It is impossible to ignore the news. Over the past week we have seen the most appalling images of Iraqi prisoners subjected to humiliating abuse by British and American troops. The response to this has been the very public beheading of Nick Berg – the website which showed it was inundated with calls so that the internet provider had to close the site down.

In the same week we have seen Israeli attacks on the people of the Gaza Strip, with allegations that refugee camps were targeted unnecessarily.

And on Thursday our own Prime Minister announced that he would continue to imprison children in detention centres in order to send a warning to people smugglers. This declaration was made despite a report on the harm detention does to children and with a complete lack of evidence that the release of children would encourage people smugglers.

When we hear such news, and when pictures of the events are thrust before us, we find ourselves asking whether such anguish is needed, or if it can possibly be avoided. And what is an appropriate Christian response to such matters?

The first point to be made is that such atrocities as these have been around for a long time. As I read the Old Testament of the Bible I find stories of torture and destruction of innocent lives, and it is chilling to read that these acts of violence have been carried out in the name of God.

However, the Bible is the story of God’s revelation to God’s people, and how they understood more and more about God as time went by. As it says in the letter to the Hebrews, “Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son,” meaning, of course, Jesus Christ.

As Christians, followers of Jesus Christ, we turn to the New Testament for help. St Paul, in his second letter to the Corinthians says, (2 Corinthians 5:16-20)

“16 From now on, (therefore,) we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way.17 So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!18 All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation;19 that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.20 So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.”

St Paul is talking about the new life which we find in Christ. Those who are in Christ see the world in a different way. A human way of looking at the world and at other people is to see the world and its people as something other than ourselves. We talk about “us” and “them”. Most nations divide the world into “friends” and “foreigners”. This, according to the Bible is the result of sin, the sundering of the nations – it is the story of the tower of Babel, which we shall hear at Pentecost.

And this sinfulness is what inspires the atrocities in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay and the Refugee Detention Camps in Australia. The human way of looking at people and finding differences is what inspired the walls around the Ghettos in Nazi Germany and the wall around Israel.

Human beings are basically good, they are made in God’s image and reflect the goodness of God. It takes quite a lot of training or conditioning to enable one human to kill another. You can do it by persuading a person that someone else is so different that they are not really human at all. This is the ultimate perversion of the way we see other people. We kill cockroaches without a second thought. If you teach a person that a Palestinian or a Jew or an Iraqi is not really human, then they will kill quite easily. Giving them a bad name is a start – you might call them Zionists or Terrorists or Illegals. In Rwanda if you called someone a Hutu or Tutsi is was enough to get someone killed.

But this is not the way we are supposed to see each other. St Paul says that if anyone is in Christ, they are a new creation, all the old has gone – and in Christ we see ourselves as reconciled to God, and, if we are reconciled to God, then we are reconciled to each other. The things that used to divide us still exist – we are still male and female, we still look different and behave differently – but this is now a cause for celebration, not a cause for division. St Paul told the Galatians, that in Christ, from God’s point of view, “there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female.” (Gal 3:28) Archbishop Desmond Tutu spoke of “God’s rainbow coloured people”. Our own vision for St Luke’s is that we seek to share God’s unconditional love and acceptance of all people, regardless of age, gender, race, marital or family status, sexual orientation, disability or wealth. This is precisely in line with the ministry of reconciliation which Christ has given to us.

So here is our response to the atrocities we see in the world around us. We are to be “ambassadors for Christ, for God is making his appeal through us.”

Every time we look at a person and let the differences divide us, then we are looking with the same eyes that killed Nick Berg, or thinking with the same attitude that built the Israeli wall. Murder and division does not bring reconciliation.

But every time we welcome and affirm someone, every time we say, in words or in action, “you are a child of God, my sister or brother, for whom Christ died,” then we are seeing with the eyes of Christ, and touching with Christ’s hands, loving with the heart of God, bringing reconciliation and giving peace.