The region is heading toward the end of a historical stage (that produced wars and divisions) and the entry into another, through one of two options: either a comprehensive settlement between the contending parties at our expense, or a comprehensive war between them that will grind us down.
And before both options, we as Christians (like others) have no ability and no role (except a moral role, that is, a responsibility and moral stances toward what is happening), but our role will be renewed after the war or the settlement, and the choice that the Christians and their ecclesiastical leaders will take will determine our destiny — either a fading away from the East or a new resurrection, especially in Syria and Lebanon now, then the rest of the countries of the East later.
Our role:
1. If we are before a settlement: the role of the Church, with its institutions and members, is “the salt of the earth” (Matt. 5:13), that is, a purifying work and the cleansing of all the old thought and the purification of ecclesiastical conduct from all its old blights, for the transition to a new historical stage that bears fruit in the building of a new society. This stage needs sincere institutional and individual repentance and a sincere desire to build a new reality.
2. If we are before a comprehensive war, which will carry differing results: the role of the Church, with its institutions and members, is “the light of the world” (Matt. 5:14), that is, it leads its people and works as a true guide for building a new society that draws its values and its light from the witness of Jesus and His ethics, and it is like Moses crossing with his people to the Promised Land. It needs to carry out a critical process of all the previous errors and all the positions we took and to study their results, lest we deny the same errors and reach the same results.
The Lord, to Him be glory, says ” the sons of this age are wiser than the sons of light in their generation.” (Luke 16:8). We must come out of our ignorance, lest the people of the world, from parties and sects, be wiser and more reflective about their destiny and the destiny of their ideologies, while we increase in ignorance and the Lord’s saying is realized in us and we perish.
Our Christian approach, and the approach of our Church institutions and their decisions in this stage, will determine the destiny of the Christians of the East in the distant future.
#Let us take heed