The Perspective of Justice

No Greater Challenge

The kingdom of God is near! The time is short! Reform your lives, just as the people of Nineveh turned from their evil way. Leave behind your attachment to possessions and security, and come follow Jesus.

There is much for which we have to repent: poverty, hunger, homelessness, discrimination, war, the destruction of the earth and the wasting of its resources. Forty days more and Nineveh shall be destroyed.

The Christian believes what Paul wrote, that the world as we know it is passing away. Ahead lies the kingdom of God, and each of us must choose between solidarity with a world headed for destruction and solidarity with a world ruled by God.

Things can change for us, as they did for Nineveh when they believed God, who shows sinners the way and guides the humble to justice.

No greater challenge or higher priority can be imagined than the development and perfection of a theology of peace suited to a civilization poised on the brink of self-destruction. 

U.S. Bishops, The Challenge of Peace, 1983:230

Gerald Darring

**From Saint Louis University