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THE CAPITAL IN THE RAPIDLY CHANGING WORLD


by Dr. Kim Yong-Bock

Dr. Kim Yong-Bock is President of Hanil Theological Seminary of
the Presbyterian Church in Korea in Chonju, Korea.



    Why a theologian had to deal with the question of the capital today? The answer is simple and biblical. It is because it has become the Mammon and humans cannot serve God and the Mammon at the same time. Our faith claims our exclusive loyalty to God, who gives life.

A Socio-Biographical Note

     As I look back my life story, I was very poor most of my life. The Japanese colonial power took all the land that my grandfather held. My father and uncle were taken to be mine workers in Manchuria and in North Korea during the World War II. I had to gather and submit to the local colonial authority a bundle of grass to feed horses of the Japanese army. I remember doing this every day around 1944. My father died at the beginning of 1945 due to the forced hard work in  Manchurian mines for the Japanese colonial power.

    When Japan was defeated in 1945, my family lost everything whatever was remained due to severe post-colonial economic disruption. The poverty has been the absolute predicament of my life till 1969, when I returned to Korea after my study in the States.

    It was my acquaintances with Korean workers through the Urban Industrial Mission, I began to realize the victimization of my brothers and sisters, who are sacrificed under the Park

   Jung Hee’s Project Modernization and Economic Growth. During my university days, I got acquainted with the life of war refugees and urban poor, for my family was one of them. I was familiar with the rural poor, for I have been one of them. My friends and I were running night school for our poor friends, who cannot go to junior high school due to their poverty during late 1950’s. Perhaps it was natural that I got interested in the issue of the Minjung.

    This personal background led to an investigation and study of the Korean minjung during the Chosun Dynasty and the Japanese colonial rule and their movements, particularly religious dimension of their movements, to overcome their political and socio-economic contradictions. This is the subject on which I have written my doctoral dissertation.

    Korean people were caught in the Cold War structure for almost 50 years, in which the socialism and capitalism bitterly competed in ideological, political and military terms as well as in economic terms. I grew up in this cold war system with a heavy dose of anti-Communist ideology. Economic growth and national security have been supreme values of our society. My church has been an integral part of the Korean version of anti-Communist capitalist system.

    The Minjung have gravely suffered during the last 50 years of the Cold War structure. They suffered under the anti-Communist ideology, military dictatorship in the name of national security, and socio-economic hardship and exploitation in the name of economic growth under the military dictatorship. Particularly during the last 30 years the Korean version of capitalist development dictatorship made the Korean minjung suffer most. In close association of urban industrial mission in Korea, in Asia (CCA-URM), and in the world (WCC-UIM), I have developed my critical consciousness and analytical thinking on the capitalist development.

    My major involvement in the study of transnational corporations in Asia – Korea, Philippines, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia and Hong Kong – has helped me get acquainted with the reality of capitalism in Asia. This project was sponsored by Christian Conference of Asia with a support of WCC and its member couches. From this study experience, I have evolved a thesis on transnational corporations in Asia in the light of the suffering of Asian peoples.

Asian People In The New Global Order

    Now we need to reassess the Asian situation in a new way, particularly the reality of power of the capital. The Asian people’s situation has been undergoing dramatic changes, as the world is experiencing rapid and drastic changes in recent years.

    In the first place, the socialist states and former socialist states are being integrated into a global capitalist market. The Asian socialist states such as China, Vietnam and even North Korea are being integrated into the global market. This has serious implications for the life of Asian peoples. No longer a socialist option for development is realistically available to the people. All the socialist movements in Asia are experiencing a serious identity crisis, for the people have lost hope in the socialist alternative. Of course, this situation does not mean a victory of the capital-ism of the people. The people experience worse situation than the time when socialism and capitalism were competing each other.

    Uruguay Round in GATT negotiation has culminated in a World Trade Organization being installed, opening an era of truly global market, breaking up all the national boundaries that have protected the people with national framework of economy. This opens an era in which the economically powerful in the industrialized countries and in the Newly Industrialized countries (NICs) will dictate the global market for their power and interests. This is carried out in the name of limitless competition in the global open market. The economically weak will find no protection in this fierce jungle of the global market place.

