Ethics and Faith - Wading through Muddy Waters
August 26, 2024
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
The ethics of faith are not always easy to sort through.
Our basic commitments are and we thank God for those anchors, anchored to one anchor.
However, to apply truth is something God calls us to work at sometimes, pray through, struggle with, and stay awake with. That is because we are always balancing things which require a perspective beyond ourselves to balance.
We are trying to do what comes naturally to God, to feel each person’s pain and distress and desire the Shalom of every people and nation. Easy to God, but difficult for us.
It is hard, not impossible, and the difficulty of it is no excuse to settle into complacency, to focus our attention on a few sources, close our hearts and minds, or harden our hearts.
To be God’s people in the world is to move beyond self-interest, even the interest of survival and safety, and embrace something larger — a Kingdom that has no boundaries or borders or language of its own among men. This is just one example of many of the issues with which the people of God must wrestle.
Historical contexts come and go. We lose track of their meaning, impact, and intensity.
In the following commentator’s words, we reach back 11 years.
The point is about consistency in our muddy ethics. It is rare.
“As Egyptian developments unfold, Christians around the world are asking how best to preserve the Christian community from harm and maintain its voice and role in Egypt.
How can Christians adopt a stance that promotes the protection of Egypt and its Christians from Muslim Brotherhood extremists without simultaneously condoning what has been described as ‘one of the deadliest single-day instances of police-on-protester violence since Tiananmen Square’?”
— Read more in: “A Christian, Rights-Based Approach to Egyptian Developments” by Wissam al-Saliby