiday for sentimental families and little children too young to realize that Santa isn’t real. Perhaps this is why so many people in so many places quickly turn their attention to New Years and its more adult concerns, its personal resolutions for being thinner, fitter and better people in the new year…and of course to more adult celebrations involving libations and general merriment.

But New Years and Christmas are integral to each other in ways that we frequently miss as we turn our attention to the Harbour Bridge, Big Ben or Times Square. The central message of Christmas is the initiation of a new order, a new kingdom in the world: the kingdom of God characterized by peace but also by justice. Peace—suggested by images of cuddly lions and lambs snuggled together—makes a nice Hallmark card but justice is more difficult. In fact, peace without justice is not peace at all—it is merely silencing the abused for the comfort of those in power.

In Mary’s celebratory hymn announcing the birth of her son, she declares the revolutionary new order that begins with her son’s life…and it isn’t just a spiritual kingdom. Mary declares that the character of the new kingdom which God initiates through her son is one of justice for the poor. In her hymn God scatters the proud and mighty but exalts the humble and meek. He “fills the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty” (Luke 1:46-55). This message of freedom and justice echoes Isaiah’s earlier proclamations that the messiah will shatter the “yoke that burdens” Israel and the “rod of their oppressor,” reminding us of Israel’s slavery in Egypt and, consequently, that justice is a physical, material reality and not just a nice idea (Isaiah 9:4). This language of justice, of setting right the relationships between the rich and poor, the mighty and the weak, the powerful and the oppressed permeates the traditional Christmas readings, reminding us that the lovely thoughts of “peace on earth” and “goodwill toward men” are only possible because God’s kingdom is characterized by justice.

As we move into the New Year and take stock of the world in 2011, making our resolutions to be thinner, fitter, better people, the most important New Year’s resolution we can make is to remember the message of justice that shapes the Christmas story and to resolve anew to participate in the work of God’s kingdom, striving for justice and peace in our still imperfect world.

Jessica Hughes


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Categories : Spirituality for the Rest of Us

Gluttony, Justice, and Grace

12 08 2011

Donna Simpson has been making headlines over the past few weeks for her goal of becoming the world’s fattest woman. News clips of the morbidly obese woman discussing her goal run like  parodies of similar human interest stories: her partner “supporting” Donna in her run for the record-books and Donna discussing her lack of fear in the face of such a dangerous endeavor, because she believes “our time is set.” Curiously, Donna’s comments suggest a vaguely religious outlook in which God has planned each individual’s death and the individual’s own actions can do little to alter this inevitable end, an outlook that allows her to face her world-record attempt without fear.

Despite gluttony being one of the “seven deadly sins” of tradition, studies on obesity in America by Purdue University sociologist Ken Ferraro note an uncanny link between Christian faith and obesity, with obesity increasing as people move closer toward Christian fundamentalism. Perhaps because so many Christians are so large, one is hard pressed to find many pastors preaching against the evils of gluttony and resulting obesity. What is more, not only is it socially unacceptable to criticize people for being overweight, such criticisms often fail to take account of the medical and psychological reasons why a person is fat. I would like to think that the lack of Christian outcry about obesity and its causes grows out of a deep love of people and a desire to take account of these root causes. However, given the willingness of many Christians to rail on anyone for being gay or for having an abortion, it seems far more likely that the church’s silence on gluttony is because this sin hits too close to home.

So, why then am I willing to rush headlong into discussing obesity and linking it to the traditional sin of gluttony? After all such a move risks at least insensitivity, if not outright offense. But I believe we must discuss gluttony as such because, in doing so, we begin to depoliticize the issue of obesity and return food to its proper place within creation.  Through this, we realize that the biblical concept of gluttony is not a prohibition against yet another pleasure of the flesh but an issue of justice and peace that has implications that reach even farther than western countries’ ever-expanding waistlines.

