Good Samaritans

In this past week, we have witnessed two very different types of response to crisis and emergency. On Monday, through the actions of Paul de Waard and Brendan Keilar, we saw a modern-day re-enactment of the Good Samaritan story. Seeing someone in danger, both men responded with bravery, compassion and selflessness. At the end of the week, we saw a completely different response to a very different sort of crisis. The Howard Government has at last decided to tackle the endemic problems of sexual abuse and alcoholism within indigenous communities.

But there is nothing ‘Good Samaritan’ in this response. No one can doubt the severity of the emergency. It is, quite simply, a national disgrace and the Government is right to act. Like Paul de Waard and Brendan Keilar, John Howard has rightly chosen to not ‘pass by on the other side of the road.’ But whereas de Waard and Keilar, and the original Good Samaritan in Jesus’ story, acted immediately, Howard has delayed his response. He has ignored report after report that have each stated how bad the situation in remote Aboriginal communities has become. And in the process of delaying, he has helped perpetuate the emergency which he now abhors.

As I have said, the Government needs to act. But a response of genuine compassion and bravery would have happened far earlier – not six months out from a federal election.

Dalai Lama and inter-faith dialogue

Over the past week, a rather heated discussion has taken place between various Baptist pastors throughout Victoria concerning what our response should be to the visit to Melbourne of the Dalai Lama. A number of people have expressed the view that there is little, if any, difference between him and the prophets of Baal or Satanists. According to this view our response should be straight-out condemnation and a prophetic call to 'no holds barred' evangelism.

I have to admit that I have been extremely disturbed by such an attitude. It seems to me to lag way behind the advances that have been made in both ecumenical and inter-faith relations over the past 50 or so years. After proudly proclaiming our progressive character, maybe Baptists are in fact, at least on this issue, 40 years behind Rome?!

Let me try to explain what I mean...

In 1965, as part of Vatican II, the Catholic Church issues Nostre Aetate ('In Our Times') - quite probably, the most significant document in inter-faith relations for the past 100 years. IN that statement, the Church explicitly stated that while:

"she proclaims, and ever must proclaim Christ as 'the way, the truth, and the life' (John 14:6), in whom men [sic] may find fullness of religious life, and in whom God has reconciled all things to Himself," nonetheless she "rejects nothing that is true and holy in [other] religions. She regards with sincere reverence those ways of conduct and of life, those precepts and teachings which, though differing in many aspects from the ones she holds and sets forth, nonetheless often reflect a ray of that truth which enlightens all men [sic]."

http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/

In other words, Rome issued both a clear acceptance of the historic faith, and yet als oan acknowledgment that not even the Church has a monopoly on the truth.

Similar Karl Barth (my theological hero!) has had some insightful things to say on this topic. Significantly, for such a thoroughly Christocentric theologian, Barth himself argued that we can expect to see evidence of diviine truth even in non-Christian religions. In CD IV/4, Barth says that we may expect to hear "true words even from what seem to be the darkest places..." There are "signs and attestations of the lordship of Jesus Christ, true words which we must receive as such...to be found with satriking frequency extra muros ecclesiae (outside the walls of the Church)."

Now I'm not suggesting that us Baptist pastors should become either Catholic or 'Barthian'! What I am suggesting is that we are in danger of tending towards an all-too uncritically dogmatic repudiation of all things 'non-Christian' (whatever that means!), that leaves us a generation and a half behind current inter-faith and ecumenical discussion.

This is not something we can afford to let happen.

I for one hope and expect to learn things - even spiritual things! - from those who do not profess Jesus as Christ. This is not to say that I take Jesus' claims of uniqueness lightly. Do I profess my own faith in Christ publicly and without reserve? Yes! Do I take my life of Christian discipleship seriously? Yes!

Do I think that those who 'in good faith' believe something else are not thereby 'saved'? I don't know...And it's precisely in that 'not knowing' that I believe we need to exercise a greater degree of humility.