The Road to Damascus

In July 1989 Christians from seven different nations -- El Salvador, Guatemala, Korea, Namibia, Nicaragua, the Philippines, and South Africa -- released The Road to Damascus: Kairos and Conversion. This powerful document involved hundreds of Christians in a process of consultation and dialogue that spanned two and a half years. The excerpts below offer a challenge and an invitation to Christians everywhere, and in particular to those of us in the United States. -- The Editors

The Roots of Our Conflict

EXCEPT IN THE CASE OF KOREA, which was colonized by Japan, the European nations that colonized our countries pride themselves on being Christian. Conquest and evangelization, colonization and the building of churches advanced together. The cross blessed the sword which was responsible for the shedding of our people's blood. The sword imposed the faith and protected the churches, sharing power and wealth with them.

Today, most Third World countries are no longer colonies, but we are still dominated by one or more imperial powers -- the United States, Japan and Western Europe. Their web of economic control includes an unfair international trade system, multinational companies that monopolize strategic sections of our economy, economic policies dictated by lending banks and governments together with the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Even technology is used as a tool for domination. The staggering size of Third World debt is only one dramatic sign of our subordination to imperialism.

In some of our countries imperialism violates national sovereignty by establishing military bases with nuclear weapons that endanger our people's lives. Various methods of political intervention subvert our independence, usually with the cooperation of local rulers. Our educational system, mass media, religious and cultural institutions reproduce a subservient colonial mentality; this is reinforced by Western habits of consumption.

Imperialism uses the tactic of divide and rule. It supports governments that discriminate against people and treat them unjustly because of their race or color. It reinforces sexism and the subordination of women. It sometimes widens the divisions even among the elite but more often it seeks to unite the ruling elite against the people. In most countries this leads to the establishment of what is today called the national security state.

The effects of imperialism upon the Third World form a litany of woes: our children die of malnutrition and disease, there are no jobs for those who want to work, families break up to pursue employment abroad, peasants and indigenous communities are displaced from their land, most urban dwellers have to live in unsanitary slums, many women have to sell their bodies, too many die without having lived a life that human persons deserve. We also suffer because of the plunder of our natural resources, and then we ourselves are being blamed for it.

Even though most of our ruling elite collude with imperialism to deceive and divide the people, groups and communities manage to reflect critically on their oppression and organize themselves. As this movement becomes more widespread and organized, the power and wisdom of ordinary people develops and deepens. Going beyond protest and resistance, they assume responsibility for proposing and pursuing a people's alternative to the present system.

This movement of organized and conscious people marks the coming of age of a new historical subject. As we exchange stories not only within our countries but among different countries, we also learn the many names we give to this new creation -- the people, el pueblo, minjung, ang sambayanan.

Western imperialism tries to force our struggle for national liberation into an East-West framework. Let us be clear that we know about the wrongdoings of the East, both within socialist countries themselves and in their relation to other Third World countries. But what we experience directly is domination by the West, and we do not want to be drawn into the East-West conflict.

Socialist countries are admitting their mistakes and addressing the need for reforms. The United States and the Soviet Union both declare that they want to slow down and even reverse the arms race, and talk of negotiations to solve regional conflicts. All these are welcome pronouncements. Ironically, just when there is talk of more peaceful coexistence between East and West, our countries in the South experience hostile attacks from the West.

COLONIAL AND IMPERIAL POWERS have reacted to the people's resistance by devising different counter-insurgency programs. Faced with the emergence of Third World people as new historical subjects, they have developed what they consider a more sophisticated response.

For the imperialists, it might be low intensity conflict (LIC), but for the Third World people it is total war. LIC uses all military weapons, short of nuclear arms. It organizes paramilitary groups, death squads and vigilantes to divide and destroy unarmed communities and organizations of the people.

Unlike traditional regular warfare, total war places a premium on psychological and ideological war. It tries to discredit all those who work for change by calling them "communists," while trying to present the government as democratic. This total strategy includes the misuse of Christianity as a religious legitimation for the West.

The misuse of Christianity in the ideological war is imperialism's response to an earlier development -- the good news of Christian participation in the suffering and struggle of the people. Both oppressor and oppressed seek religious legitimation. Both sides invoke the name of God and of Jesus Christ, and Christians are found on both sides of the political conflict in most of our seven countries. The church itself has become a site of struggle.