Reflecting on gluttony within a biblical worldview reveals that gluttony is not about having a svelte form but about consuming more than one needs, which always proves to be detrimental to others and the self. Put this way, gluttony is not just about over-eating but about the myriad forms of overconsumption that grip the west, implicating everyone, even the thin. Gluttony―be it energy gluttony, clothes gluttony, technology gluttony, food gluttony, debt gluttony―is ultimately a justice issue. Whether it is the farm-worker who supplies cheap food, the sweatshop teenager who makes cheap clothes, or the Mexican peasant who can’t afford corn because the prices are inflated due to the biofuel market, in a finite world of finite resources, when one person consumes more than he needs, it is quite likely that someone else doesn’t get enough, or that someone else is abused in the process of fulfilling the rapacious appetites of another. Frequently, the image of the glutton is combined with the drunkard, suggesting the person whose consumption denigrates themselves while risking violence to others.

As bleak and condemnatory as this biblical image of the glutton sounds, I believe it is be liberating because the biblical solution to gluttony isn’t to be found in strict-diets, calorie-counting and exercise regimes, or even in turning off the lights, buying energy-efficient light bulbs and thrift store clothes. Such solutions will, at best, eliminate some of the forms or appearance of gluttony but not restore a right-relationship between the individual and the created world. As American farmer Wendell Berry puts it, “…we cannot live harmlessly, or strictly at our own expense; we depend upon other creatures and survive by their deaths. To live, we must daily break the body and shed the blood of Creation. When we do this knowingly, lovingly, skillfully, reverently, it is a sacrament. When we do it ignorantly, greedily, clumsily, destructively, it is a desecration. In such desecration we condemn ourselves to spiritual and moral loneliness, and others to want.”[1]  Thus, the biblical response to gluttony involves learning to see the finite, created world as a gift to be consumed lovingly―it is a vision of consumption with restraint growing out of respect for the people and processes that go into producing a fresh loaf of bread, a bunch of grapes, or a glass of wine.

Jessica Hughes

[1] From Wendell Berry’s “The Gift of Good Land” (1979),  in The Art of the Commonplace, ed by Norman Wirzba, 2002, 304)


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Is God Pro-Genocide?

29 06 2011

“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.” Richard Dawkins[1]

Never short for words, Dawkins has a point. Let’s take one tag: genocidal. Think global flood, God eradicating Egypt’s firstborn then throwing horse and rider into the sea, and the divine mandate to destroy seven people groups before Israel could set up in the Promised Land.[2] The Bible is a bloody book, and whilst religion is a convenient excuse for crazy people doing crazy things, much of the blood is directly on God’s hands. In a world with religious violence on the rise, this is disturbing.

Let’s hone in on one particular incident: Jericho. In Joshua 6 we read of Joshua’s conquest of the Canaanites—seven musical rounds of the city and the walls tumbled down. They were to ḥērem this people: utterly destroy all life, including men, women, the young, the old, and even the livestock. I wonder how a Tutsi would read this text? Would they insert Hutu for Israel, recalling the hundreds of thousands of people—friends, grandfathers, daughters—murdered in cold blood back in Rwanda, 1994?

Make no mistake, this is shocking. And unless your tack is to save YHWH by dismissing the Bible (kind of like cutting off your nose to spite your face), what we have here seems to be Class A Genocide. No answer will make the situation rosy, but is there a way to make sense of divine violence?

First, a couple of questions: Can God kill the innocent? 

Granted, it’s immoral for us to destroy life: we didn’t create it in the first place. That would be “playing God”. But can God play God? Is there anything inherently wrong with the Creator of life—where life is a gift, not a right—destroying the life he made? It may offend us, but if we can cut the lawn and kill a cow (neither of which we made) then surely God has a right to give life and take it away. Death is everyone’s end, whether in the calm of a nursing home or the turmoil of a battlefield.

I’m not sure Jericho is this stark, though. God is never capricious. Who, truly, is innocent? Can the perfect people raise their hand? In Biblical language, “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. … For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”[3] Our actions flow from our desires, and we’ve each hated (the heart of a murderer), lusted (the heart of an adulterer), coveted (the heart of a thief), not to mention blasphemed (damning the Life-Giver). (And all of this without unveiling enacted evil, where our self-control couldn’t restrain destructive passion.)

