I finished Greg Barrett’s “The Gospel of Rutba” yesterday. I imagine that I will be processing this book for the days, weeks, months and possibly years to come. It evoked sadness, anger, disgust, guilt, as well as joy, hope and peace within me. In Rutba, Barrett juxtaposes the macabre realities of war with one of the most amazing stories that you will ever hear of grace, friendship, forgiveness, inclusivity, hospitality and peacemaking.
After reading about the lives of Shane Claiborne, Cliff Kindy, Weldon Nisly, Peggy Gish, Logan Mehl-Laituri, Kathy Kelly, and Sami Rasouli, the primary subjects from the West in the book, and their demonstrations of loving the enemy I am embarrassed to self-apply the term Christian. Reading this story has challenged me to my core.
With a ridiculous amount of research—the endnotes amount to about a 1/3 of the text—Barrett exposes the tyrannical “Domination System” that the United States has become. Rutba is the story of Iraq that you do not get on CNN or Fox or even Al Jazeera for that matter. However, it is the stories like these that need to be told. If enough of them were told we might begin to see the humanity in people—even those that we call our enemy. It is far from an easy read, but every American needs to read this book—and not just the chaptered section, but endnotes too.
In fact, I plan to buy a case to give to friends for Christmas presents—perhaps it will help “sow the peace.”
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