All about elders of the faith and peace

It is wise for any house builder to calculate his expected cost in comparison to his wealth before deciding to build a house. The house that is being built is peace and the problem I see is in the adequacy of the resources at hand. The resources we have are God, the word of God, and elders of the faith, respectively. Peace can be built by God and the word of God, with the support of elders of the faith. When elders of the faith are led by God and the word of God, and when they have the substance of a reliable elder of the faith, peace is possible. What is missing is the substance of a good elder of the faith. What is missing is reliance on God. What is missing is reliance on the word of God. The elders of the faith are useful when the lord works through them and when they have the substance of a good elder of the faith who is guided by the good book, not when they rely on themselves, their wit, and their knowledge, and when they lack the substance of a good elder of the faith. I am not trying to be disrespectful to the elders of the faith, just trying to shine a light on their dark side, so all they have can be nothing but the light of the lord.

 

Let us understand the basics first. Why are elders, in general, and elders of the faith, in particular, very effective in mediating conflicts? The first advantage of both is better knowledge of harmonious ways, either from experience, as an elder, or from the good book and guidance of God, as a faithful. Beyond knowledge, a good elder and a good elder of the faith have smooth and charismatic ways that can address critically disputed points in a way that is acceptable to both sides of the conflict. They know how to build harmony from long experience of failure, success, and observation and guidance of the good book and God himself, and they are very agreeable when they make points, after all, God speaks through the faithful elders. They have ways of making you swallow hard rock as a soft juice. When dealing with complex problems like ours, however, more reliance on God is advisable. As we are the source of the problem. After all, it is self-evident that darkness cannot defeat darkness and evil cannot destroy evil. We are the problem, and God is the solution. We need to let God speak through us, and it is better to keep our darkness in check, as we cannot solve the problem with the same ideas and tools that created it. It is naivety to keep doing the usual and to expect a different result.

 

Another, important ingredient of their effectiveness is the respect they command and the associated social power they implicitly exercise in the community. People listen to them because people respect them and they are being glorified by the lord. Beyond respect, any bad apple will also accept their decision because they are socially respected and s/he fears social pressure otherwise. If they have the backing of God and are known as persons of God, people also accept their decision due to fear of God. So the recipes for being a good elder of the faith are knowledge of harmonious ways, social respect with implicit social power, and excellent skill in communication but most of all guidance and backing of God. The most important component and maybe also the single most important weapon they can use, therefore, is Jesus himself. They need to depend on the wisdom of the lord, guidance of the lord, and wit of the lord himself, as nothing is impossible to the lord though people are bounded in their capability. If our mind and our way created the problem, we need to take a lower sit while giving the higher sit to the lord himself. We need to pray for guidance from the lord himself. Supporting one political point against the other will not solve the problem but will take the problem to the church. We are not going to solve the problem of politics by taking sides, but we are going to divide the Assembly of God in terms of political lines. A natural man can be naive; s/he is flesh and bone after all. Naivety is an insult to us, however, as we have the mind of the lord. If we are naive, it implies we are not following the lord but trying to lead the lord, the lord himself, into our darkness and ignorance.

 

Now let us see the elders of the faith who are trying to mediate conflict in Ethiopia from this perspective. The first question is: are they socially respected by all sides of the dispute and do they have universal social power? The second question is: do they know harmonious ways that can be used to settle the complex dispute of the country? The third question is: do they have the communication skills to make two opposing sides agree? The last question is: are they mouthpieces of Jesus, letting the lord speak through them? To rephrase the last question, are the elders of the faith letting the spirit of God speak through them, or are they speaking their personal political views and preferences as the universal truth? My understanding is that, with all due respect, most elders of the faith and their efforts are poorly developed in all of the above lines. The most damaging problem that I observe, however, is that they are depending on their human ways rather than letting the lord take the wheel. An important disclaimer that I need to make before I go into the detail, is that all critical points made below do not equally apply to all faithful elders of the faith, but they do reflect the dominant problem of the general process.

