Theologian, missiologist and educator Ruth Padilla DeBorst led the last presentation on the second day of the Fourth Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization. Representing Latin America, the Costa Rica-based Argentinean began her message by quoting John 20:20-21 as the last words of Jesus to his disciples.
According to her biography on the website of Western Theological Seminary (WTS), where she is a professor, Padilla DeBorst longs to see peace and justice embraced in the beautiful and broken world we call home. Wife of one and mother of many, theologian, missiologist, educator and storyteller, she has been involved in leadership development and theological education for integral mission in her native Latin America for several decades.
Speaking in English, Padilla Deborst began her biblical reflection with “Peace be with you as the father has sent me, so I am sending you” (v.21). From there she gave a historical, social and economic account of what was happening in the world at the time when the Lord was on earth, to begin to ask in what capacity Jesus was sent into the world.
“He was sent into the world, not as a royal prince on a gilded Roman throne, but as a child of a poor woman and a manual laborer, first forced to flee for their lives to an estranged land; sent not as a high priest on a seat of honor in the Sanhedrin, but as a roaming teacher with nowhere to rest. He was sent not to busy himself with religious rights, but in his own words to proclaim good news to the poor, to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind,” she said.
In addition to teaching at WTS, she serves with the Community of Interdisciplinary Theological Studies (CETI, a learning community with students from all over Latin America), and the INFEMIT (International Fellowship for Mission as Transformation) Networking Team.
In her account, the daughter of the famous theologian René Padilla, assured that “the farming people of Judea in Micah's days were suffering not only the anxiety of the impending invasion of an enemy, military forces, but especially the oppression of corrupt governing elites.”
These peoples “were being forced to pay taxes and leave their fields to build cities for the wealthy few. Their lands were being expropriated to feed the greed of the rich. While they were forcibly displaced, their young men were being recruited for the army and their young women were being taken as sex slaves for the Royal Court.”
The theologian asked participants: “Does any of this sound familiar? Whether we like it or not, an honest look at our world today reveals many of the same injustices, blatant gaps that do not reflect God's intent for the world. God loves. One overarching justice gap that dishonor God is wealth inequality. God created a world of abundance, capable of sustaining the flourishing of life of the entire created order. However, the richest 1% of our planet owns half the riches of the entire world. And while the wealth of the world's five richest men has more than doubled since 2020, nearly 5 billion people have been made poorer. Poverty is the most visible face of injustice.”
She also mentioned the inequality that exists between men and women, where women get paid less for the same work men do, with equal or greater working hours, or are overexposed to low-quality, low-value jobs. “We [women] are far more likely to be victims of sexual harassment or downright abuse in Christian communities,” she said.
“Although women compose the greater number of active members [in the church], men overwhelmingly hold the leadership positions. While women are restricted in the use of the gifts, the spirit has granted them solely because we are women. Discrimination also affects people with physical and mental disabilities limiting their pay and opportunities in many realms of life. In addition, the digital divide, the difference between those that have and don't have access to digital tools like internet, computers, smartphones. What we all use means nearly one third of the global population remains disconnected from a virtual world and deprived of the opportunities you and I take for granted,” she said.
With energetic eloquence Deborst pointed out that “the AI industry is owned and its algorithms informed by the same five men I mentioned earlier. Finally, the Industrial War machine continues grinding up people in places often bolstered by religiously ideological theologies that relativize the image of God in each and every person. Now, if this is the current situation, what are God's people called to in the presence of such unjust realities? What was Micah's message from God to the powerful people of his day amid their religiously masked and unjust lifestyle? Micah's first reminder to the people of Judea about God's gracious intervention on their behalf throughout history. He then exhorted them to remember, to listen, to repent, and to act in accordance with God's own character. Finally, he summed up God's expectation in the well-known question we know as Micah 6:8, He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God,” she emphasized.
“What God requires of God's people then and now is no secret. God's intent was clear from the very beginning and is made clear throughout Scripture, both for them and for us.”
Quoting from memory the text of Deuteronomy 10:12 which reads, “And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God ask of you but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in obedience to him, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul,” the speaker showed how Jesus himself taught the same to his disciples. “If you love me, keep my commands.” (John 14:15)
“There is no room for doubt,” she pointed out. “God is worshiped not by rights, religious festivities, or even mission activism, all practices that can simply serve as masks, but by ethical obedience. What makes God's people such are not superficial expressions of religious piety, Christianese jargon, worship jingles or colonialist theologies that justify and finance oppression under the guise of some dispensational.”
“Micah's summary includes three intertwined callings. First, the posture expected in relation to God. God's people both then and now are called to walk humbly with our God. This involves living in deep reverence of our creator, acknowledging our frailty and utter dependence on God. It entails questioning any other power that might challenge that ultimate allegiance and submission. There's no space in this picture for equating the claims of nation or ethnicity over the claims of God's reign of justice for all. Humility before God opens us up to the work of the spirit, inspiring us to love what God loves.”
Micah's second call indicated that “it is to love mercy or kindness. This points to the core motivation that should underlie all our actions. Deep solidarity and love. It demands unmasking our selfish self-protective drives in allowing God's compassion to move us as prophetic peacemakers and to shout to the fore winds that there is no ideology. So right, no religion, so holy, no race, so superior”
“We are called today to remember, to listen, to repent, and to act in compassionate love in accordance with God's own character,” she added.
“Finally, the third identifying marker of God's people is the pursuit of justice, the practice of social economic and political action for the common good. This requires unmasking our comfortable self-seeking for the sake of the good of the whole community. The supreme model for this practice is none other than God, the sovereign Lord, as we read in Deuteronomy 10. For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who shows no partiality and accepts no bribes. He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the foreigner residing among you, giving them food and clothing. And you are to love those who are foreigners, for you yourselves were foreigners in Egypt. There is no room in this picture for silence when fellow human beings are being robbed of home, land, livelihood, or life itself, not in the Judea of Micah's day, not anywhere else.” she emphasized.
Finally, she pointed out that “we are sent as Jesus was into the world. We are called today to remember, to listen, to repent, and to seek justice in accordance with God's own character, to seek God's reign and God's justice. May the spirit lead us to yearn, seek, work, and pray as humble, compassionate channels of God's justice until our Lord returns and justice and peace finally embrace. Amen.”
Originally published by Diario Cristiano, Christian Daily International's Spanish edition.
