Lovers of period and costume drama have had a field day with Downton Abbey, Prime TV’s evocation of Edwardian upstairs-downstairs life and shenanigans. Part of the charm of such programmes is that so many of the social, political and religious dimensions of what happened in the Edwardian era and its predecessor, Victorian England, are reflected in British colonial settlements like New Zealand.

It’s sad in some ways that the charm, romance and settled order of periods denoted by the names of the monarchs who ruled them is lost in our modern world. Not that life was all beer and Skittles in those by-gone days. Many of the attitudes and practices we inherited have gone and good riddance too. Now those often glamourised eras of the past have been replaced by the post-modern world.

The Church, like society, lives with and is influenced by the patterns and mores of the period in which it is set. Victorian and Edwardian churches reflected and addressed their environments. Now that we live in a post-modern world the “Emerging Church” is one such attempt to address our era. It seeks to answer the question: how do we “do church” in a post-modern culture? There’s a wealth of literature available and the writings of Scott McKnight, professor of religious studies at North Park Seminary in Chicago, delve into many of the issues the Church in its mainline and emerging forms faces.

In an article in Christianity Today, McKnight claims that one of the more controversial elements of post-modern Christian thinking is the serious questioning of evangelicalism’s “in versus out” mentality. He writes, “Even if one is an exclusivist (believing there is a dividing line between Christians and non-Christians) the issue of who is in and who is out pains the emerging generation.” His evangelical antennae tell him such questions have prickles in them but they’re there and whatever position we adopt we all know the issue of who is in and out meets us at each turn of the road.

It confronted me recently while reading I Shall Not Hate by university and Harvard-trained Palestinian doctor Izzeldin Abuelaish. Born and raised in a refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, he has devoted his life to reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians. As a physician, Dr Abuelaish worked with patients on both sides, treating them as equals, encouraging them to live in peace and harmony. His passion for his task rubbed off on both his Palestinian and Israeli colleagues, and patients who came to the clinics were treated with compassion, according to their medical condition and not their origin.

Then a tragedy most of us have never faced, or can comprehend, happened on September 16, 2008. His wife, Nadia, died from acute leukaemia, leaving his eight children motherless. Thirty-four days later, his three daughters, “my beloved Bessan, my sweet, shy Aya, and my clever thoughtful Mayar,” along with his niece, died when an Israeli tank shelled their house in Gaza, tearing apart his family, his home, his life. How, in that situation, do you not hate? How do you avoid rage? His answer is contained in his book.

“I vowed not to hate and avoided rage because of my strong faith as a Muslim. The Quran taught me that we must endure suffering patiently and forgive those who create the man-made injustices that cause human suffering.”

The book is a moving commentary on that faith-inspired decision not to hate. It’s a plea to recognise hate as a chronic disease, the cause of which is inside us. Because we all live in one boat, any harm we do to others or hatred we carry toward those who hurt us puts us all in danger of drowning.

A similar insight is expressed in Russian novelist Vasily Grossman’s Everything Flows. Ivan Grigoryevich is asked by a young woman about the German extermination of young Jewish children in the gas camps.

“How, I asked, could they live with themselves after that? Was there really no judgment passed on them by man or God? And you said: ‘Only one judgment is passed on the executioner – he ceases to be a human being. Through looking on his victim as less than human, he becomes his own executioner; he executes the human being inside himself. But the victim – no matter what the executioner does to kill him – remains a human being forever.’”

Both Abuelaish and Grossman know that hatred and revenge destroy the hater.

Talking about it is not good enough either. Action is needed if peace and reconciliation are to come to our world. Izzeldin Abuelaish admits the size of the task is overwhelming and it’s easy to put it all in the too hard basket and focus on our own personal concerns. To show the importance of acting, no matter how insignificant our actions may seem, he tells a simple story.

“A man is walking along the seashore as the tide ebbs, revealing a multitude of starfish. Soon he comes upon a young girl who is picking up the starfish one by one and returning them to the sea. So he asks the girl, ‘What are you doing?’ And she replies, ‘They will die if I don’t get them back into the water.’ ‘But there are so many of them,’ the man says. ‘How can anything you do make a difference?’ The girl picks up another starfish and carries it to the sea. ‘It makes a difference to this one.’”

I Shall Not Hate is a profound chronicle of faith hope and love. It left me wondering about the post-modern query, “who is in and who is out.” I used to think I was pretty sure. But when people of other traditions and life journeys who do not share my core Christian commitments but demonstrate they have responded affirmatively to Amos’s haunting question, “What does the Lord require of you but to do justly, love mercy and walk humbly with God,” I find myself much more uncertain as to who is in and who is out.

If who is in and who is out is one of the great dilemmas confronting we post-modern Christians, then I’m glad the final decision is in God’s court, not mine. In the meantime I’m deeply grateful that the Dr Abuelaishes of this world leap over any barriers I may choose to erect.

– Tom Cadman looks at life and faith through the lens of literature