August 2008 – Just the way things are at the end of history?

Pardon me if I don’t clap my hands and shout for joy. If this is the end of history, then it is a “pretty” bleak place. If this is the terminus of the world-spirit’s evolution, the conclusion must be that the demonic is ubiquitously incarnate. Francis Fukuyama wants us to settle for what he believes to be the completed, final, global, ideological victory of capitalism. But, if the world has arrived, then ever-increasing masses of poor people have found their destination to be an empty table.

 

Our ancestors were hunter-gatherers and travellers with herds; but Cain killed Abel. Among civilisation’s many blessings were Pharaoh, Solomon, and Caesar. In face of such resplendence at the apex, who could hope for more from the world than might trickle down from such successfulness? Against that obvious brilliance, Yahweh’s little toot on the jubilee trumpet – with its radical rejection of socio-political pyramids and trickle-down economics – sounds like something in a Hicksville hoedown, a socio-economic square dance condemned, by its sheer naivety, to be the joke of the wise, those who know how the world really is. Civilisation’s sophisticates know that the laws of the market are given with the law of gravity; the laws of the market are built into the world-fabric. The civilised are certain that growth and consumption must increase and that the “differentials” between “wages” and capital, “investments” and “returns”, costs and profit, are inseparable from the matrix of wealth. That all do not enjoy wealth, to the same degree as those who create wealth do, is just the way things are.

 

But those with a mind to live out of the biblical story – the story of the faithful, just, and wise creator of heaven and earth whose covenant with creation and human beings brings liberation – know that Yahweh, not the market, is creator and sustainer of wealth. Ultimately, the creator of all, not the consumer of much, defines wealth and value.

Jesus understood himself to be the end, the telos, the culmination of God’s story in humanity. Jesus understood himself to be the bringer of jubilee liberation and he taught his followers to pray to the Father “… remit us our debts as we have also remitted the debt of our debtors”. Those who seek to follow Jesus have no other option. Those who understand him to be the judge of the world must accept his judgement.

 

Within this issue of Stimulus, as the general election approaches, Mel Downer gleans, in jubilee, criteria for questioning those who vie for control of the land. In the same vein, Anthony Dancer calls us to consider the reign of God in the realm of human politics. Brian Harris provides an overarching view of spirituality as located, related, timed, and expressed in our context. John George and Hugh Morrison each contribute articles that differently highlight aspects of being the church here, but for the world; the followers of Jesus are a pilgrim people with a different vision of the world, from the world’s view of things. St Imulus writes of global mission and, at Lambeth Conference time, Richard Jennings ponders ecclesiastical power games – Are they really cricket?

 

Certainly, if cynical power plays, pragmatic, self-interested political games, and iniquitous inequity characterises the end of history, all is hopeless. But we have another vision wherein, in the end, the liberator leads out the world in joy, and all the trees of the field clap their hands for, at last, the creator reigns! Until then, we must live in that hope, demonstrate that faith, question the powers, and act to inaugurate that vision.

 

Gavin Drew

for the editorial committee

Douglas Maclachlan

Publisher