February 2011 Subscriber Letter
February 2011
Dear Reconciler Family,
Revival, I believe, is just what we need as a country and world! When I listen to the high-pitched rhetoric and hate speech, I see no other solution. A great part of a godly revival is love, humility and willingness to consider the needs, viewpoints and desires of others, even if we disagree with them. Nose to nose shouting is pointless!
One area of major disagreement and shouting in America today is politics. And I think we can learn much from Dr. Michael Cassidy’s book, The Politics of Love, which deals with late 20th century politics in apartheid South Africa. (He is founder of African Enterprise ministry.) Here are some excerpts from the book to his beloved nation during a time of great conflict, disagreement and violence:
While the church may endorse and embrace truth wherever it is found in the spectrum of political postures, it should also be manifest that our Kingdom posture will call for things which neither the left, right nor center of secular politics would dream of. Examples of this would be the priority of prayer, the place of forgiveness, the way of Calvary weakness and the primacy of love for all.
In a sense, with political as with theological truth, our inclinations are to inhabit one or the other of the polar regions of truth when, in fact, a true commitment to truth requires straddling not the middle ground, but both poles simultaneously.
Thus Martin Luther King’s Gospel commitments made him struggle in Montgomery in December 1955, with being both “militant and moderate” at the same time. “I decided,” he wrote, “to face the challenge head on and attempt to combine two apparent irreconcilables.” The way through, he said, lay in actions “balanced with a strong affirmation to the Christian doctrine of love.”
It must be emphasized that the Kingdom Way is not a wishy-washy middle position of neutrality. When Jesus called left-wing Simon, the revolutionary zealot, and Matthew, the right wing government department man, into his apostolic band, he wasn’t calling them to a middle ground or a Hard Way, but to Kingdom Ground and the Only Way, where the Kingdom is the “shalom” way of “God-ordered relationships.” Kingdom Ground transcends all earthly allegiances and patterns of relating. It is what led the early believers to be called “Christians” Because they did not fit the Jew/Gentile categories of their day.
Kingdom people will therefore feel free to embrace from left, right or center whatever social truths are compatible with biblical understandings. At Point A, therefore, the Kingdom will make us radical and at Point B conservative. This will confuse the secular mind. No matter.
Thank you so much for your loyal and prayerful support.
Love and peace,
Curtis May
P.S. Here is the website link to Black History Month ideas: http://alturl.com/ph2iu.