Between Profession and Dignity

This speech was delivered at the launch of the fourth edition of the vocational training courses program to support small projects for the Armenian Protestant community in Syria on March 9, 2024.

Dr. Michel E. Abs

The Secretary General of the Middle East Council of Churches (MECC)

Is there anything uglier than need? Is there anything more painful than extending your hand to others, asking for what will sustain you?

God has created man with mind and body to be his means of survival and progress, which can only be achieved through knowledge and work. These two magical words have defined the course of humanity and charted the paths for its growth and prosperity.

We are in societies that were the first to invent science and technologies that have become the means of work, from the invention of the alphabet, to the wheel, to chemistry, to algebra, and geometry, and exporting all these achievements to the world.

Our societies, which the world unanimously calls the cradle of civilization, have been subjected for centuries, and in the past few decades at a harsher pace, to fierce attacks that destroy both people and structures in an attempt to erase our role from history.

We are exposed to impoverishment because the saying "impoverishment conquers" complements the saying "divide and rule." Therefore, our economic facilities are destroyed, in the Antiochian Levant, as in the rest of the Arab countries, our civilization is dismantled, and our scientific edifices are targeted. This leads to the migration of our brainpower, aiming to replace our people with outcasts... but the dreams of those aiming at that will not come true.

The response to destruction is reconstruction, and to impoverishment is self-sufficiency. Today, you are graduating a group of professionals in a homeland that, before the forces of evil and darkness conspired against it, was the only one in the world that did not fall into the debt of dependency and was in a state of self-sufficiency that is rare in our current time.

What you are doing, dear ones, and we are with you all the way, is the stone that holds the jar. It is the hidden bond that can secure livelihood, and thus dignity, and prevent destitution or need from the family.

The destructive attempts, most of which have economic goals, aim to transform our nation into small, politically discordant groups, and into a state of economic dependence by transforming our economies into groups of small enterprises that do not benefit from any economic or financial immunity. That is, transforming the economy from macro to micro, or pushing skilled people to emigrate.

Vocational training and support for small businesses are the appropriate response to these frenzied attempts to kill our economy and eliminate our workforce. Professionalism and entrepreneurship through the creation of small, even micro enterprises, establish a renewed economy that gradually replaces the economy subjected to attempts at economic annihilation.

In response to attempts to send us below zero, here we are responding with life, and life is knowledge and action.

We, in the Middle East Council of Churches, have been supporting our societies with all the elements of steadfastness with all our strength and resources, convinced that we are a nation exposed to various forms of conspiracies and injustice, and that it needs the contribution of each of us. We also consider that dignity comes before life, and that it is what adorns life. Therefore, we have established a special program that deals with everything that leads to the preservation of human dignity and social cohesion, which goes hand in hand with social service and development programs.

Dear trainees,

Today you receive talents, so be sure to bear fruit with them, as the Lord Incarnate taught us, so that it may be said of each of you, "Well done, good and faithful servant! You were faithful with a little; I will put you in charge of much." (Matthew 25:23). Therefore, you must start with a little, so that the Lord may bestow much upon you, and He is the best of providers.

I conclude my speech with a noble statement by Caliph Omar Ibn Al-Khattab, who said, addressing one of his deputies, "O you, God created hands to work, so If they do not find work in obedience, they will seek deeds in disobedience, so occupy them with obedience before they occupy you with disobedience." Therefore, your professionalism and work constitute the guarantee of social peace and development.

May the Creator grant you success in what you are doing, for He is the support and the helper.