wfn.org | Editorial: Making 2010 the year of civic movements

["Taiwan Church News" <enews@pctpress.org>]

>      Taiwan Church News

>3018 Edition

>December 28, 2009~January 3, 2010

Editorial: Making 2010 the year of civic movements

>Translated by Lydia Ma

As we say goodbye to 2009, Taiwan Church News has prepared a list  of noteworthy news that

made headlines this past year. A closer look at this list shows  that headlines in 2009 revolved

around the themes of evangelism, discipleship, service,  transforming society, reaching out to

the rest of God’s creation, and relating the gospel to  Taiwanese society. They were in

essence themes that PCT had been emphasizing in recent years.

These themes are often oversimplified in daily life and relegated  as “political news” because

dealing with them requires butting heads with the powers that be  or rocking the boat to change

the unfair status quo. To illustrate what I’m talking about,  one only needs to refer to news such

as protests on human rights violations in Tibet, the referendum on  building casinos in Penghu,

or the initiative against tainted U.S. beef. However, all of these  events sparked movements

because the issues concerned could compromise the wellbeing of  people.

We must see these movements from God’s point of view. We know  that God is a God of

compassion and we are created in God’s image. These movements  basically sought to

restore the loss of human dignity, and as Christians we ought to  have more civic awareness

than anyone else on earth. It is with this in mind that we have  determined that our goal for 2010

as a church is to make a better effort in following Christ’s  footsteps.

Whenever we turn to the life of prophets as recorded in the Bible,  we note that they often put to

practice what they believed in theory. We are noticing this  pattern emerging as well from

recent social movements in Taiwan in the past year. As a result of  acting on what we believe

in, we’ve experienced many David vs. Goliath moments.

We believe that our efforts to promote democracy and autonomy can  set the tone for 2010.

Like the “Baltic Way” movement that took place on August  23, 1989, when over 2 million

people from the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania  joined hands to form a 600 km

human chain to protect their rights, when civic awareness and  nationalism is awakened in

Taiwan, we will not need to coax people, instead, they will step  up to the plate on their own

>accord.

I am suddenly reminded of a story about a bunch of mice that were  housed in the same cage

as a big snake. Whenever the snake became hungry, it would try to  catch a mouse. The mice

would panic and scatter in all directions, allowing the snake to  easily prey on the slowest or

weakest mouse. Slowly, the number of mice decreased until there  was only one mouse left

one day. Though this mouse used to be the strongest of the pack,  at the end of the day, it still

>ended up in the belly of the snake.

If we can imagine the snake in this story as any source of threat  to our society or existence,

then, a society without any civic awareness is like the bunch of  mice that scattered. Whenever

we overlook unjust social issues as things that don’t concern  us, or dismiss them as “worldly”

or “unholy” things that shouldn’t cloud our church  agenda, or turn a blind eye to ungodly

behavior in our society, sooner or later, we will discover that  our pleas will fall on deaf ears

because we might be the only mouse left. Let us pray that 2010  will be the year when God’s

children will step up to the plate and witness through civic  engagement.

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