Dialogue: Politics irrelevant for this apostle

By GARTH GEORGE

I have a huge amount of respect, reverence even, for Pope John Paul II. Whether, as the Catholic Church tells me, he is the Vicar of Christ on Earth, I'll leave to the dogmatists, but he has shown time and time again that he is chosen of God, for he has always had about him a Christlikeness and the older he gets the more Christlike he becomes.

In my lifetime I have met only one man who to me exhibited in his living and vocation the nature of Christ and, such was his humility and goodness, had I told him that he would have cringed in discomfort. He, too, happened to be a Catholic priest, but that was decades before I, until then a low-church Protestant, joined the Catholic Church myself.

I have observed only one other - the American evangelist Billy Graham, whom I last saw on Larry King Live. As he answered and expounded upon the questions put to him I couldn't help thinking: "If that was the Lord himself sitting there, he would be saying the same things in the same way that Dr Graham is."

How well I can understand John Paul's deep desire to tread on the same ground that Jesus trod and to follow in the footsteps of St Paul. It is a desire that surely must reside in every true Christian heart; it certainly does in mine, though the chances of it ever happening get slimmer by the year.

His visits to the Holy Land, and lately to Greece and Syria, he told us, were personal, religious pilgrimages. I know what he means: he was not there because he is the leader of the world's biggest Christian Church, he was there simply as an apostle of Jesus Christ.

John Paul's visits to the Holy Land and to Damascus and Athens have for me a greater importance than any others he has made, for it is obvious that he has been called to make the first moves in an effort to heal the enmities between religions that have existed for centuries.

Oh what a wonderful world it would be if all of us who believe in one God - Christian, Muslim and Jew - could live side by side as brothers and sisters, acknowledging and respecting our religious differences, tolerating one another's religious observances, comfortable in our diversity yet unified in the knowledge that we all worship the same God, be he called Allah, Jehovah or Jesus.

Hear John Paul at a mass in Damascus, the world's oldest still-inhabited city: "In this holy land, Christians, Muslims and Jews are called to work together with confidence and boldness and to work to bring about without delay that day when the legitimate rights of all people are respected and they can live in peace and mutual understanding."

And, in the courtyard of the Umayyad Mosque, once a Christian Church: "It is crucial for the young to be taught the ways of respect and understanding, so that they will not be led to misuse religion itself to promote hatred and violence."

Just imagine the children of Abraham, the children of Ishmael and the adopted children of Jesus all living together in peace and harmony. What a world it would be.

Will it ever happen? I believe that one day it will, although I know that I won't live to see it and nor, probably, will my children or grandchildren, for centuries of injury, perpetrated by the blind guides of all three religions, will take a long time to heal.

It was not in the least surprising that the Weekend Herald headed its feature on the Pope's latest travels "Personal is political in this pilgrim's progress." It is extraordinarily difficult in any country, let alone the Middle East, for most people, even believers, to separate the spiritual from the political.

Hear Rabbi Dr David Rosen, president of the International Council of Christians and Jews: "The Pope ... had an enormous impact among the Jewish community on changing attitudes towards the Christian world ... but he's not going to impact on the political process."

Of course he's not: Pope John Paul is acting and speaking spiritually, not temporally. He is a spiritual, not temporal, leader.

He need take no heed of worldly politics, for he knows that there is an infinitely higher authority - and that in the end that higher authority will prevail.

He knows that while most of the thousands, even millions, who flock to see and hear him - as in the crowds who flocked to see and hear Jesus and Billy Graham - are there simply to look upon a great man and to be entertained, there will be a handful whose hearts are touched by God in such a way that they will never be the same again.

And this humble, frail, courageous servant of God knows that in those seeds planted in those Spirit-touched hearts reside all our hopes for mankind.

* garth_george@nzherald.co.nz