Learning to Walk in His Ways

On October 2, 2006, a gunman named Charles Roberts entered a one-room Amish school in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania. He took ten schoolgirls hostage, killing five and critically wounding the others before taking his own life. To explain his motivation, he told the children, “I’m angry at God for taking my little daughter.”
 
By the following morning, as television crews swarmed the village, the Amish parents were already prepared to offer forgiveness. Soon, this extraordinary act of grace became a bigger story than the terrible crime that preceded it. Amish Grace explores the religious beliefs and habits that led the Amish to forgive so quickly.

The authors examines the importance of forgiveness among cloistered communal societies and ask why this act of forgiveness became news among secular society. With insight and compassion, the authors contemplate how the Amish community’s witness could prove useful to the rest of us.

From the author of ECPA and CBA top sellers, Thus Saith the Lord?, Breaking Intimidation, The Fear of the Lord and The Bait of Satan, with over 1 MILLION copies sold worldwide, The Bait of Satan exposes one of the most deceptive snares Satan uses to get believers out of the will of God―offense. Most people who are ensnared by the bait of Satan don’t even realize it. John Bevere shows you how to stay free from offense and escape the victim mentality. With nearly one million copies in print, this book includes testimonials of transformed people whose lives have been changed by the message in this book. You will find answers to tough questions like these: Why am I compelled to tell “my side” of the story? How can I fight thoughts of suspicion or distrust? What can I do to stop rehearsing past hurts? How can I regain trust after someone deeply offends me?

Two parables that have become firmly lodged in popular consciousness and affection are the parable of the Good Samaritan and the parable of the Prodigal Son. These simple but subversive tales have had a significant impact historically on shaping the spiritual, aesthetic, moral, and legal traditions of Western civilization, and their capacity to inform debate on a wide range of moral and social issues remains as potent today as ever.

Noting that both stories deal with episodes of serious interpersonal offending and both recount restorative responses on the part of the leading characters, Compassionate Justice draws on the insights of restorative justice theory, legal philosophy, and social psychology to offer a fresh reading of these two great parables. It also provides a compelling analysis of how the priorities commended by the parables are pertinent to the criminal justice system today.

The parables teach that the conscientious cultivation of compassion is essential to achieving true justice. Restorative justice strategies, this book argues, provide a promising and practical means of attaining to this goal of reconciling justice with compassion.

Life in the twenty-first century presents a disturbing reality. Otherness, the simple fact of being different in some way, has come to be defined as in and of itself evil. Miroslav Volf contends that if the healing word of the gospel is to be heard today, Christian theology must find ways of speaking that address the hatred of the other. Is there any hope of embracing our enemies? Of opening the door to reconciliation? Reaching back to the New Testament metaphor of salvation as reconciliation, Volf proposes the idea of embrace as a theological response to the problem of exclusion. Increasingly we see that exclusion has become the primary sin, skewing our perceptions of reality and causing us to react out of fear and anger to all those who are not within our (ever-narrowing) circle. In light of this, Christians must learn that salvation comes, not only as we are reconciled to God, and not only as we “learn to live with one another,” but as we take the dangerous and costly step of opening ourselves to the other, of enfolding him or her in the same embrace with which we have been enfolded by God.

Volf won the 2002 Louisville Grawemeyer Award in Religion for the first edition of his book, Exclusion & Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation (Abingdon, 1996). In that first edition, Professor Volf, a Croatian by birth, analyzed the civil war and “ethnic cleansing” in the former Yugoslavia, and he readily found other examples of cultural, ethnic, and racial conflict to illustrate his points. Since September 11, 2001, and the subsequent epidemic of terror and massive refugee suffering throughout the world, Volf revised Exclusion and Embrace to account for the evolving dynamics of inter-ethnic and international strife.

Pastor and New York Times bestselling author Timothy Keller outlines the reasons why forgiveness has to be a central part of everyone’s lives.

“To err is human, to forgive divine,” has long been aspirational. But our complicated modern world has questioned the benefits of forgiveness. Timothy Keller passionately defends the central role forgiveness has to play in our lives, and shows readers how and why forgiveness is the only way forward in an imperfect world.

Forgiving anyone in a meaningful way is one of the hardest things a person can do. If you do not forgive, resentment and vengeance consume you. It is impossible to move past transgression without forgiveness, but few people have the resources and the tools to forgive others fully and move on with their lives. Forgiveness is an essential skill, a moral imperative, and a religious belief that cuts right to the core of what it means to be human. In Forgive, Timothy Keller shows readers why it is so important and how to do it, explaining in detail the steps you need to take in order to move on without sacrificing either justice or your humanity.

Journey Through the Storm unpacks Musalaha’s thirty years of practical experience building bridges, healing division, and following Christ in the context of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Composed of essays, curriculum excerpts, interviews, and real-life testimonies, this collection offers insight into the theory, theology, and application of Musalaha’s six stages of reconciliation. It is a powerful, hopeful, and deeply realistic look at the demands and rewards of transforming the “other” into a neighbor and an enemy into a friend.

True reconciliation isn’t humanly possible but it is always possible with Christ. Reconciliation is unique to the church and it begins with God; thus we must first be reconciled to God before we can be reconciled to each other. In ”The Path to Reconciliation” experience the supremely personal ministry between God and people, perhaps the most intimate because it is about reversing the original sin and all the consequences of man’s choice to disobey God and fall. Look at how Jesus brings about the supernatural transaction of reconciliation by identifying with the death, burial and resurrection of Christ in order to be the people God has created us to be, a reconciled people.

Conflict is inevitable, but peace, especially among Christians, is essential. When conflict turns into peace, frustration becomes clarity and turmoil becomes unity. When conflict turns into peace, God is glorified. But how do we find peace without ignoring our problems? How do we pursue unity without compromising on our principles?

