Alternative Globalization Addressing Peoples and Earth

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to the forces of death and destruction. It draws its power from agape, the
love of the Triune God that permeates all creation.
This focus on agape underlines that earth and all life have their origins in
God and belong to God. They are not the property of humanity to be
commodified (Lev. 25:23; Ps. 24:1). Creation does not belong to humans,
but humans belong to creation, and creation is God’s. Agape relationships
reflect that all life has its common root in God’s free grace and life-giving
love. Grace is God’s power to sustain and renew creation, and to turn us
from death to life. Discrimination, exclusion, and an unequal distribution
of wealth and power deny the values of the agape community and violate
the commandment to love God and neighbour.
Agape relationships affect all dimensions of life. Life includes having food,
clothing, shelter, education, work, and health. It includes social belonging,
relationships, social tasks and care. It includes: self-consciousness and selfrealization,
experiencing and celebrating community as well as the gift’s
participation. Fullness of life - the abundant life offered by Jesus -
encompasses these. At the same time, agape emphasizes the value of
resistance and the search for alternatives, whenever and wherever
meaningful life is reduced to profit and economic growth at the cost of the
necessary requirements of the earth community and its relationship to
God. The world is an icon of God. Every cry of the earth and its suffering
people challenges churches to seek God’s loving transfiguration of
humanity and creation.
2.4 The centrality of transformative justice
Every form of power is tempted to constitute itself as absolute, without
accountability to those affected and in denial of the manifold relationships
that constitute the web of life and need to be respected and recognized. 11
The biblical tradition includes some safeguards designed to prevent and
correct accumulation of unjust power and the misuse and abuse of creation.
One of the preventive laws is the prohibition against taking interest.
Corrective laws particularly relate to the three aspects of the Sabbath and
Jubilee vision concerning periodic rest:
• the Sabbath as a day of rest;
• the sabbatical year; and
• the jubilee year.
Jesus presents his own mission as jubilee justice when he reads the Isaiah
scroll in Capernaum (Luke 4). The Jubilee tradition advocates access to
resources in favour of just relationships with other humans, animals and
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The search for alternatives attempts to restore the original life, affirming function of
power that is accountable to the Creator.