Choosing Christ in the World

Abstract

More often than not, great changes in human history have ensued from the un-conscious dialogue of an individual human being with the great historical forces which have been in motion for perhaps centuries before his or her birth. The individual in question crystallizes the aspirations of his or her contemporaries and voices them, channelling as it were their spiritual energy, sparking off a movement bigger than the idiosyncrasies that initially set him or her in motion. Mohamed Bouazizi’s self-immolation on 17 December 2010 served as a catalyst for the Tunisian Revolution and the wider Arab Spring. The manifesto of Stephan Hessel, former French diplomat, entitled Indignez-vous!, has much to do with the birth of movements such as the Spanish indignados, the French indignés, the Portuguese movement Geração à rasca, Occupy Wall Street in the United States, Y’en a marre in Senegal and a host of other movements across the globe which strive to humanize our world. The 2011 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded jointly to Ellen Johnson Sirfleaf, Leymah Gbowee and Tawakkol Karman “for their non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women’s rights to full par-ticipation in peace-building work.” All these men and women filled with ubuntu join a host of others such as Nelson Mandela, Gandhi, Desmond Tutu, Martin Luther King Jr., Wangari Maathai, etc. whose lives and actions have gone a long way to render our world a little bit more human. If these and others were able to crystallize our aspirations and give them meaning, it was certainly because they were grounded in something or someone (?) bigger than them. They are like trees whose roots dip into the pure sap of life.