The Path of a Peacemaker offers a simple, proven path to a lifestyle of peace. It guides you through an examination of your own personal story, identifying the origins of your hopes and fears. It invites you to understand and embrace God’s approach to conflict, take responsibility for your own part in conflict, and connect with others in a spirit of humility as you learn to listen first, ask for forgiveness, and move forward, even if the conflict remains unresolved.

Christians too often disregard the depth and thoughtfulness of Jewish, Muslim, and Middle Eastern Christian concepts of justice. To fill this lack, this book explores the rich development of justice within each Abrahamic faith as it relates specifically to the Palestinian/Israeli context. From a uniquely Palestinian Christian perspective, this book offers a theological framework through the concept of reconciling justice to facilitate better understanding for multiethnic, political, and religious encounters as a prophetic imagination for peace and reconciliation in the region.

Sokreaksa S. Himm was a young member of a large family in Siemreap City, Cambodia. When the country fell to the Khmer Rouge in April 17, 1975, his family joined the exodus to the jungle villages.

As the young Khmer Rouge soldiers consolidated their grip, the deaths increased. Anyone who complained; anyone educated; anyone an informer disliked: all were “sent to study”, killed. Teenage boys were brainwashed into amoral, vindictive thugs.

Finally the day dawned when the family were marched to a ready dug grave in a jungle clearing: one by one they fell as they were hacked down. Sokreaksa, gravely wounded, was covered by the bodies of his brothers and sisters. His executioners walked away, laughing.

That morning Sokreaska climbed from the mass grave. Hatred burned in his heart. Could he possibly forgive his family’s killers?

This book addresses the universal theological dimension of reconciliation in the context of the Israeli Messianic Jewish and Palestinian Christian divide.

Palestinian Christians and Israeli Messianic Jews share a belief in Jesus as the son of God and Messiah. Often, though, that is all they have in common. This remarkable book, written in collaboration by a local Palestinian Christian and an Israeli Messianic Jew, seeks to bridge this gap by addressing head on, divisive theological issues (as well as their political implications) such as land, covenant, prophecy and eschatology which separate their two communities.

The struggle for reconciliation is painful and often extremely difficult for all of us. This unique work seeks to show a way forward.

Canada’s Indian Residential School (IRS) system will forever remain one of the country’s most shameful legacies. These church-run, government-funded institutions took Indigenous children against their will and subjected them to abuse, neglect, and dangerous living conditions in the name of assimilation into white European culture and religion—what colonizers considered so-called mainstream Canadian culture.

The IRS system was a cultural genocide spanning more than a century, yet one facet of a complex scheme by European colonizers to eliminate Indigenous Peoples, whom they deemed too different to function in their society.

As part of a growing Indigenous Rights movement, Indigenous communities have more recently demanded justice from Canada via protests, lawsuits, and intense lobbying.

One of those activist-led lawsuits resulted in the largest class-action settlement in Canadian history—mandating apologies from the Canadian government, official church bodies, and other participants in the horrors. It recommended policy changes, and allocated approximately $2 billion to distribute among Survivors of the IRS system.

The settlement also led to the 2008 creation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, a government-sanctioned body that spent several years:

– Hearing testimony from residential schools Survivors within the Indigenous, Métis, and Inuit communities
– Compiling a comprehensive and accurate report on the atrocities committed and the intergenerational effects of the system
– Recommending far-reaching policy changes and fostering comprehensive educational programs that would prevent such atrocities from ever happening again

When the Truth and Reconciliation Commission released its Final Report in 2015, it recommended 94 Calls to Action for the Canadian government to right such horrifying wrongs. This watershed moment in the Indigenous Rights movement marked the country’s preliminary attempts to begin dismantling the systemic racism devastating Indigenous Peoples in Canada.

CLICK TO VIEW Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s 95 Calls to Action

With God On Our Side takes a look at the theology of Christian Zionism, which teaches that because the Jews are God’s chosen people, they have a divine right to the land of Israel. Aspects of this belief system lead some Christians in the West to give uncritical support to Israeli government policies, even those that privilege Jews at the expense of Palestinians, leading to great suffering among Muslim and Christian Palestinians alike and threatening Israel’s security as a whole.

Is there a Biblical alternative for Christians who want to love and support the people of Israel? A way that doesn’t favor one people group over another but instead promotes peace and reconciliation for both Jews and Palestinians?

Director: Porter Speakman Jr. Writers: Stephanie Hicks, Kevin Miller Starring: Evan Albertyn, Gary Burge, Ron Dart

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John Paul Lederach is an American Professor of International Peacebuilding at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana, and concurrently Distinguished Scholar at Eastern Mennonite University. He has written widely on conflict resolution and mediation. He holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Colorado. In 1994 he became the founding director for the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding at Eastern Mennonite University where he was a professor. He currently works for the foundation Humanity United. Lederach is a Mennonite Christian, and as he wrote in his 1999 book Journey Toward Reconciliation, his Christian faith has affected both his thinking and application of non-violent solutions to conflict.

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Dr. Terry LeBlanc holds an interdisciplinary PhD from Asbury Theological Seminary, specializing in Theology and Anthropology and serves as adjunct professor at Portland Seminary in Oregon, Acadia University and Divinity College in Wolfville, Whitley College at the University of Divinity in Melbourne, Fuller Seminary, and Tyndale University College and Seminary in Toronto, where he is also program elder for the University B.Ed. program. Terry has accrued over 39 years of community work in global Indigenous contexts including as an educator in theology, cultural anthropology, and community development practice. In addition to being the Executive Director of Indigenous Pathways, Terry is also Director of NAIITS: An Indigenous Learning Community (NAIITS).

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