Thought Leaders Series: 2018
The redactors of the Old Testament, take us on a journey from the book of Genesis, where Yahweh brings order into a chaotic world (in their telling of the creation myth), into Exodus where Yahweh introduces chaos into the order, in his quest to deliver them, owing to his covenant with Abraham.
But perhaps the most profound lesson one can deduce from the book of Exodus is centred around the concept of self-offering (Kenosis). This theory is also embedded into the story of other key figures, for example, Abraham, David, Esther, Ruth, Ezra, Nehemiah and Jesus.
In the case of Moses, we are introduced to a man who grew up in nobility, but chose to immerse or self-offer himself in the struggle to redeem his people from pain, shame, and suffering. This story will go to inspire many for centuries, including Dr Martin Luther King Jnr.
The New Testament writers will use it as a template in their theology of Jesus. We are told that like Moses, Jesus descended from heaven and took the form of humanity in a bid to immerse himself into our pain and suffering, and like Moses, redeems humanity.
However, to demonstrate how far removed the Church (especially in the developing World) is from this principle; we preach ownership of private jets, instead of holding governments to account for the state of our roads and transportation system.
Instead of holding governments to account for the stock of social housing, we preach private home ownership. To a very large extent this in fact led to the recent recession and the subprime lending disaster. Where people (many of whom were Christians) lost their properties as they could not keep up with exorbitant interest rates and mortgage repayments, owing to their credit rating. As pastors preached, people testified about home ownership, in some circles it even got competitive. Some of these pastors profited from this industrial scale fraud.
That aside, instead of inspiring people to pursue careers, vocations, education, or entrepreneurship; they overwhelm them with church activities and programmes, even to the detriment of the few that are in business, employment, education, or training.
Instead of facilitating social action projects like building schools, hospitals, roads, creating employment, and setting funds aside for those that need help with business startups, or those that run into financial difficulties, we build more churches, enlarge existing facilities, broadcast to the World on costly media outlets, and accumulate wealth to ourselves.
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Human Capital Development
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