    Naked reality of struggle for the “Survival of the Fittest” and the logic of “the Strong Eating up the Weak” will dominate the market place in a new way in the global market. This means a renewed fierceness of the jungle-like competition in the market which will victimize the weak and poor peoples in Asia and everywhere.

National Governments Serve The People Or The Capital

    Governments in Asia are pursuing open market policy under pressures from the Western governments, especially the United States Government. Uruguay Round agreement in GATT negotiation is the first step in this direction. At the same time, the governments are launching slogans such as “Age of Limitless Competition” and “National Capacity to Compete Internationally is Critically Important for the Survival of the Nation.” It seems that doctrine of national security is replaced by the doctrine of “national competition.” But for whom to compete is not clear. Is it for the people or for the capital?

    Human rights and democracy have been emphasized in the world and these values are of the Western democracy. Such emphasis could be regarded as a ploy of the Western powers to open dictatorial and authoritarian political systems so that they may create conditions for global open market. Liberal democracies in the West have been political preconditions for the capitalist market. In an ironic way, such “democratic re-forms” are weakening governments to control national economy and to protect the socio-economic security of the people. Liberal democratic governments in the West as well as in the South have been failures in taming market forces such as giant transnational corporations.

    Governments are active players in the global market, and yet they are not ultimate players. Giant transnational corporations in food and agriculture, in industrial manufacturing, in finances and services, and in media and communication are real and ultimate players, which know no national boundaries, accountability to no people, and no control by any power. There is a certain absolute character in corporate powers in the global market. Governments are incapable of making these corporate powers accountable for their dealings in the global market.

    When national governments are driving the policy of national competition, they are actually supporting and serving these corporate powers to compete in the global market. But their interests are not identical with the interests of the people, who is supposed to be sovereign to national governments. Opening of the nation by deregulation in the context of the Uruguay Round of GATT negotiation is precisely for the corporate powers, particularly for those of the industrialized West.

    What this means is that nation states as supreme political institutions of sovereignty and self-determination of the people, as agencies of economic development of the people, and as protector of socio-economic security of the people have been drastically weakened in the global market. Powers of the nation states have succumbed to the transnational pressures of the international powers in the global market.

The New Gap Between The Poor And The Rich In Asia And In The World

    The global market is being dominated by the Western capital powers, and the peoples and nations in the South suffer poverty more seriously than ever. Minimum protection of the people by their governments has been weakened, and their societies have been forced open to external market forces, and their economy has been integrated to the global market. What this means is that the people’s socio-economic security is exposed to the global market forces and the socio-economic victimization is intensified everywhere in Asian countries.

    The people in poorer nations suffer most, because the gap between poor nations and rich nations are widening, but the poor in the Newly Industrialized Countries in Asia (Asian tigers) suffer more severely than ever, too, because the people in NICs are equally exposed to the global market forces. Even the poor in the industrially advanced nations are suffering severely in the process of globalization of the market and the poor in the socialist and former socialist countries are no longer protected by national social safety network.

    In short, the socio-economic security of the people are in jeopardy everywhere in the world, and the poor and weak are exposed to global competition and victimized in a new and global way. A good illustration is the fate of the Korean peasants. The poor in India, for example, are more severely exposed to threats of diseases due to the pharmaceutical drug market indiscriminately selling many banned drugs to people without prescriptions.
 

People Become Victims Of New Violence

    The international relations and social constellation of powers have been rapidly shifting due to the demise of international Cold War balance of powers and to the opening of the society to the global market process. The previously latent conflicts become manifest such as ethnic and national conflicts. The social power and solidarity of traditional classes such as workers and peasants have been weakened and violence, physical or otherwise, against them have become intensified due to the weakening of the social movements.

    Ethnic and national groups assert themselves in the context of rapidly shifting social and national balances, giving ways to violent conflicts. These are being exploited by the subterranean military weapons market. These conflicts are violence-intensive, making the people suffer, and wasting their lives.

