Reconciling All Things: A Christian Vision for Justice, Peace and Healing Book

"We are claiming that there is a deeper, richer hope God offers to the world. Yet we have forgotten the very source that makes reconciliation a distinct gift and vision of hope. When we step back, two things come clear: first, God's life-giving vision grows out of a story, and second, that story is about a quieter revolution... when Christian's remember well, we are able to explore the story of God's involvement with the world and to draw on that story to locate and understand what is going on at any particular time within that story. This is what makes Scripture indispensable to the Christian journey of reconciliation. Scripture both forms Christian memory and shapes concrete possibilities for life in the world...

One of the greatest dangers facing work for justice and peace birthed within a Christian vision is the gradual detachment of that work from its unique Christian roots and vision. In the world of gaps- of injustices and divisions between people- the journey can gradually become about external needs alone; building more houses, serving more people, economic flourishing and self sufficiency, attending to more demands. Slowly the work drifts away from their roots in a journey with Jesus... this is why theological reflection is so critical, constantly asking the question "Why are we bothering with this work? What are we leading toward... theological reflection requires a certain critical distance."

The two central voices in this book, Emmanuel Katongole and Chris Rice, present a working dialogue surrounding reconciliation by way of their own relationship across the lines of class and race. It provides an interesting way into the conversation, providing plenty in the way of practical application.

One of my complaints about the book is that it does lean too heavily into those practical elements. There are a lot of stories, and I am more theoretically driven in terms of my comprehension and interest. With that said, the theoretical sections of the book I found to be quite good. I will admit, the audience I think is going to be quite particular to that end. As the quote above suggests, Katongole and Rice desire to establish the uniqueness of the Christian story in its ability to address reconciliation, not on an academic level, but rather on a personal level. This is not the kind of book that I think will convince those outside of the faith, which positions this for people of faith. To that end, it tends to stay fairly conservative, where I would have liked it to dig even further and push a little hard on the Gospel "as' reconciliation. It does however function as a good starting point into the larger conversation, beginning with the idea that reconciliation begins with understanding the narrative, and setting our experience, our challenges, our struggles and our hope within that story.

The Christian story, the authors argue, is always responding to an already not yet reality. As it writes, "The story of the ministry of reconciliation always begins in the humility of every day life, with someone responding to a gap... Responding to a gap is not about starting everywhere but about starting somewhere."

Here the book connects this idea that it is in faith that we have a future vision of the way things not only should be, but will be. This informs the work that we do in the world. Equally important is allowing the already-not yet reality of the way things are to humble both us and the work we are participating in. One of the reasons so many people are resistant to the idea of entering into the work for justice, peace, and healing is that it is difficult to know where to start and where we can make a difference. The book is helpful in calling to recognize that what the Christian story recognizes is a gap between what is and what will be. And so reconciliation begins to starting in that gap, where ever that is, however small it is.

A part of the necessary humility then becomes about how it is that we recognize the Church as providing an answer to the gap. As they write, "We do not want to glamorize incarnational presence. Nor do we want to suggest that the Church's presence is a panacea for the world's brokenness. To be sure, in many places and at different periods of history, the church's presence has been less of a gift and more of a challenge. Instead of being a peaceable and interruptive presence on a landscape of brokenness, the church has often taken on the same patterns and characters of its place, sometimes even serving to make things worse.

(But) Incarnation grounds the ministry of reconciliation in such a way that we learn to read the history, geography and needs of a place. As we do this in the context of God's story, our imaginations are shaped to see what the embodiment of God's promises could look like in our own neighborhoods."

This humility is what conditions and conforms us to the problems that we see (the gaps) so as to enter into it and participate with it, not using the Church to conform the problems to the Church. It is in this that we can then embody the hopeful vision of the Christian story, which simply recognizes a day when things will be made right. It begins, in a sense, with simply sharing in the suffering of others, and being bothered by the injustices that we see. "To be deeply bothered about the way things are is itself a sign of hope. To the extent we are not shattered, we do not hope."

And as we are bothered, this shapes the desire of our heart for those places where there is injustice and a lack of peace and brokenness in need of healing, directing us ourselves towards prayers for that more hopeful vision. The book speaks to this idea of being broken ourselves over the brokenness that we see saying, "Lament is not despair. It is not whining. It is not a cry into a void. Lament is a cry directed to God. It is the cry of those who see the truth of the world's deep wounds and the cost of seeking peace. It is the prayer of those who are deeply disturbed by the way things are.

Over and over again, lament teaches us about both what must be learned and what must be unlearned in order to live well in a broken world.

The journey of reconciliation is grounded in lament... Lament slows reconciliation down because it sees the challenge of transformation not from the top but from the margins- indeed from the bottom... (and) the more global reconciliation becomes, the more self assured (fast) it is. The more local, the more slow and fragile. Speed meets a wall when reconciliation is measured by what is nearest to us... But maybe slowing down is what we need."

And when we slow down, we can begin to be shaped by the Christian story ourselves:
"Quite often the brute realities of this world intimidate and overwhelm us. According to the world's logic, it takes power, strength, money, and influence to effect change. And so, given the widespread realities of war, conflict and violence in the world, we feel terribly overpowered and helpless, as if we lack the necessary resources to make any difference... this is precisely why Scripture gives us such a story- to show that there are alternatives and that this task of reconciliation is about imagining new ways to draw from the story of promises not yet fulfilled.

However weak it may seem to us, we are called to work on skills of forgiveness, self giving service and costly love of the enemy."

In its most helpful portions, Kagongole and Rice helped me to see that it is not about having a fix all to the worlds problems. Nor is it about my ability as a Christian to be an answer. Shaped by humility, reconciliation is shaped by our ability to share in the suffering of the world- to see the brokenness, to be broken by the brokenness, and then to find in the Christian story a hopeful message that can empower us, in our understanding that things are being made right and that there is a better future, to enter into the work now, beginning with whatever is right in front of us, whatever gaps intersect in our lives. And we do so not in the understanding that our abilities can solve the problem. We do so to be formed by the Christian story, to be broken by the brokenness, and to walk together in those suffering places in a way that reminds us of the Christian story (and in that way, allowing our lives to be an expression of that hope in the way we align ourselves.

All of this then is a work that flows back into our mutual participation in the Christian story as a work of reconciliation in all things, in the whole world, including ourselves.