From human trafficking and global hunger to religious freedom and homelessness, it isn't difficult to paint a vivid picture of what the good news of the gospel means in practical, human terms. But what we seldom notice is we could actually do something about these things. I mean really do something.
Since it's mostly about money, one has to believe that what we're not doing, what we're not seeing means we've decided not to do it.
“If you think the gospel is about getting people to say the ‘Sinner’s Prayer’ so they can get their ticket to heaven, then your gospel has a hole in it,” said Richard Stearns, CEO of non-profit organization World Vision.
“Jesus sends us to restore and renew our broken world. The great commission was a sprawling vision … of a new kind of human flourishing that would take the world by storm. It was an invitation for all to come in and to live differently.” In other words, Stearns says, we need to spend a great deal more time restoring our world than in restoring our coffers; we need to spend a great deal more time helping humanity succeed, rather than doing what we can to bring down sin in that same group of people.
Hey, I've not hugged a single tree lately, but I acknowledge the need to be as green as possible. I've never in my life had a discussion about the slave trade, but I know we must start soon and very soon. Ideas about religious freedom have covered me in grace-talk the past couple of weeks. And don't get me started on hunger.
The article, written by Cathleen Falsani for the Orange County Register, pointed this out:
"Do you begin to see what would be possible if the church really took seriously the call of Christ to show the world a different way to live?”
The trick is for Christians to “move from apathy to outrage.”
And what should the moderate Christian be outraged about?
- How about the hundreds of millions of children who go to bed hungry and don’t have access to clean water.
- Or the more than 25 million people who are trafficked in our world as slaves.
- Or an estimated 2 billion people who live in poverty.
- Or the staggering 20,000 children under the age of 5 who will die today – and every day – of preventable causes, such as malaria and tuberculosis.
It is far too simplistic to say Jesus didn't mention some of these topics, didn't preach on them, didn't teach on them, therefore we don't need too, either.
It's flat-out wrong to suggest that Jesus wouldn't be outraged with what we've done to His planet, His children, His resources. Making Jesus political, right or left, is repugnant. Making him loving, sharing and caring is like weeping over Lazarus, still in the tomb. You know he's coming out because you've seen the end of the story, but still, there he lies in a prison formed by stone.
We have the resources, I strongly believe, to change the world. But first, I'm afraid, we must change ourselves (or allow ourselves to be changed) before we start work on this tired, old planet and it's tired, old inhabitants.
Heck, World Vision estimates that the cost of providing clean, safe water to every person on the planet would be about $70 billion. “This one intervention would drastically reduce child mortality, it would allow tens of millions of children to attend school, it would free up millions of hours of productive time for women, and it would change life in rural communities dramatically,” Stearns said.
Jesus, on the last night he would spend in an earthly body, prayed -- yes, yes, yes you read that right -- for each one of us to do something special. He didn't pray for maddening closure of our disagreements, didn't pray that we would finally fix our financial woes, didn't pray that we would shrink our ever-expanding guts and deficit.
Nah. Nothing like that. But if Jesus simply used his power to fix the things we've wrecked, it would be like painting a big ol' smile on the big ol' frown of the very infamous grumpy cat.
No, Jesus prayed, literally prayed as rivulets of Messiah-blood ran down from his forehead, that somehow, someway, we would be unified. Beyond king and country, beyond white-picket fences and conservative mantras, way out there beyond liberalism's clarion call for change, out there where love comes to mature, there Jesus prayed. Knee on stone pebbles, prayers rivited and focused.
He wanted us, needed us, to be one, as he and the heavenly Father are one. Down through the corridors of time, Jesus walked, asking for the then, praying for the now. One. Unified. Shared deeply.
I mean, come on. That's it? No parting of the Mississippi River? No jettisoning of our friends and family in a pique of remorse? No loss of limb, no loss of dreams big or small? No sacrifice to an angry God?
Be one Jesus prayed. Allow us to be one with each other, with him, with the Father, with the Spirit. As the Beatles' Ringo Starr banged out the rhythm of a generation, wailing "Come Together," so a bunch of harried disciples did and so, too, do we now.
For the article, Stearns keeps counting, giving us a rendition of Mad Mathematicians Gone Wild (or something like that). "...For $370 billion, we’ve covered food and water – and we still would have more than $670 billion left. For $86 billion, we could wipe malaria, one of the biggest killers of children under the age of 5. For $30 billion over 10 years, we could give microloans to start new businesses to 100 million potential entrepreneurs and that would create 250 million new jobs.
We could, as Stearns says, “effectively decimate extreme poverty and human suffering” and we’d still have $454 billion in the pot.
That money exists. So why isn't it being used to eradicate the sin we've grown in political pitre dishes?
Perhaps because we're too busy.
No comments:
Post a Comment