    The violent conflicts are sparked off by social, ethnic-national and racial tensions as well as international tensions. The fierce competition. in all directions without limits will intensify conflict situations both national and international situations. Common security and peace, social and national, of the people will be threatened in a far-reaching manner. National police or military will not and cannot handle such multiple violent situations.
 

Global Cultural War Against People

    The context in which we are speaking about communication in the global market is a “cultural war” between the power and the people, waged through political propaganda, commercial advertisement, educational process, public media and information technology. This cultural war takes place on both national and global levels, assuming the form of ideological or propaganda war. Sometimes it works to domesticate the minds and desires of consumers, inducing them to buy things that are produced this is to control and conquer the market. The educational system acts to establish hegemony over the minds of students in the name of socialization. Traditional cultural process and religious institutions are also mobilized to serve the cause of the powers. But the most important aspect of this cultural war is manifest in the modern mass communication media such as newspapers, wire services, radio and television.

    The ideological battles between the two supper powers have been fought through political propaganda against each other (communism vs capitalism), through ideological inculcation in formal and non-formal education systems, through public media and information processes and often through religious institutions and practices. Now this ideological war seems to be over but power conflicts, violent or otherwise, will continue to involve semi-ideological battles for legitimacy and support. The communist societies have complete control over the process of political propaganda, but its effectiveness is regarded doubtful in recent years. Societies where a liberal press is allowed have a facade of freedom of speech, but the powers control the media and education in highly effective ways in these societies. Dictatorships around the world have sought to control the speech, thought, feeling and perception of the people. Today this process of control by power is done through hi-tech communication and information media this communication technology is intensive and therefore brutally effective. The power of the capital is manifest in global communication and information order.

    The economic life of the people is very much affected by communication and information in three basic ways. The struggle for decisions on economic policies involves fundamental cultural struggle in terms of economic philosophies and economic objectives such as economic growth and economic distribution. The most direct way in which the economic life of the people is swayed is through commercial advertisements in the communication media. The media is the chief culprit in consumerism, which corrodes the minds of the people with enticements to cheap materialism and economic hedonism.

    Moreover, information has become a commodity and service in economic transactions, for information is both power and resource. The information and communication network constitutes the network of people’s economic and socio cultural life as well and the powers create, expand, and sustain this network of information and communication on a global scale.

    There are several inter-related networks that operate in a global scale. The political and military intelligence and information network of the governments, the economic network of information of transnational corporate powers, global media, and the religious-cultural networks of world religions have powerful influence over information and communication in global dimensions.

    The term “international information and communication order” is a misnomer to reflect the reality of the present communication and information process nationally and internationally, although the McBride report has clearly shown the nature of the international information and communication order, as dominated by the powerful. The process of information and communication is not merely the objective order of society and community, but it penetrates into the mind and brain of the human person, into the perceptual apparatus of the body, and into the heart and soul of the whole human being. The information and communication process pervades the human self. The battleground is the sense, consciousness, mind, heart and spirit of the human person as well as the community.

    The globalization of communication and information has become technetronic intensive through hi-media technology on all levels. Symbols, images and pictures in full color, simultaneously translated languages, and scenarios and sequences of events are instantly transmitted to the people, who are turned into the victims of this global communication onslaught. Technetronics intensive communication and information involves the global network of value adding process with increasing acceleration in intensity and speed. Such global network of communication increasingly encircles the life of the people it envelops their perceptions and understanding, and it finally invades the innermost chamber of consciousness, the minds and hearts of the people, deeply affecting their spirit as well as their life.

    The most important consequence of this communication and information revolution carries out through hi-tech development is the subjugation of the spirit, mind, will, heart, passion and even desire of the people to the dictates of the dominant powers, near and remote. Human subjectivity which is the engine of human life, is the final territory being conquered through cultural process of communication and information. Western development of modern science and technology in the past has excluded the human subject from the epistemological world and now its advancement allows the powers to dominate human subjectivity to domesticate life itself.

