Tom Fox on agape

I rarely post on Sundays, but I do so to honor the memory of Tom Fox, the slain Christian Peacemaker Teams volunteer whose body was discovered in Baghdad yesterday. His words about why he was in Iraq, written the day before he was abducted, are the best epitaph:

I have read that the word in the Greek Bible that is translated as "love" is
the word "agape." Again, I have read that this word is best expressed as a
profound respect for all human beings simply for the fact that they are all
God's children. I would state that idea in a somewhat different way, as
"never thinking or doing anything that would dehumanize one of my fellow
human beings."

It seems as if the first step down the road to violence is taken when I
dehumanize a person. That violence might stay within my thoughts or find its
way into the outer world and become expressed verbally, psychologically,
structurally or physically. As soon as I rob a fellow human being of his or
her humanity by sticking a dehumanizing label on them, I begin the process
that can have, as an end result, torture, injury and death.

"Why are we here?" We are here to root out all aspects of dehumanization
that exist within us. We are here to stand with those being dehumanized by
oppressors and stand firm against that dehumanization. We are here to stop
people, including ourselves, from dehumanizing any of God's children, no
matter how much they dehumanize their own souls.

I'll be praying to live this Lent as Tom Fox lived -- fearlessly and peacefully, in love with God and all of God's creation.

Please join me in thanksgiving for the life of Tom Fox, and the work of Christian Peacemaker Teams -- my favorite non-animal charity. 

Comments

[*Christopher]

May Holy Thomas Fox pray for us as we continue in the Word with fear and trembling this Lenten season. I am awed by his witness to the bounty of God. I will be looking more into this organization. It is my understanding that it is mostly Friends and Mennonite, and that few Episcopalians are involved.