 

Let us start with respect and social power. Is there an elder of the faith who is respected in all regions, by all political movements, by all political parties, by government and opposition, by rebel militia and government soldiers, and by freedom fighters and patriotic movements? Such elders do not exist in Ethiopia, because the elders were playing child games for decades than being elders. I hope the lord can have hidden 8,000 elders, but I see none. In reality: one side sees them as toy-solders and a pawn of the other side, and the other side tries to use them as a tool of their dirty politics; one side sees them as freedom fighters and the other side sees them as terrorists. We have elders of the faith trying to save either Ethiopia as a nation, or Oromia, Tigray, or Amhara, as a region, but neither all the faithful nor everyone else. Some worry about Ethiopia but not every Ethiopian, some worry about Oromo but not the Amhara, Some cry about Tigray but not about the Amhara, and for others safety of Amhara is the first and most important but not the safety of Oromo and Tigray. Those are our elders. They are not even the Pope in the chase game of politics, though we are supposed to be the chase masters of this world with the mind of the lord, but pawns of different sides, nothing but toy soldiers of lesser men. Yes, elders of the faith of one side are respected on their side but hated by others. Then how can you become the elder of all sides to help them into the light from darkness? When your social acceptance as an elder and elder of the faith is at the bottom of everything respectful, at least on one side of the conflicting group, what power do you have to work as an elder or elder of the faith? You can be a political pawn of one side but not a spiritual guide of all sides. When you talk, the wise from the opposite side will smile at your naivety and the fool will insult you. You cannot harvest respect when you sow naivety and pure selfishness for decades, what is growing is what you plant on the soil for decades. 

 

Respect is earned, it is not entitled. It is earned when you help the weak and discipline the strong. It is accumulated when you stand for the oppressed and advise the evil person out of his way. It flourishes without question when people who hate you, for whatever reason, have to accept there is salt and light in you. Respect is harvested when you are a just, merciful, kind, loving, unconditional lover of everyone, and when you are known as the light and salt of the community. If people never saw you as a just, fair, honest, and reliable elder, no rebel, government official, businessman, intellectual, or any individual will be worried to know that you are not happy about something because you have never been their light in the darkness and their guide in their confusion.

 

Let me explain my point in practical detail from our recent history. Ok you want to bless and pray for government officials and leaders because it is written, but do you visit your brother in prison, who is in prison due to political descent, and do you support his family in the due time, because this is also written? We know the answer to this. Now if the imprisoned brother becomes a rebel, can s/he listen to you as an elder or elder of the faith? Now let us turn the mirror to the other side. Ok, you may think your ethnic group is oppressed and you are politically active for that, but when some from your ethnic group sin and do evil, do you oppose and make a stand against your group? Or do you play politics with justice, right, honesty, and the word of God? If you were covering the rape of his sister or torture of his brother, could he accept you as a good elder and elder of the faith then after? This is the reality as we face it and this is why elders and elders of the faith are without universal power in Ethiopia. Their power is bounded and also very fragile. It is bounded around their favorite group. It is fragile because the day they behave differently they will lose it.   

 

At this point, it is important to unite the elders of the faith from different political movements first, before you can make peace between opposing groups of the nation. Those opposing elders need to decide if their soul or the world is more important to them. What is it for a man to gain the whole world and to lose his/her soul? After all, anyone who hates his brother and claims to belong to the lord is a liar because without love all is worthless. The first step, therefore, is to reconcile the elders of the faith from all sides through God, by God, and toward God. The needed reconciliation is not toward political views but toward God and this can be done only through God. Let the lord speak through you, and silence your views by hanging yourself on the cross. I will explain this point in great detail, below, and the point that I am making here is that before you can heal Ethiopia, heal the body of Christ by making peace with your elder of the faith from the other side. Amhara protestant elders supporting Fano first make peace with Oromo protestant elders supporting OLA. You serve one God if you cannot cross this line first, therefore, I think you have no hope in other areas.

 

In the long run, however, since there is no wrong time to do the right thing, I do think that elders of the faith do need to rebuild the influence that they lost back. Be an elder of the faith of the strong and the weak, the rich and the poor, government and opposition, the police and the criminal, the rebel and the solder, the ethnic centrist and national centrist politician, and all people in general. You should become the light that shows them the way in darkness because the word of God that comes out of your mouth and the light and salt that shine in your way of life will guide them out of the darkness. When some are oppressed by the powerful, your face and your hand should be near to help them; when people are becoming powerful and wealthy your guidance and discipline should guide them on the right path in life; when people are suffering, your hand should be there to comfort them and help them. You should be an ambassador of Jesus and Jesus knows how to shine your light bright and how to make you acceptable in the heart of people. Until then I think Lord has to play the leading role in this line. Lord has to create conditions that will make them accept your salt and light because it is the word of God that comes out of your mouth. This means people have to suffer seriously in the darkness of their sinful choice before they can accept the way of the lord as Holy. I am sure God is working on the solution, so just be helpful by lighting the light of the lord at the mouth of the dark ditch that the country is. What is needed is the light of the lord, not your darkness.