    Such domination is manifested in political and ideological control and manipulation, domestically and internationally. It involves the total planning and control of the market. Such a capacity to subjugate human subjectivity in a mass scale is used to manage social, political and military conflicts on domestic and international levels. This becomes the case due to symbiotic power relations between the public media and the political powers, in which the people’s participation is prevented. Such power relations are complex and difficult to discern. But government propaganda, the use of the media for the implementation of political power and policy and election campaigns are clear manifestation of such symbiosis.

    The domination by western political power, especially the U.S., and the West-dominated international communication order with its dominant network of information industry, wire services, satellite communication and so on, makes a powerful impact upon the peoples in Asia, by interlocking with the Asian national communication media and by subverting these on political, economic and cultural levels.

    The economic powers such as giant transnational corporations use the public media to dominate and control the market, to create arbitrary needs among consumers, causing a deep sense of deprivation, and to cover up the ugly image of the corporate powers. There is no marketing without the media and the advertisement of products and services create false and unsound economic propaganda, often providing false in-formation and images about the products and services. This process distorts sound economic values, fostering “cheap and pragmatic material-ism”. The media serves corporate powers’ techno structures to carry out the total planning strategy of profit-maximization by controlling marketing as well as production. Without such subservient media the corporate strategy of total planning would not be possible. The people as workers and consumers are molded according to the plan of the economic powers in and through the media the people have lost their subjecthood in production as well as in the market they have become victims of the distorted information imposed on them, and have an inverted self-image implanted in their consciousness by the media.

    In the same way the transnational corporate structures have pervaded all the Asian societies to subjugate economic selfhood not only in economic political terms, but also in cultural terms through their economic propagandic advertisements. This has destroyed the health and whole-some vision of economic life of the Asian people.

   The Asian national media, under the influence of the Western domination of the global information and communication order, have corroded and subverted Asian cultural values and Asian styles of life with the Western values and life styles. Particularly the Asian cultural identity has been suppressed among the Asian nations and peoples. Religious and cultural heritages are disparaged as pre- or ant-modern (meaning anti-Western) the languages, symbols and images are suppressed and replaced by the Western ones. This process causes profound cultural dissatisfaction among the people, even to the point of unhealthy national and cultural romanticism and nostalgia. The people’s uprootedness is caused by the mass media, which receive heavy doses of Western cultural injections in the present international information and communication order.

    Such cultural corrosion and subversion and even “genocide” are tragic part of the cultural subjugation of the people through the global media dominated by the Western powers, and this is inevitable, given the inherent character of the present global order of information and commu-nication which excludes participation of the people, their dialogues and interactions.

    The power of the Western media violates the rights of the people in their own society and often the people has no means to redress these violations. It also violates the cultural and ethnic rights of the people in the world. It promotes the Western racial, cultural and religious values against racial, cultural and religious heritages of the people of the world.

    Disinformation and misinformation, partial truths and small lies and sheer ignorance and prejudice are mingled and spread in the process of communication and information in various ways in different situations. These phenomena are directed against the oppositional forces of the people in both liberal societies and dictatorial societies, in their conduct of international policies as well as in domestic affairs. The whole process serves the power interests of the powerful.

    When the Western media criticized the dictatorial powers in the third world for their violation of human rights and dictatorial control of the media, this was regarded by these powers as hypocritical behavior, infringement of national sovereignty or interference in the internal affairs.

    In recent years a certain democratic reforms are being promoted in the Third World by the Western powers so that these powers themselves can make direct intervention through investment and trade by TNCs, through political pressure in such cases as human rights, and especially through the Western media. Introduction of “liberal democratic reforms” opens the Third and Second World societies for more direct penetration of those societies by the Western media as well as by the Western market forces. Thus the Western media of communication and information become instruments of “low intensity strategy” in the arena of “cultural domination and war”.

   The communication and information media create a strange world out of an arbitrary combination and superficial construction of colors, images and languages that are simplified and separated from reality. The media creates a perceptual world that is in no relation to the real world or in opposition to the actual world. The modern media in the global market has a capacity to create a strange new world of illusion in the minds and hearts of the people everywhere.