Which brings me to the second question: Does sin deserve to be punished?

Josef Fritzl locked his 15 year old daughter in a basement and raped her up to 5 times a day, fathering her seven kids. He got life in prison. Is his punishment deserved? Perhaps too lenient? Unless you’re a die-hard anarchist, you recognize the need for ultimate justice. When wrong is done, someone must pay. And in the case of the Canaanites, these weren’t minor indiscretions: they imaged their violent and sexualized gods, enshrining child sacrifice, cultic prostitution, bestiality and incest (Leviticus 18). Who better than God to weigh right and wrong, and meter out punishment?

God is longsuffering. From his initial heads up to Abraham about Jericho’s sin in Genesis 15, through to his final right handed violence in Joshua 6, we have 430 years of repeated warnings about impending judgment. One of Canaan’s prostitutes, Rahab, used God’s covenant name YHWH when explaining to Israelite spies that this coming conquest was no surprise; in her mind, the punishment was expected and just (Joshua 2:9-14). Granted, this punishment affected everyone, even infants. For individualistic westerners, this is unconscionable. Yet even we recognize that our actions affect each other—we are part of an interconnected web. A parent’s bankruptcy endangers the whole family. A president’s call to war endangers the whole nation. God was holding all of Canaan responsible for their collective sin. The corruption and violence of this culture was systemic. Enough was enough, so God stepped in to judge.

Yale theologian Miroslav Volf was born in Croatia. He lost family members to ethnic violence. Wrath first seemed “unworthy of God. Isn’t God love?” But his final resistance to the idea fell as he reflected on genocide in the former Yugoslavia, millions displaced and thousands butchered. Volf wondered,

“How did God react to the carnage? By doting on the perpetrators in a grandfatherly fashion? … Wasn’t God fiercely angry with them? … I came to think that I would have to rebel against a God who wasn’t wrathful at the sight of the world’s evil. God isn’t wrathful in spite of being love. God is wrathful because God is love.”[4]

For Canaan, divine violence was just. Israel was the underdog, a nation of slaves called to confront a superpower as YHWH’s sword—not because of Israel’s superiority, but because of Jericho’s sin (Deuteronomy 9:4-6). God returned on Canaan the violence they unjustly exercised on others, even their own people. We may not like it, but we can hardly call it unfair.

But the right-handed violence of God is only half the story. As God laments in Ezekiel 18, “Do I take any pleasure in the death of the wicked? Rather, am I not pleased when they turn from their ways and live?” God’s left hand of mercy and grace was always extended to any who would repent.  Even to a prostitute named Rahab. This was not ethnic cleansing. Indeed, Rahab was incorporated as the ancestor of Israel’s Messiah, Jesus the Christ. God would still bless the nations through this nation.

Any blog-length treatment of such complex issues will always fall short.[5] But as I’ve grappled with divine violence, I’ve come to see the truth in the old spiritual, “He’s got the whole world in his hands.” Yes, but it takes two hands for God to hold a broken world. God’s right hand of justice will rightly deal with individual and corporate evil, bringing all things to account, precisely because he loves the world. Without confidence in ultimate justice, surely we would play vigilante rather than turn the other cheek as peacemakers in the image of Jesus. But God is arguably left-handed. Grace and mercy had the first word at creation, the decisive word at the cross, and will have the final word in New Creation where violence is no more and swords are beaten into plowshares (Isaiah 2). It is this perfect fusion of both hands together that allows God to hold this fallen world in love. Anything less, and YHWH wouldn’t really be God, or worth worshipping.

Will such answers satisfy sceptics? I doubt it. But God is not genocidal. Dawkins’ rant was one tag too short: Deicidal. God’s character is most truly seen at the cross. Whatever your background, YHWH is ever ready to absorb your evil in love, even if it costs his own life.

Dave Benson

[1] Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006), 31.

[2] Genesis 6-9; Exodus 11-15; Deuteronomy 7.

[3] Romans 3:23; 6:23.

[4] Free of Charge (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2006), 138-39.

