The Impact of Displacement on Faith: Lessons Learned from Colombia

This course will explore how faith is impacted by displacement and forced migration. Migration and forced internal displacement affect millions of people around the world and it requires a knowledge and response that is commensurate with the magnitude of the problem. Dr. Milton Acosta will unpack the reality of internally displaced persons from the Colombian context whilst making it applicable to each of our own contexts. This course will address ideas such as trusting God in the midst of suffering and theodicy to how biblical practices of lament, grief and forgiveness allow for IDPs to hold on to faith. Finally, this course will help us to understand what it means for God to identify himself as the God of the widow, the orphan and the stranger as well as what it means for us to be the church who cares for the least of these.

Dr. Milton A. Acosta is a Langham Scholar, serves as chair of the Biblical Sciences Research Group at la Fundación Universitaria Seminario Bíblico de Colombia (FUSBC) and is a professor of Old Testament. Some of his more recent publications include El humor en el Antiguo Testamento and “Ethnicity and the People of God.” Acosta also serves as Old Testament editor for the Latin America Bible Commentary and was a member of the World Evangelical Alliance International Translation Review Panel. His areas of research include rhetorical patterns in the Hebrew Bible, forced migration, and violence in the Bible. Besides teaching and writing, he enjoys gardening and insects.