    In this way the peoples in Asia are victims of the powers militarily, politically, socially, economically and culturally and international media networks constitute an integral dimension of the victimization process, as the cultural power of domination that victimizes the people culturally.
 

People’s Participation In The New Global Market

    With people’s participation in the market being further curtailed under progressive globalization, we should reflect on the situation that has existed up to now.

    One of the major reasons why socialist systems collapsed is that they did not allow full participation of the people. At the same time, the major weakness of liberal governments is also their limitations on people’s participation. Now is the time for the people to become direct and active participants in the affairs that affect their own lives not only on national level, but also on local and global level.

 

Free Subjects In Every Aspect Of Life

    The people are free subjects to participate in every aspect of life. This has concrete implications in the vortex of the global market today.

    The people are workers, producers, and managers of life and community. Economic participation of the people is expressed at the level of workers and producers but the people must also participate in management, distribution and community welfare. In this way they can participate as gardeners of life. People’s participation should make interventions in all aspects of the socio-economic life of the community, local and global.

     Money is the enemy of the people. Money has become the Mammon that victimizes the people in the world today, more than any other form of economic power. The financial powers and their institutions are making the people powerless and victimizing them for life. Trans-nationalized banking institutions and international monetary organizations deprive the people, put them into debt, and bankrupt the people and their economies. The people must take charge of their own financial resources.

    The people must participate in the management of their economy. Today the management of economies by the transnational corporations and nation states is highly technocratic essentially, the people’s participation in planning the economy, and in the production and distribution of goods and services, is systematically eliminated. Workers are totally integrated into the productive process, and participation by workers’ unions is getting weaker and weaker. The people must participate as workers, consumers and concerned citizens in the political economy, to make interventions in the global market.

    The people must be subjects of their own welfare. Housing, clothing, food, education, health and cultural activities cannot be left to the political and economic powers in the world. The people’s direct participation in their own welfare is essential in this rapidly changing global economic situation. They cannot wait for the structural changes that are not forthcoming anyway they must recognize themselves as the primary subject to secure their own welfare of life.

    The people must create their own socio-economic values they must reject the dictates of the state and corporations. To determine their own needs, their own material values and their own style of life, they must wage a cultural struggle for a decent and good economic life.

    The people are political subjects. In spite of the many formal declarations of the sovereignty of the people, their actual participation is minimal or even completely suppressed. Every aspect of life must be politicized, in the sense that people must participate in decision-making in every aspect of their life.

   A democratic structure of national government does not necessarily mean democratized structures in local communities. The nature of the nation state must be transformed from the perspective of people’s participation in local community politics. The local should be prior to the regional or central, if the sovereignty of the people is to be truly realized. Democracy is a political process from bottom to top, not the other way around.

    People’s participation should extend to every aspect of social life: class, status, caste, minority, gender, and so on. Social democracy should be prior to political democracy. Without the participation of the socially weak and down-trodden, there can be no true participatory political democracy. This is a biblically founded principle, upon which a constitution can be written.

    Cultural life must be radically democratized and the people must be cultural subjects. The traditional authoritarian cultures must be democratized the modern media should be under the people’s control and the education process must be reversed to raise up the people as the cultural subjects who sustain their cultural struggle. It is here that the people’s participation will be determined in the newly globalizing market, that is, on the cultural front. No political propaganda of ideology, national security or war should dictate the minds of the people. The people must be masters of information and communication they should refuse to be victims of their political and cultural identity. They should refuse to be docile objects of the communication order, and rather become communication activists who are the subjects of cultural and political life.

    Often religious resources are mobilized to justify political life. Essentially, politics is spiritual, and even religious. The powers and authorities always have to reckon with the ultimate destiny of the people. The people must not allow the powers and principalities to exorcise their religious and spiritual power instead, the people must claim that they are the primary spiritual subject, for God — or the ultimate reality — is essentially related to the people, not to the powers-that-be. Invocation of spiritual power by the powers-that-be often brings about demonic con-sequences. It is not enough to secularize the state spiritual subjectivity must be reclaimed.