[5] Delving deeper? Watch the video “God’s Two Hands” at http://wonderingfair.com/media/ and download resources from http://logos.kbc.org.au/blog/resources/logos-talks/gods-two-hands/.


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Categories : On Anything and Everything, The Heart of Faith, Tough Questions

Pastel Dreams and Apartheid

12 01 2011

Desmond Tutu has a little children’s book called God’s Dream.[1] In soft pastel paintings of kids from all nations, we discover that God dreams about people sharing and caring, “that we reach out and hold one another’s hands and play one another’s games and laugh with one another’s hearts.” Yeah, right. Tell that to victims in the Soweto riots or Sharpeville massacres: “Sure, the big boys were a bit rough, but brush it off, accept their apology, and play together as good kids should.”

Facing legitimated racism, ‘forgiveness’ seems naïve at best, and unjust at worst.  Such religious drivel enshrines platitudes in place of pragmatism. What we need—sceptics and sufferers alike insist—is cold, hard justice.

What are we to make of such objections? Did Mandela take a wrong turn in appointing Tutu to chair the “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” (TRC)?

The TRC, you may remember, was established in 1995 to investigate politically and racially motivated human rights abuses during apartheid. It sought to restore victims’ dignity through recompense and rehabilitation, and grant amnesty on a case by case basis to any person—whether black or white, to avoid “victor’s justice”—who confessed the full extent of their atrocities. This had to be done within a grace period, after which point the full weight of the law would fall on the head of the impenitent.

Was the TRC warm-hearted but soft-minded; the kind of fairy-tale we tell our kids but ignore as adults?

I think not. As Tutu once said, “Children are a wonderful gift.  They have an extraordinary capacity to see into the heart of things and to expose sham and humbug for what they are.” Cold, retributive justice may be one such sham, as both the African and Biblical understanding is “far more restorative—not so much to punish as to redress or restore a balance that has been knocked askew.”[2] But if we reject the icy logic of retribution, what hope have we of reaching final restoration? How can we not slip into weak sentimentality and passivity before evil? Tutu, I suspect, would see truth and grace as South Africa’s two feet on the long walk to reconciliation.

First, truth. Tutu experienced apartheid. He knew first hand that “God does not force us to be friends or to love one another. … Dear child of God, it does happen that we get angry and hurt one another. Then we feel sad and very alone.  Sometimes we cry, and God cries with us.”[3] Reconciliation is never at the expense of truth. We don’t move forward by forgetting the past.  God is “notoriously biased in favour of those without clout,” so the TRC disarmed the powers by bringing all injustice into the light.

Second, grace. Forgiveness follows admission of fault. It is both altruistic, and “the best form of self-interest” as Tutu explained. For in forgiving, you are no longer locked in victimhood, chained to the perpetrator. But this grace—returning good for evil—goes deeper yet: “When we say we’re sorry and forgive one another, we wipe away our tears and God’s tears too.” Why? Because “God dreams that every one of us will see that we are all brothers and sisters—yes, even you and me.”[4] Judgment begets judgment, but what if “my humanity is bound up in yours”? What if “freedom is indivisible,” and that the enemy is in reality another child of God: family? Surely, then, even as judgments must be rendered, our arms should remain ever open to embrace the other as part of ourselves. In Xhosa, this is called ‘ubuntu’ (oo-BOON-too): I am what I am because of who we all are. As the “rainbow people of God,” ubuntu extends to all.

The TRC’s resolution, as novel as it sounds, was not new. It was always God’s dream to reconcile all people to Himself as one family (2 Corinthians 5:14-21). And this dream moved from platitude to pragmatism when the Creator of the Universe called down from the cross to his crucifiers, “Father, forgive them, for they do not understand your dream.”[5] Truth declares our solidarity in sin. Grace offers amnesty for a time to the truly penitent. Justice is ultimately delivered to all who refuse to turn from their complicity in evil. And God’s dream of reconciliation is eternally realized for all those humble enough to forgive and be forgiven. May we in 2011 live toward this dream depicted in Tutu’s children’s book, that one day we will all join hands and play together under the tree of life from which flows healing to the rainbow nation.

