"the conviction of things unseen..."

I just returned from watching the Invisible Children documentary that everyone has been talking about. If you haven't heard anything about this group and what they are attempting to do, you need to go check out their website at www.invisiblechildren.com.

The bottom line is this: there are children in southern Uganda who are being abducted from their homes to fight with a growing band of rebels who want to overthrow the Ugandan government. They are taken from their homes, usually under the cover of night, and forced to serve as soldiers in the rebel army. They are witness to brutality and cruelty that is beyond what most of us can even begin to imagine. Every night, in order to escape the recruiting raids, thousands upon thousands of children make the long trek from their homes in the village to numerous empty warehouses in the city. Here they sleep together in mass, hoping to find safety in numbers and in the protection that the city affords them. This crisis has been largely overlooked by the Ugandan government; the world as a whole has seemingly turned a blind eye to these atrocities as well.

What puzzles me is that the organization that is making such a great effort to raise awareness about this problem isn't a 'distinctly Christian' organization. Maybe that shouldn't puzzle me so much though. Often it isn't the church that is leading the charge on social issues. I have heard many a 'Christian leader' say something to this effect; that our main purpose in missions is to bring the gospel to people, and that concerning ourselves with social issues (such as poverty, injustice, sickness, etc.) just gets in the way of accomplishing the 'great commission'.

As often as I hear this, I cringe. How can you separate 'the Gospel' (meeting people's spiritual needs) from 'social issues' (meeting people's physical needs)? Maybe if the Gospel were simply a list of theologically-charged ideas that people were supposed to intellectually assent to, that would be possible. But salvation is so much more than that; God's desire is (and always has been) to bring mankind 'from a Garden to a Garden', so to speak. God has always desired to redeem and restore. Not just to call out for himself a people who are justified, but who are being made whole and living life abundantly (I'm not referring here to the 'God-wants-to-make-you-happy' gospel, a'la Joel Osteen). When Scripture talks about the Good News that brings life, it speaks not only about the mysterious spiritual wonder of Christ's saving work, but about the Gospel of the Kingdom; that is, the least becoming the greatest, the downtrodden being lifted up, the oppressed receiving justice, the hungry being fed, the sick being healed, and so on and so forth. This is a theme found throughout Scripture, particularly in Luke's 'Great Reversal' theology that we see in Luke and Acts.

In James 1:27, we are told that looking after orphans and widows in their distress is the kind of religion that God considers pure and faultless, and that we should keep ourselves from being polluted by the world. This verse immediately follows a passage that talks about those who consider themselves religious, but whose conduct speaks otherwise. About the man who hears the truth, but doesn't do anything about it. My question then is this; as the church today (the ekklesia, the 'called-out ones') are we living as that person who hears the word, but does nothing about it? The theology of man in the Scripture is very clear; every person is made in the image of God, and God desires that no one be in need, whether that need be food, clothing, or freedom from oppressors. This idea of God's is clearly expressed throughout the Old Testament in numerous statements about caring for the poor (Lev 19:10, Deut 15:11, etc.) Even the very core of the Hebrew understanding of law, the concept of lex taliones, (simply put, 'an eye for an eye') reflects God's desire for justice to be done to all, no matter whether they are rich or poor(Lev 19:15); no matter who they are, or where they are.

In the New Testament, we have a more convincing example in the actions of Christ and his disciples. How often did Jesus meet someone's spiritual need (new life through faith), while at the same time meeting their physical needs? In fact, often he would simply provide something that met their physical, earthly needs and leave it at that. Now, one could argue that these miracles and the ones that the apostles performed were simply signs that accompanied the spread of the Good News, but it is hard to believe that God's compassion upon people in need doesn't factor into the equation in a major way.

If I tried to list out all of God's statements on 'social issues', I would be up all night. So it all comes down to this; what are we (the ekklesia) going to do about it? We know God cares, why don't we? Why aren't we the ones out on the front lines of these situations, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, nursing the sick to health, and bringing the wonderful truth of the Gospel in its entirety to the dark and hurting parts of the world? Why is the ekklesia so apathetic as a community and a culture? Why is it that only a courageous few take up this cross? We are quick to say that we want to live for God; are we afraid to die for what God wants for us to do? Are we afraid to lay down our lives for people we've never met and to go serve God and people halfway across the globe?

You bet I am... and that is where the problem lies. As much as I want to get upset at others, I have ownership in this particular issue as well. My heart believes that as long as I'm happy and relatively sin-free, that I'm living in the will of God. And this is a lie. If I succeed at preventing the world from polluting my faith, but don't ever wholeheartedly abandon myself and meet the needs of others, then I have failed. If my Christianity doesn't lead me to love other people in ways that consume my entire being, and to go to where the need is greatest and willingly serve the King of the Universe by laying down my life to lead a lost and dying world to redemption, then my religion, my 'faith', isn't worth much in God's eyes. Because faith without action is worthless. And that is where I find myself. More on this to come.