Get ready to face new challenges

Every era has its own challenges There are challenges that confront people of every time and place; there are challenges that are specific to a specific era.

It is a human tendency to look back with nostalgia to “the golden age”, or a period in the past when everything was ideal. But if truth be told, every age in every place has its own problems. In the next few articles in this retitled column we are going to reflect on “the challenges of our time”.

The latter half of the 20th century and the first decade of the 21st century must be one of the most complex in human history. Humankind has had to face some of the most problematic challenges ever faced on Earth.

It represents the most advanced phase of human history; and yet there is sense in which it can justifiably be described as the most backward stage in the development of homo sapiens. It is the age when humanity experienced peace after two savage world wars; yet the “Cold War” and atomic warfare could have wiped out humanity. It is the age of “the global village”; it is also the age when we witnessed some of the worst forms of ethnic cleansing.

Ours is the era when colonised people won freedom from their colonial masters; it is also the era when some of the previously colonised people suffered the worst forms of oppression from their own kind. How will future generations judge this era? In the words of Charles Dickens, some may call it “the best of times”, and some “the worst of times”.

God created humankind in his own image, meaning, among other things, that God gave us a mind to enable us to reflect on the world around us and on the challenges that face us. The Christian Church is not only a community of people created with a mind, but a community of people who are for ever conscious of their mission to evangelise the world, to bring the Kingdom of God into the world. As such we should be aware of the challenges that face that mission and challenges that pose a threat to humankind.

What determines whether we are fulfilling our mandate in the world is not how easy it is to practise the faith and preach the Gospel, but the quality of our response to the challenges of our time. The worst form of response, in my view, is to close our eyes to these challenges and pretend that all is well because we can go to our churches and worship God in peace and tranquility.

I submit that one of the greatest challenges to the Christian community of our time is the fact that this is one of the ages when believers of every faith have experienced the greatest amount of freedom of worship from the state in democratic societies. Whether you are a Hindu, a Muslim, a Jew, a Christian or a believer in Traditional African religion, you are given your space and freedom to worship as long as you do not interfere with the freedoms of other people. Even the old prejudices between Catholics and Protestants are largely a thing of the past. There is tolerance, mutual respect and freedom of worship in relatively democratic states.

However, this state of freedom poses its own challenges. One of these is that society at large is likely to think that every religion is like every other religion, and so there is nothing special about Christianity. And if every religion is like every other religion, what is the point of believing in God, even?

Or take the issue of ecumenism: now that Christian denominations get on so well together and even worship together, is there any point in talking about the need for Christian unity? How does the Christian community deal with these challenges? How do the followers of Jesus show that the Christian faith has something special to offer to humanity?

There are challenges that are even more mind-boggling than these. We shall explore these over the next few months.