 

Knowing that universal respect for elders of the faith is lacking, the next issue is related to their knowledge and wisdom. What I view, from my perspective, is not an observation of a wise elder and wise elders of the faith making wise moves, what I see is either pawns or tools of one side at work, or an outright naivety in approach, with some noticeable exceptions that I don’t want to name. Ethiopian political problem is not simple, it has a long history of complex processes and anyone who knows the politics knows it. You cannot lecture political solutions as you are an expert on the issue because you decide to have a political solution at some point. You are the man in the uncharted jungle when people have been living in that jungle for years. The first thing you should do is not lecture them on how they should live, as most naïve elders of the faith try to do. The first thing you should do is learn the way of the jungle, so you can guide people out of the jungle at last. Have contact with all sides, then listen and don’t talk. Listen, listen, and listen, and pray, pray, and pray for wisdom from God. Please, let the lord take the wheel. Then God can open your eyes to the solution. Don’t rely on your naivety, rely on the lord for the solution. If you have no solution, pray that the lord can have an alternative way, without you. Fasting and prayer are necessary for you too because you will continuously inhale toxic political speech and you will notice that our politics is toxic. I am sure you will thank God that you don’t have to breathe this toxic air all day of your life. So, it is important to detoxify yourself through fasting, praying, and reading the word of God from a good book. Think of yourself as a doctor who has to touch the wound of the patient but who must clean himself then after. To restate what is obvious, the two things that you need are to learn the problem first, how painful it is, and most importantly to let the lord take the wheel. Your role should be to pray, fast, and praise the lord while contemplating the detailed nature of the problem, and let the lord speak through you. You, who are part of the problem, cannot solve the problem, as darkness cannot defeat darkness. Let the light of the lord shine through you because darkness has never and ever defeated the light of the lord. We are not wise enough, but lord ended is.

 

The last issue is how you communicate. You have to know the way you communicate to people in conflict is not the same as the way you communicate to people in harmony. The way you communicate with your friends is not the same as the way you communicate with your enemies. The way you communicate to those who love you is not the same as the way you communicate to those who love to hate you. Social intelligence demands looking into the minds of people to understand how they think so you can talk to their minds. The Bible says that a fool knows what he is saying but not what others listen to. You need to make them listen to you, and for that, you need to know how they think and how they see you. Your speech should not made to convince you and your friends that your old ideas are always right, your biases are just, your lies are true, and your partial truth is universal facts. You are not communicating, otherwise, but self-deluding. You should speak to make friends out of your enemies. For that know your and your enemy’s sanity and insanity, so your sanity can interact with his/her sanity. Do not let your insanity lose, because you want to swim in your lies. Don’t speak to let your insanity lose, but to defeat the insanity of your enemy and yours through sanity. Don’t talk to yourself, talk to those who love to hate you with wisdom. Our sanity is Jesus, our sanity is the word of God, our sanity is the Holy Spirit, and our sanity is love. The insanity within us is we and we need to hang ourselves on the cross. 

 

Imagine an OLF or a TPLF supporter. How far do they invest in ethnic politics? Do you think a lecture from you will make them abandon it? Can your insanity heel their insanity? Let us assume for the sake of argument that ethnic politics is the problem. So in the long run, we have to eliminate ethnic politics could be the logical decision. But does it mean now OLF and TPLF have to accept they are wrong and their enemies are right because you say so? When you start to lecture about such politics, are you letting your insanity lose or are you talking to OLF and TPLF supporters? Worst, some elders of the faith talk like the political cadre of different regional and federal governments, and others speak as external relations office of rebels. If a salt lost its test, what is its worth? That is why the opposite side sees you as worthless because the light inside you is nothing but darkness, though your poppet masters adore you as a child adores his toys. You are Jesus’ own and it is an insult for you to be poppet of a lesser man.

