So wrote Paul Krugman recently about the euro crisis, but he drew on exactly the same sentiments expressed in 1910 by Norman Angell in The Great Illusion who argued that trade and industry, not war and the exploitation of subject people, were the keys to national wealth. Well, we know what happened. No one in power took any notice and the last hundred years has seen devastating wars and rampant exploitation.
If Krugman is a modern prophet Amos was an ancient one and he was the first to leave his warnings in writing. They didn’t want to listen to him either; ‘Go away seer, get back to the land of Judah; earn your bread there, do your prophesying there’ (Amos 7:12). Leave us alone in our illusions.
Jesus expected that his followers would meet with closed ears just as he had done. ‘If they refuse to listen to you shake off the dust from your feet as you walk away as a sign to them.’ When Franciscan Fr Philip Timmons was deported from the then Rhodesia in 1976, for highlighting the cholera epidemic in Buhera and so causing ‘alarm and despondency,’ he shook off the dust from his shoes as he boarded the plane.
We don’t want to listen to economic or health warning signs, nor do we welcome the message of global warming. The effort to move out of our comfortable security can be just too much for us to face. Perhaps our deafness has a deeper source in our not really wanting to welcome the gospel. Basically we don’t want the good news. It might lead us to changing our way of thinking.
Paul, many years into his ministry, sent an amazing letter to the Ephesians. Peter Edmonds, who taught for years at Chishawasha, thinks it is a circular letter to the churches Paul founded. Paul writes with a great sweep of ideas in the first chapter summed up in his words ‘God chose us to live through love in his presence.’ We hurry over such words. But could we relish them for a moment? ‘He chose us … to live … through love … in his presence.’ If we give him a chance the Spirit of God will help us ‘know’ what these words mean. They can make quite a difference.
Post published in: Faith