One need only remember the First. World War, the Second World War, the Korean War, the partition of India, Stalin's purges, Rwanda, to name but a few. The material progress and spiritual redemption offered by a Hitler, a Stalin, a Mao or Pol Pot ended in bankruptcy. There seems to be, in this century, a destructive potential built right into our very notion of progress and development. Progress as perceived from our vantage point in the West has brought misery to millions and a destruction of our planet - Mother Earth.
Progress is the status quo.
This status quo at the close of the 20th century has done more harm than all the wars of this century combined. This is what it ' means to believe in God as the possibility of possibility. Advent -Jubilee Christians living at the close of the 20th century and standing before a new millennium, can find hope and promise in the season of Advent as we hear and accept the invitation to realize the call of jubilee in our personal and public lives. This century has profoundly challenged our belief in a loving, caring God. We need only think of the Holocaust and the genocide in Rwanda.