 

To have such a simplistic understanding of politics is naivety and to talk it in public as wisdom is shameful, especially to the born-again faithful who represent Jesus. Your mind lacks understanding and your mouth lacks wisdom. Our problem is not black and white, it is complex. It is not a fight between Angels and demons; it is a fight between different sinful people with different political ideologies and social standing. You are not a face-booker or blogger to speak such naivety, as people expect better from you because you represent Jesus. Have you seen how local elders speak, they are fascinating people, and they have ways to make you swallow a stone-like fluid. That is what is needed in your communication. You need to see to the mind of people and to communicate in a way that is acceptable to them. The good question is: why are you communicating wrong? Because you are you! Unfortunately, we don’t need you. We need the lord to speak through you. You are a person of God not because you speak your mind but because the lord speaks through you. What we need you to do is not to speak your mind, but to listen to all sides and to fast and pray on those issues toward the lord. What we need is the word of God, because the spirit of the lord can examine everything but is examined by no one. After all, who can know the mind of the lord? So pray, fast, and look for wisdom from God. Give us God and please hang yourself on the cross. We don’t need you, we need the lord.

 

So if I boil it down, what you need to do is fast, and pray for wisdom and solution from God. Besides, talk to all sides and focus more on listening and less on talking. Most importantly, before you can restore peace between Amhara and Tigray politicians, first restore peace between Tigray and Amhara protestant elders and faithful followers. Before peace can be made between the Prosperity party and OLA, first their elders of the faith need to talk and make peace with each other. Before Fano and Kero can talk to each other, first protestant Fano and protestant Kero need to make peace and solve their difference. If you cannot solve those problems among your faithful who fear Jesus and who can be united by the good book and their faith in the lord, how are you going to settle it when you are talking to the political snakes and vipers of the politics? Before trying the devils, exercise with your Angels, please.

 

Another critical point is that don’t lecture the lord when you pray, ask for the way of the lord and that way may not be what you wish for. Don’t depend on your intelligence but on the wisdom of the lord. Before the house can rise upward, it needs to be founded deeper, in the ways of the lord, first. Last but not least, you need to focus on teaching the good book. Our heart needs to soften and the rock in our heart needs to be changed into a human heart. Word of God is our vaccine, our medicine, and the solution to all of our problems. I know this not from theory but from practice. Once people start spending time with the bible, they will not be able to listen to the political debate any more. The political air of hate, conflict, war, misinformation, and disagreement will chock their breath, and will run fast out of it to breathe the fresh air of the word of God. The word of God does heal angry minds and misguided hearts.

 

My last point is about who needs to be part of this project. I think we can divide the faithful into two groups. Those of the past work of God and those of the future work of God. If you are waiting for the future hand of God that will open the new mission of the worldwide church, if you are waiting for the restoration of the faith and the church at a global scale, and if your focus is on what is coming, stay out of such issues. You can pray, fast, and work with the elders but stay out of the elders’ project. Ethiopian politics is a toxic wave run by venomous snakes and vipers, and saving the spirit is more important than saving the flesh. Let us not destroy the future work of the spirit to benefit our flesh. Don’t complicate yourself with such politics, because the political snakes are very venomous, and the work of God is more important. Play a supportive role by helping the elders so they can help themselves, the nation, and God. The elders can afford to pay the price because most of their work is not in the future.

 

Why should those who look into the future avoid this issue? The antidote of faith is us versus them politics. When you talk, the expected step of the devil is to give you a label, as a supporter of this or that group. Having a label by the devil is our crown and we should be happy for that. If they must label us, however, they must label us for our word of God and godly behavior but not for our political stand. Our label becomes our glory when they despise us for preaching the word of God, which is always true, not for our political stand, which may not be true. Political stand creates war and division. The faith flourishes under persecution and unconditional love, not war and division. If protestant belongs to the government or some rebels, and other religions belong to other political groups, the gospel of peace will become a gospel of war and the shoe of peace will be a shoe of blood. Ones you are labeled as TPLF own in Amhara, Fano own in Tigray, Prosperity own in Welega, and as government poppet by the opposition, people will reject you outright rather than listening to the gospel. If you are waiting for move of the heaven, don’t complicate your life with earthly politics. Let the elders who are finishing their journey and who fought the good fight of faith, add one glory to their achievement and be helpful from outside.

 

Our dear elder Noah, who built the ark of our faith to save us, you are drunk and necked, please cover your shame because the name of the Lord is on you. Don’t see yourself as another media anchor, facebooker, or blogger but as an Ambassador of the lord, and be obedient to your government, as a mouthpiece of heaven. You are not a spokesperson of a political party, opposition, or government but a spokesperson of the lord. Represent Jesus and let only Jesus speak through you, so you can be the master of the chase game of life rather than a pawn and toy solder of political snakes and vipers, who are lesser persons compared to you because you are the lord’s own. I say this with all due respect.