Transforming Power by Robert Linthicum

Recently I have been thinking more about how God calls us to love our neighbour. I have been thinking about a recent dumping of poultry manure on a homeless camp in our community of Abbotsford and wondering how this fits with loving our neighbour.

Is it ironic that it was poultry manure – when the poultry industry is probably one of our economic drivers in Abbotsford, and we in Abbotsford boast that our agriculture produces higher economic returns per hectare than any other community in Canada?

How does this fit with the fact that our community of Abbotsford is very generous in that Abbotsford residents donate more for charitable giving than most other communities in Canada? Our Abbotsford residents give a lot towards our poor. Are we called to do more?

The United Nations has a lot to say about human rights and retaining the dignity of the homeless.

“Besides the violation of their right to adequate housing, homelss persons may be deprived of a whole range of other human rights. Laws that criminalize homelessness, vagrancy or sleeping rough, along with street cleaning operations to remove homeless people form the streets, have a direct impact on their physical and psychological integrity. Merely by not having a secure place to live, nor any privacy, homeless persons are much more vulnerable to violence, threats and harassment.”  (http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Publications/FS21_rev_1_Housing_en.pdf)

It is perhaps timely that for Father’s Day I was given a book called “Transforming Power: Biblical Strategies for Making a Difference in Your Community” by our daughter who was teaching social workers in Afghanistan….

Here are a few relevant quotes from this book that encourages me to think more and perhaps differently about this:

“You and I, as those empowered by the redeeming power of Jesus Christ, are not called to bring in the kingdom of God, the shalom community. God’s intentions for humanity will only realized fully by God’s final intervention in human history. But we are called to be a foretaste of that kingdom, a model of it in our life together, and to work towards God’s creation of that shalom community by being involved in:

–          Empowerment of our people as we together confront political systems of oppression and greed

–          Equitable distribution of wealth so that there will be no poor among us

–          Relationship with God and each other through Jesus Christ

Only as we commit ourselves to work for shalom community, keeping before ourselves the vision of the world as God intended it to be, can we have a significant impact on the world as it is.”

“The magnificent book of Deuteronomy presents God’s design for the way political, economic and religious systems, and their prophets and the people are meant to function. The word that I believe most effectively captures this comprehensive vision of the world is the Hebrew word shalom. Shalom is a corporate word….It  describes the political, economic and religious well-being of a people and their systems who are building a society upon a religion of personal and corporate relationship with God and each other, a politics of justice and an  economics of equitable distribution of wealth designed to eliminate poverty in their midst.”

“How would the church be different if it believed that Jesus worked for the transformation of both people and their society? What would happen if we believed that God’s work of salvation was as big as the totality of sin – corporate as well as individual, social, economic and political as well as spiritual – and that Christ came to die for all of that world? How would the church in your city be different if it saw itself as working with Christ for the building of you city’s shalom? And what could Christian people like you accomplish to right the wrongs in your city, if they could see such work as being the logical extension of the work that their Lord and Saviour had come to do? What would happen if we really were to take Jesus seriously?”

“Paul (in the book of Ephesians) is declaring that the work of the church is to hold up to the Roman Empire and to any other system an entirely different vision for their society – a vision of all of life lived in shalom under the authority of Christ and manifested in that society’s pursuit of a politics of justice, an economics of equitable distribution of wealth, the elimination of poverty and a people in relationship to God. And that mystery can only be realized if the church will move beyond itself to be engaged in every possible way in public life.”

“Our task is to work for the peace and the prosperity and the welfare and the good of all the people, the systems and structures, and even the principalities and powers of our city. It means that nothing is outside the purview, concern or commitment of the church, whether it is political, economic, religious, social, cultural, environmental or spiritual, whether it is in the public domain or in the private. The essential task of the church is to work for its society’s shalom – to work for the full and total transformation of all the people, forces and structures with the love of God.”

“Working for Shalom of your city:

1. Become God’s presence – enter fully into the life of the city
2. Pray for the city – God’s people must pray regularly and systematically for their city’s leaders. Systems, and the principalities and powers behind those systems.
3. Practice your faith through action – work for justice and shalom,
   1. Undertake ministries of mercy and seek to serve the needs of the poor
   2. Be advocates for the powerless
   3. Work with and mobilize the poor to provide needed community services
   4. Proclaim the good news – it is the responsibility of the church to proclaim God’s prophetic and reconciling word to the political, economic and value-producing systems of our society and to the leaders of these structures.”

The book gives further discussion on how God calls us to work towards the world as God has intended it to be:

“A final common value would be a shared commitment to the Iron Rule: “Never do for others what they can do for themselves.” This commitment recognizes that each of us as individuals and all of us as a relational culture are to assume responsibility for the practice of relational power, justice and an economics of sufficiency rather than of greed in our personal lives and our public actions”

“Power is the ability, capacity and willingness of a person, a group of people or an institution to act.”

“There are two types of power. The first is unilateral. The other essential type of power is relational power. Whereas unilateral power is power over a constituency, relational is power with… The deepest form of relational power is reciprocal power. It is one where people understand that both parties or forces can benefit from power decisions if they authentically share those decisions. Therefore reciprocal power is truly shared power in with each party is of equal strength, is equally participative in the decision-making process and is committed not to its private or exclusive good but to the common good”

“Essentially, Yahweh is described in Scripture as a relational God, yearning for relationship both with the people and he has created. Even the words used for God are relational in nature – father, son –, spirit – and God’s work in and through us is described in relational terms – love, grace, truth, covenant.”

“Our responsibility as children of God is to use relational power in ways that will be pleasing to God and transforming of each other.”

This book is giving me lots to think about as I reflect on what God calls me to to in my own community!