THE Christian view is clearly that all of God’s people are of equal value.
The Apostle Paul said: ‘In Christ there is no Greek or Jew’.
That means you can’t have systems of slavery, or the Holocaust, or race-based systems like apartheid unless you view certain people as non-people – or a lower grade of person.
So, then, we must mourn equally for Israeli victims of terrorist violence and for people of Gaza killed by government military action.
Back in the 1980s we would have been recognizing seemingly intractable political situations not only in Israel/ Palestine, but also in South Africa and in Northern Ireland, where there seemed to be no way forward.
Indeed, of those we might have been seeing Israel as most likely to make progress, with the Begin government making peace overtures with Egypt, and then the Oslo Accord between Rabin and the PLO.
But over the next 15 years it was in South Africa and in Northern Ireland that we saw peaceful (altough not perfect) transitions, through intense efforts towards peacemaking by politicians showing true leadership.
One feature of both of those community reconciliations was that people previously regarded as terrorists became tolerated, even respected as political leaders – Nelson Mandela as the obvious example in South Africa, but also Martin McGuinness in Northern Ireland working harmoniously with Ian Paisley.
I think it was Winston Churchill who said: ‘Jaw, jaw is better than war, war’.
David Morgan is a member of Wokingham Methodist Church, where Sunday services take place at 10.30am.
For information, visit: wokinghammethodist.org.uk
