On grace

Christian faith, at its very heart, is about grace. I think that’s not a controversial statement. That God is love is the fundamental Christian conviction. That God, out of love, created the world; that God, out of love, came into the world to attend to the human predicament and help us … or help establish the kingdom of God – none of that is controversial. But if you try to, if you unwrap it, then you realise that the feature of this love that God is, is grace – grace that gives without seeking a return, and grace that gives also in [a] situation of injury, which we call forgiveness.

And I think if you take grace as fundamental to Christian faith, then you see how fundamentally it works against the violence. Why do we treat each other violently? Because we grasp for other people’s things, because we have been injured in our reputation and we seek revenge – a variety of things of that sort contribute to violence, and you can see different aspects of the Christian faith attending precisely to that. Generosity toward the others, forgiveness of others’ injuries, reconciliation as a kind of a modality of restoration of human beings to what they were originally created to be; all of that is central to the Christian faith. Put it to being central in practice and you’ll have a major contribution to a peaceful world.