Dave Benson

[1] Desmond Tutu, God’s Dream (Melville, SA: Jacana Media, 2009).

[2] Tutu, “Recovering from Apartheid,” in The New Yorker, 18 November 1996.

[3] Tutu, God’s Dream.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Desmond Tutu, “God Suffers for Us,” in Children of God: Storybook Bible (Malaysia: PrettyInPress, 2010).


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Religion at the Political Table

11 10 2010

Religion is not neutral to politics, nor is politics neutral to religion. Despite those who try to keep them separate, the fact is that every political stance is informed by some form of religious worldview, and every spiritual belief, if carried to its full logic, will bubble into political action. Two religiously-infused political moments of the past week illustrate this.

On one side of the South Atlantic, the Brazilian presidential election arrived at an unexpected turn. The predictable victory of Dilma Rousseff, the leading candidate, was postponed for a second round of votes, according to most analysts, because a mass segment of the electorate shifted their votes to another candidate, Green Party Marina Silva. Silva championed environmental concerns and was the only candidate not favouring the legalization of abortion in Brazil, and this last-minute, surprising twist launched a wide-spreading debate on the role of faith in politics. One columnist in Folha de S. Paulo, Brazil’s leading newspaper, seized the moment to argue against religious participation in politics.

“The danger of using a spiritual logic to address politics is that it introduces moral absolutes into questions that need to be resolved from an essentially practical perspective, usually with recourse to negotiation. To sum up, the last thing we need to do is to bring the notion of sin to laws and public policies. There is of course a secular equivalent to the concept of sin, which is crime. The difference is that, while the latter has an exclusively reasonable justification on more or less utilitarian grounds and admits gradations, the first, because it is dictated by a superior and supposedly incontestable authority, arrives in non-negotiable packages. In a certain way, to think religiously is to negate politics.” [1]

Well-meant yet a bit confused, Hélio Schwartsman fails to notice is that his statements contradict one another. To defend that moral absolutes or the notion of sin are not applicable to politics is, of course, a religious view. He is also thinking religiously; he is also negating politics by excluding people who believe that moral absolutes are of relevance. He is advocating a dichotomy between morality and practical matters, as if they could be divorced, and trying to promote political debate by silencing one voice in it.

In stark contrast, the world celebrated the retirement of Archbishop Desmond Tutu last Thursday, a religiously motivated opponent of Apartheid across the South Atlantic. A Time magazine article exalted the achievements of the Nobel peace laureate who became “the world’s moral compass” and “our global guardian” because of his stance against injustice. “Tutu’s secret, then, is no secret at all. It is faith,” concludes the article, and U2 singer Bono complements saying that Tutu “ties tight faith, justice and compassionate earthiness. He takes on the most sophisticated structural wrongs and breaks them down with pure focus.”[2]

Be it in Brazilian elections or South African racial struggles, or in any other context, our beliefs do inform our political views. There can be negative influences, as well as questionable compromises between faith and power, of course, but only fully developed moral absolutes like those of Desmond Tutu have the solidness to stand unflinchingly against injustice. “God is not evenhanded,” he defends. “God is biased, horribly in favour of the weak. The minute an injustice is being perpetrated, God is going to be on the side of the one who is being clobbered.” Tutu’s is no neutral language, for sure, and it would not give in to practical matters or utilitarian negotiations, like Schwartsman would prefer. And that why it is of worth, why it gives an irreplaceable contribution to the political scene. It grows out of a worldview centered on a good God, a God committed to justice in such a fierce, adamant way that Tutu and all of us can rejoice, “the texture of our universe is one where there is no question at all but that good and laughter and justice will prevail.”[3]

René Breuel 

[1] Hélio Schwartsman, “Fé na Política” [Faith in Politics], Folha de S. Paulo, October 5, 2010. http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/colunas/helioschwartsman/810042-fe-na-eleicao.shtml.

[2] Alex Perry, “The Laughing Bishop,” Time. Vol. 176, no. 15. October 11, 2010, pg. 30.

[3] Ibid.


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