Archive: January 2011...

Editorial...

If you’ve ever read the Soul Survivor mag before then you may well have read all sorts of stories about our writers. Generally these stories aren’t the most fascinating; food poisoning, haircut choices, car journeys and even a stint as a Care Bear in a primary school nativity play, have all featured in some random connections we’ve tried to make between life and following Jesus.

But over the next few months, instead of writing about our (fairly mundane and dull) lives, we’re going to look at the lives of some seriously inspirational characters that you may or may not have heard about. These are all people who have - or who are - living out their faith in ways that so clearly display God’s grace, compassion and love that we won’t need to even think of clever ways of tying them to any Biblical truth. They are people who reveal Jesus to the world around them. They are people that make us proud to say that we are Christians! So, here we go...

Legend Number One: Archbishop Oscar Romero

Oscar Romero was a Bishop of San Salvador, a city in El Salvador in the seventies. At first he seems an unlikely chap to be featured here as for most of his career he was known as a pretty conservative Catholic figure. But things change.

As with most Central and South American countries in the seventies and early eighties, El Salvador was not a great place to be. Political and social unrest, military coups and various powerful groups trying to gain control and leadership meant that violence, disappearances, assassinations and fear were commonplace across the country. It was in this climate that Oscar Romero was named Archbishop, and it was in this public position that he spent the last three incredible years of his life, speaking out against injustice and violence.

Everything switched on for him when a close friend, Father Rutilio was murdered for questioning the ruling powers. After this shocking incident Romero is quoted as saying:
"When I looked at Rutilio lying there dead I thought, 'If they have killed him for doing what he did, then I too have to walk the same path".

So he did. He got involved in radio broadcasts, wrote articles and used his weekly services to speak about God’s justice. He highlighted exactly how the Salvadoran government’s use of torture, fear, violence and murder were totally against God’s kingdom. He was radical. In the face of death threats, intimidation and censorship he stood with the poorest and spoke of love, peace and grace. He asked his listeners to forgive the people who had killed, maimed and tortured their family members. He asked the government to repent and change their practices. He asked God for grace, peace and change.

Faced with a society smothered with violence, torture, murder and fear he spoke of the beauty of the cross:

“We have never preached violence, except the violence of love, which left Christ nailed to a cross, the violence that we must each do to ourselves, to overcome our selfishness and such cruel inequalities among us. The violence we preach is not the violence of the sword, the violence of hatred. It is the violence of love, of brotherhood, the violence that wills to beat weapons into sickles for work”

A day after a public statement where he called on Christian Salvadoran soldiers to obey God’s higher order and stop carrying out government repression and violations of basic human rights, he was shot. Even more significantly, witnesses says he was shot whilst leading a Eucharist service, with the fatal bullet taking his life as he lifted the cup of wine (at which point the leader of the service usually says; ‘This is my blood, shed for you’). 

His death was not in vain. At his funeral 250,000 people gathered in a protest against the government repression. Soldiers panicked, people died, but something had changed and many cite the events as the turning point that began to bring freedom and democratic processes back to Salvadoran society.

Oscar Romero. Legend. There’s loads to be inspired by and you can read more about him online, so do some research! We also totally recommend the book of his quotes and thoughts called ‘The Violence of Love’; its pretty challenging. 

We’ll be back next month with another inspirational character, so enjoy checking out the rest of this edition’s articles for some top thoughts on all sorts of different stuff.

Have fun

Dan
editor@soulsurvivor.com