    The people’s subjectivity must be realized in all social relations.

   The people as a socio-economic class are subjects in social relations and should be at least equal with other classes.

   This means that the people as a lower social class should be more participatory than other social classes. This vision is not of an ultimately classless society, but of a social process in which the lower class has advantages in participation over the other classes. Here the principle of social equality demands the preferential rights of the people.

   The people of out-castes or lower castes, lower status, and minorities must assert their subjecthood and participation. Participatory structures and processes should be designed differently, but their identity, their self-determination and their direct participation must be insured. Women’s social participation has a unique place which in turn illuminates the full participation of the people in all other situations. Women’s participation is not merely the question of equality against social discrimination. Their participation makes human community whole and full, as well as equal and just.

   The spiritualities of the people in different social situations are different and religious communities have not recognized this reality. The people must be able to express their own spiritual subjectivity to make society whole and just. In any case, various mechanisms and teachings of religions should be transformed to open up the people’s participation.

   The people are cultural subjects. Historically the people are culturally and religiously domesticated, suppressing their cultural development and participation. In the modern world of information and communication, the people’s cultural identity is uprooted, their cultural values are destroyed, their style of life is destroyed and they are culturally victimized. This is more cruel than economic, physical and political victimization their soul is destroyed as well as their body.

   The people are speakers, writers, and communicators expressing their own feelings, perceptions, opinions, convictions and will. Now the people must have their own means of communication and media. They also must have access to the media and the media must become public, not allowing monopoly by any power.

    The people have cultural resources that are to be mobilized. Their experiences accumulate information, wisdom and insights for life. The people must assert their own experiences as primary and use their cultural resources to communicate their own experiences and will. The people must resist and transform any cultural imposition, whether of values, styles or media.

    The people must have cultural power. Communication and information are power over mind, senses and perceptions.

    The people must form a value-added net-work of cultural resource centers, so that they can counter the cultural domination of the powers.

    The people must affirm their own cultural traditions, values and styles. Cultural subjectivity begins with the affirmation of one’s own cultural life as well as cultural traditions. This is the beginning of the struggle against the dominant cultures. This cultural struggle is to ensure cultural identity and cultural fulfillment.

    The people are religious and spiritual subjects. Spirituality and religions exist for the subjectivity of the people, and not the other way around.

    The deepest root of people’s subjectivity is in their deepest religious experience. The meeting with God gives birth to the subjectivity of the people.

     All the religious activities of teaching, rituals and practices should enhance the subjectivity of the people to the level at which the people as subject respond to God or ultimate being.

    The people’s historical subjectivity is deeply rooted in their ultimate commitment. Any dichotomy or symbiosis between the religious root and the historical manifestation of the people’s subjectivity will seriously harm that subjectivity.

    The people are subjects of life in the world. The people’s body is spiritual and historical as well as biological and material. People’s participation in life is wholistic, interconnecting all dimensions of life, human and natural.
 

Conclusion: People’s Subjecthood In The Global Market

    The people are an independent actor in history, and therefore, in the global market, which is dominated by the capital. I regard it to be MAMMON of the present age, which thrives upon victimization of the people. The God’s sovereignty is being manifest in the OlKONO-MIA of God, in which people become new subjects in the global market. God and Mammon are in struggle in the global market. Our faith in God is the ground of our hope in the self-hood and participation of the people, who will transform the “JUNGLE” of the market into the “GARDEN OF LIFE”.
 

Subjects Of Life And History

     People are created and destined to be subjects of their life and history in a wholistic sense.

    They are subjects as the covenant partners of God, who is truly sovereign. God does not allow the people to be subjugated or domesticated to other powers or principalities in heaven or on earth.

    The Hapiru people were slaves under the despotic imperial ruler of the Egyptian empire. But God established a special relationship with the enslaved people, freeing them and making them God’s faithful partners in covenant. The people were liberated and became subjects, not slaves.

    The people were enslaved workers but in the created order of God, they have become free subjects, the stewards and gardeners of life. They are no longer subjugated to the powers of darkness and chaos that destroy life, as in the Baby-lonian empire.

