In Thomas Merton’s writings on Faith and Violence, he provides faith, hope and love as the avenues through which to overcome the evils of oppression:
Growth, survival and even salvation may depend on the ability to sacrifice what is fictitious and unauthentic in the construction of one’s moral, religious or national identity. One must then enter upon a different creative task of reconstruction and renewal. This task can be carried out only in the climate of faith, of hope and of love: these three must be present in some form, even if they amount only to a
natural belief in the validity and significance of human choice, a decision to invest human life with some shadow of meaning, a willingness to treat other people as other selves.
Merton invites the reconstruction and renewal of our individual, religious and national identities towards our own growth and salvation.
- How might you reimagine the world we live in?
- How do we step out from the system that oppresses others and find freedom from the competitive power game?
- You have identified those who you scapegoat and are scapegoated. Spend some time imagining that person, their life, their family, the world they inhabit. It is your world too.
- Ask God today to enlighten in you what needs to be reconstructed or renewed in how you understand and relate to all people in our world today.
- What is required for you to have the willingness to treat other people as other selves?