Christians or believers in the God of the Bible have been on opposing sides in political conflicts before. What is new today is the intensity of the conflict and the awareness we have of it. Never before have we been so conscious of the political implications of Christian faith. This religious conflict is not a mere academic debate; it is a matter of life and death. What is at stake is the future of justice, peace, freedom, and the glory of God.

The Faith of the Poor

THE GOD WHOM THE MISSIONARIES PREACHED was a God who blessed the powerful, the conquerors, the colonizers. This God demanded resignation in the face of oppression and condemned rebelliousness and insubordination. All that was offered to us by this God was an interior and other-worldly liberation.

Gradually our experience of poverty and oppression began to raise questions for us: Why does God allow us to suffer so much? Why does God always side with the rich and the powerful? Was poverty and oppression really the will of God?

After many years of protest and pleading we began to take responsibility for our own liberation. The Christians who were part of this development began to read the Bible with new eyes.

What we discovered was that Jesus was one of us. He was born in poverty. He took sides with the poor; he condemned the rich: "Blessed are you who are poor" (Luke 6:20); "Woe to you who are rich" (Luke 6:24). He even described his mission as the liberation of the downtrodden (Luke 4:18).

At the heart of Jesus' message was the coming of the reign of God. We discovered that Jesus had promised the reign of God to the poor: "Yours is the Reign of God" (Luke 6:20); and that the good news about the coming of God's reign was supposed to be good news for the poor (Luke 4:18).

Jesus was and still is the Word of God, the true image of God. The true God is the God of the poor who is angry about injustice in the world, vindicates the poor (Psalm 103:6), pulls down the mighty from their thrones and lifts up the lowly (Luke 1:52). This is the God who will judge all human beings according to what they have done or not done for the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the sick and those in prison (Matthew 25:31-46).

With this new faith in Jesus, we can now begin to read the signs of our times, discern the presence of the risen Jesus in our midst, appreciate the action of the Holy Spirit and see our present conflict with new eyes. We are no longer surprised to discover that the followers of Jesus are crucified and killed. Now we hear God's voice, especially in the cry of the poor, in the cry of pain and protest, of despair and hope.

God is on the side of the poor, the oppressed, the persecuted. When this faith is proclaimed and lived in a situation of political conflict between the rich and the poor, and when the rich and the powerful reject this faith and condemn it as heresy, we can read the signs and discern something more than a crisis. We are faced with a kairos, a moment of truth, a time for decision, a time of grace, a God-given opportunity for conversion and hope.

Our Prophetic Mission

THROUGHOUT HISTORY, WE CHRISTIANS have often been deaf to God's voice and blind to God's presence in people. This lack of faith has prevented us from exercising the prophetic mission that Jesus has given us.

For some of us, the reason lies in a life that is not confronted by the suffering and struggle of the poor, and therefore the choice of a convenient God who does not challenge us to take part in a movement for change. For others, however, the reason lies in a choice of privilege and power, and a conscious defense of the status quo.

Idolatry is the sin of worshipping or being subservient to someone or something which is not God, treating some created thing as if it were a god. It was for the sake of security that the people of ancient times turned to the Baals and other idols. Today, our oppressors turn to money and military power and to the so-called security forces. But their security is our insecurity. We experience their security as intimidation and repression, terror, rape, and murder.

The idols demand human sacrifices. Today this is still the most evil dimension of the sin of idolatry in our countries. People, young and old, innocent and defenseless, are being sacrificed to placate mammon -- the national security state and international capitalism. We live with the everyday reality of human sacrifice: starving children, deaths in detention, assassinations, massacres, and disappearances.

Right-wing Christianity under whatever name is a way of believing that rejects or ignores parts of God's revelation and selects or distorts other parts in order to support the ideology of the national security state. We are convinced that this heretical choice is made for selfish political purposes, although not all the adherents of right-wing Christianity are necessarily aware of this. Consequently, right-wing Christianity is the conscious or unconscious legitimation of idolatry. Right-wing Christianity is being promoted with vigorous and expensive campaigns in all our countries and in almost all Christian traditions.

Kairos and Conversion 

The most famous conversion story in the New Testament is the story of the apostle Paul on the road to Damascus. Before his conversion, Saul (as he was then called) persecuted those Jews who had been converted to the way of Jesus. Saul sided with the authorities and the status quo against this new movement that wanted to "turn the world upside down" (Acts 17:6).

