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The Confession of Our Hope. Always prepared to give "account for the hope that is in you." (I Peter 3.15) (This document was translated into English by Synodical Pastor Martim Reusch, whose native languages are Portuguese and German and shared with the Northwest Synod of Wisconsin to further our companion synod relationship.) The theology of grace enlivens and strengths us in the hope and in the transforming pledge in front of the ideology of unlimited growing and accumulating. It also prevents against a theology that praises the consume as a goal in itself or glorifies the prosperity unconnected to the justice's values. What we have and what we are is not a merit of us but represents gift and grace of God. We are just part of God's creation. The creation is trusted to us to our care, never to be exploited. We emphasize the theology of love that donates itself in opposition to a ideology that promotes the exclusion and feeds a culture of self satisfaction. We believe in the God of life that hears the crying of God's suffering people and the lamentation of God's creation. We believe in the God of life that wants mercy but do not imposes sacrifices. Our days idolatry is excluded as an authentic option already in Jesus words: "No servant can be slave of two masters; for either he will hate the first and love the second, or he will be devoted to the first and think nothing of the second. You cannot serve God and money." (Mathew 6.24 ) The kingdom of God and its justice does not agree with richness accumulation by ones in detriment of the collectivity existential needs. We confess the faith in the God of life when at the same time we put aside the centrality of the economy that frees us for action of grace and service, of work and rest, of feast and solidarity. At the same time we confess our limits and our precariousness when comes to live and experiment the partake and promotion of justice and dignity of life for all. We are conscious of contradictions, failures and temptations presents in our congregations and in the Church. We feel ourselves involved by the political and economical system standing, in the point that we are co participants in a game with rules and goals that we even disagree. The crisis of values brings in it others heavies consequences like the drugs traffic and consumption and the corruption growing in the public and the private area in a scale never imagined. We all need liberation, renovation and changing of direction. We need repent and new life. Nevertheless, in fidelity to God's Word and to the desperate and animated by the Holy Ghost faith, we are insisted to proclaim the reason of our hope in a time of enormous challenges and also of huge necessities and temptations. We believe in God that creates, maintains, saves and consoles. Because of that we do reject doctrines pseudo religious masked in political-economical projects and systems that promotes death and ask for themselves veneration and adoration. We believe in Jesus Christ, from whom we receive new life. We are forgiven and freed of all ties in order to serve, in freedom, in a free thankful way to all God's creatures, since God in God's love involves all and everybody and do not excludes no one. Because of that we do reject all doctrines that praise the separation of the spiritual and material spheres, depreciating the world and the society and exalt only the spiritual values. At the same way we do reject all forms of prejudice end ethnic discrimination. We believe in the Holy Ghost, that by the means of the word and the sacraments creates and maintains the Church. The Church is formed not by people exempt of guilty but by sinners justified by the means of grace of God, persons that are called to constitute congregation, give service to God and testify the faith in a world marked by sin. This faith moves the Church and all its members to live in love and donates own self in service to the next, in special to the smallest and weak, to the forsaken and disconsolate, to the one that suffers injustice and to the ones that suffer any kind of necessity. As long as the human institution, even the Church and its members permit to question itself, by the Word of God, in its failures, in order that its service would be more consonant to the will of God. Because of that we do reject the doctrines that adapt the Church to the world at the point that it would serve the hegemonic ideological and political interests, losing in that way all its critical and prophetic dimension. At the same way we do reject a individualism that, even affirming the dignity of all human person, despises in the practice the importance of its insertion and fraternal life in congregation. We do deny that a person is enough in itself but affirm the necessity to serve each other. |
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