   The year of Jubilee has been proclaimed by Christ. In the Jubilee, the disinherited, the indebted, and the physically, mentally, economically and socially disabled all become subjects who participate in the political economy of God.

    The people are the subjects of political rule. The establishment of political authority, whether in the form of kings, emperors, modern dictators or democratic rulers, is permitted only within the framework of God’s covenant with the people. God’s covenant does not permit the people to be other than God’s partners, who are subjects, free to respond to God’s faithful word.

    The establishment of kingship in Israel was conditioned upon the kings’ being subjugated to the covenant and covenant laws, which had been wrought between God and the people. In no case was this to be violated. Historically, kings broke the covenant, and prophetic movements rose up to restore the convenant on behalf of God and the people.
The true political authority came as “dou-larchy” in Jesus, who came not to be served but to serve, and to make the first the last to serve all. Here the people are the subjects and the powers are the servants.

    The people are the subjects of their vision they are visionaries. When the people are dead and have become dry bones, scattered in the dark valley of defeat, God awakens them to a vision of restored life, in which they rise up to be the subjects of life and history. In relationship with God, the people become the visionary subjects of life. The visions of the prophet Isaiah (Chapter 11) and of St. John (Rev. 21 & 22) rose out of the people’s subjugation under the Babylonian and Roman Empires. The people, in faithful covenant relationship with God, are the subjects of the future history they have hope for the future, imagination for the future, and the passion and will to struggle and create the future, in which they are the ruling subjects along with God.

    The Messianic vision is the vision shared among the people, of their participation in the Messianic banquet, in the new city of heaven and earth. The people rise up from despair and hopelessness and move forward to the Messianic Reign.

    The people are the subjects who form relationships among themselves in the context of their covenant with God. God’s justice in the covenant raises the people from the bottom up, from the downside up. This is the social and cultural dynamics of God’s covenant with the people, who are downtrodden. God created nations, races, genders and the natural world, not in hierarchical order, but to be participants in God’s Garden of Life. The setting up of secondary divisions of class, status, caste and so on, in the world of life is against God, for such divisions destroy the people, denying their participation in life.

    The people are gathered from every corner of the earth, regardless of color, race, ethnic origin, religious-cultural heritage, gender, class, status, caste or any other difference, to participate in God’s reign. This is the Messianic invitation, and no power can prevent the people from participating in this Messianic koinonia. In Christ, there can be neither chosen nor gentiles, free nor enslaved, male nor female, rich nor poor, high caste nor low caste, high nor low, powerful nor weak. The people are all co-participants in Christ’s Reign.

    The people are living subjects and partners of life in the biological sphere as well as in the historical and spiritual spheres. When life in the natural world is victimized, the people are victimized and suffer together with nature. This is the meaning of the Garden of Life, which is tended as a whole by the people as the gardeners. God’s creation of life and people’s participation in the gardening of life is their common struggle against death, against killing and all the forces of death. The people are the permanent subjects of life in struggle against death, to fulfill life in its wholeness.

    In Christ the people cannot be destroyed. Christ guarantees life, eternal life, that is, the life that cannot be destroyed. In Christ the people find the fullness of life, for Christ is of the people and the people are of Christ. In Christ the people resist the power of death, as Christ rose again from the death that was imposed by the power of the Roman Empire.

    The people are subjects who glorify God in worship and life. When God created the world in which people are the subjects of life, it was good and beautiful and the people sang to glorify God in full orchestration with all the living creatures on the stage of the natural world. People’s worship of God is a total drama celebrating God’s faithful relationship with them, for God made them partners in the covenant. The Celebration takes place in the life of the people in the world in full harmony of colors and music. It takes place in the universe, in history and in every aspect of life. This is the true tabernacle of God with the people.

    The Messianic banquet is the celebration of life in the highest form. The angels are mobilized to enhance the celebration in the most beautiful and glorious manner, for the chief end of people is to glorify God and enjoy God forever. The people are celebrants in this messianic banquet.
 

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