New Creations in The Age of Terror

A couple of days ago, a few days before the anniversary of 9/11, another bomb exploded in Jakarta, right outside the Australian embassy. It shook the Indonesian community here in Perth with anxiety for the future and fear for loved ones back home. As an Indonesian living in Australia, I can feel the horror that this incident has brought on both the Indonesian and the Australian peoples.

Ever since September 11, 2001 the world has been living in constant fear in an 'Age of Terror'. That day when the planes were diabolically steered to plunge into the two towers rudely awoke us to another dark age of humanity in a world that is supposed to be approaching greater technological enlightenment. And since then tragedy upon tragedy of epic proportions followed; the Bali bombing of 2002, the J.W. Marriott hotel bombing in Jakarta of 2003, and now the Australian embassy bombing. The words 'terrorism' and 'terrorists' have become the staples of newsreaders. People are today asking 'What next? Will I be alive tomorrow after the next bomb explodes?'

And what does this mean for the followers of the Way? It reminds us that our world is old. And evil. Most standing in the pulpit would use this new tragedy as a yet another sign of the fact that we are nearing the end of times - and rightly so. Our world is old and nearing its end. And its evil testifies to this fact.

But while living in an old world we do not have to be stuck to being old. Paul says that in Christ we are new creations; the old has passed away and the new has come (2 Corinthians 5:17). By the graceful sacrifice of Jesus we are new creations, though we are still living in an old world. And being new creations should mean something in the way we live our lives. It means living in this old world as Jesus Christ would. It would take up too much space to explain what this means completely, but we shall look at a couple of things.

First of all, Jesus was not afraid. Many Christians today are characterized by the fear of the coming of The End. In many instances, this fear, like most fears, paralyzes us from doing God's work as new creations. Yet the Spirit that God has given us is not a Spirit of fear but that of love (2 Timothy 1:7). If we truly have the Holy Spirit living in us and trust Him, we should not be hindered by our fear of the signs of the age from doing God's work. And even more, neither should we be halted from that work by the fear of the coming judgment, for if we have the Spirit of Love working within us, the perfect love that He brings out of us will drive out that fear (1 John 4:17-18).

Also, while the impulse of so many Christians is to withdraw from the big, bad and increasingly evil world (an attitude of 'invisible monasticism'), this was not the case with Jesus. Because He was not driven by fear but by love, Jesus dared to reach out to people even more in a world that -being a perfectly holy being Himself- must have looked unbearably bankrupt to Him. His attitude was not that of egotistical self-preservation. In fact, the Bible says that while perfect and holy, He did not see His equality with God as something to hold on to but became human and even bore the sins of the world on His back to save us all (Phillippians 2:5-8). German theologian and martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer even went as far as saying that Jesus had entered into a 'fellowship of guilt' with us in order to save us. I am not saying that we should again be sinful but it is ironic that while Jesus came into this sinful world to save us, we are often too scared of this evil world -and especially in this age of terror- to be Jesus in the midst of those lost.

Jesus calls us to be the light of the world -as He has been- but a candle cannot fulfill its purpose if it is too strangled by fear to shine or is unwilling to enter the dark where it is most needed. The world today, in the Age of Terror and at the end of history, is a very dark place indeed. And we, His new creations, are the little candles that Our Father has placed in this very dark place.