"Saul was still breathing threats to slaughter the Lord's disciples" as he traveled down the road to Damascus armed with letters authorizing him to arrest any followers of the Way, men or women, that he could find (Acts 9:1-2). Then suddenly it happened. Saul made the startling discovery that he was on the wrong side, that God was on the side of Jesus and that the persecution of the people who followed Jesus was the persecution of Jesus himself.

What was revealed to Saul was that God was not on the side of the religious and political authorities who had killed Jesus. On the contrary, God was on the side of the One who had been crucified as a blasphemer, who had been accused of being possessed by Beelzebul, who had been handed over as a traitor, an agitator, a pretender to the throne of David and a critic of the Temple (Matthew 26:62, 65-66, Luke 23:1-2, 5, 13).

On the road to Damascus Saul was faced with this conflict between these two images or beliefs about God. He was struck blind by it. It was his kairos. Saul became Paul when he accepted in faith that the true God was in Jesus and that the risen Lord was in the very people whom he had been persecuting.

This kairos on the road to Damascus must be taken seriously by all who in the name of God support the persecution of Christians who side with the poor. The call to conversion is loud and clear.

We must be converted again and again from the idol of mammon to the worship of the true God. We cannot serve two masters, we cannot serve both God and mammon (Matthew 6:24).

We must take seriously Jesus' accusation of hypocrisy. We cannot sit on the fence and profess neutrality while people are being persecuted, exploited, and killed.

All of us who profess to be followers of Jesus of Nazareth are in continuous need of conversion. While we see clearly the idolatry, the heresy, the hypocrisy, and the blasphemy of others, we ourselves need to search our own hearts for remnants of the same sins and for signs of triumphalism, self-righteousness, dogmatism, rigidity, intolerance, and sectarianism. There should be no place in our hearts for any kind of complacency.

THE PARTICULAR CRISIS OR kairos that has led us to the writing and signing of this proclamation of faith is the conflict between Christians in the world today. We have wished to make it quite clear that those Christians who side with the imperialists, the oppressors, and the exploiters of people are siding with the idolaters who worship money, power, privilege, and pleasure. To misuse Christianity to defend oppression is heretical. And to persecute Christians who are oppressed or who side with the oppressed is apostasy -- the abandonment of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

What we are dealing with here is not simply a matter of morality or ethics. What is at stake is the true meaning of our Christian faith.

This proclamation was written and signed to give an account of the hope that is in us. Like the disciples who traveled along the road to Emmaus, we are sometimes tempted to give up hope. As the two disciples say: "Our own hope had been that he [Jesus] would be the one to set Israel free" (Luke 24:21). What they still had to learn from Jesus and what we need to be reminded of again and again is that the way to freedom and salvation is the way of the cross. "Was it not ordained that the Christ should suffer and so enter into his glory?" (Luke 24:26). There is no cheap solution or liberation. There is no easy road.

Because of our faith in Jesus, we are bold enough to hope for something that fulfills and transcends all human expectations, namely, the reign of God. We are even called to live with the hope that those who collaborate with the idols of death and those who persecute us today will be converted to the God of life.

None of this can happen, however, without pain, suffering, and many deaths. Jesus promises us the reign of God, but he also promises that "they will hand you over to the Sanhedrins and scourge you in their synagogues." "You will be dragged before governors and kings." "You will be hated by all on account of my name" (Matthew 10:17-22).

The disciple cannot be greater than the master, and we are following the path of a crucified Christ. Whatever twists and turns the road might take, be firm and steadfast. The pain we undergo is part of the birthpangs of a new creation.

The experience of our seven countries working together to compile this document over a period of two and half years has been an example of solidarity. We hope that such examples of cooperation and dialogue will continue, will develop, and will be extended for the benefit of all.

Our oppressors organize themselves nationally and internationally. We cannot afford to face the struggle separately. Solidarity is not optional if we are to promote the cause of God in the world. We call on fellow Christians in the Third World, in industrial capitalist countries, and in socialist countries to build a network of exchange and cooperation.

Reprinted with permission. Copies of the full text of The Road to Damascus are available from the Center of Concern, Department S, 3700 13th St. NE, Washington, DC 20017; (202) 635-2757.