SERMON: "OUR ROADMAP OF PEACE FOR LIFE" – Bishop Munawar (Mano) Rumalshah, bishop of Peshawar of the Church of Pakistan, used the image of a car's gear system to illustrate what he called a "three-fold plan" for a journey towards peace for life. According to Bishop Rumalshah, the most painful reality of our life on earth is our failure as humans to live out the purpose for which we are created. He said that in order to achieve peace, people of all faiths must "go back to the first gear", that, is to rediscover the basics of our faith. He observed that people have deviated too far from the real meanings of their faiths and belief systems. He cited as an example Islam, whose "greatest gift... perhaps is equality." Yet in Islamic Pakistan, Muslims treat non-Muslims "worse than garbage." Christians also discriminate against non-Christians, according to the bishop, as in the case of a Muslim woman he met in this gathering who had to change her name in order to be accepted by the Christian majority in the country. From rediscovering the essentials of our faith, the bishop proposed that the next step would be to go into neutral gear, and that is, to discover in the basics of our faith those which are common to all people. We have a common humanity – all people, regardless of belief are exploited and abused by the same political, economic and social systems. We have a common God, but to deny this commonality of God and to fight for our own "god", which is what we seem to be doing, is to deny God himself. Despite our different faiths and cultural heritage, "we could share together the values that would enhance humanity and bring about peace and justice into all situations." We must then shift to the "forward gear" – the end of the journey which leads to a "reconciled relationship". At this point the bishop recognized the presence of the Ethiopian observers in the Forum, two of whom were Muslims, as "living examples of how people across different faiths can come together to bear witness to God's mercy in their lives."
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First People's Forum on Peace for Life | OPENING CELEBRATION | 2004 November 30 | Davao City, Philippines
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