My agitations with this growing movement stem from something more than just a simple skepticism, its birthed out of what I call... laziness. Today's evangelicals have attached themselves to the social justice movement because it enables them to feel a part of the growing swarm of people out there who feel philanthropy is cool for the sake of a shallow belief system. Im not a heartless monster, I do believe in helping people.... if it works. I'm a Christian and believe that Christ is the only way to bring about true change. Period. However, many Christians desire that savvy cool, or want to co-manage with those (i.e. George Clooney) with no desire for a conversion of the heart. Many Christians want to be accepted in the green movement, the One campaign, Saving Dar fur and that Red blitz and all those really hip and polished charities. Hey! We are world! But at the core, its nothing more than a desire for Christians to be lazy by not having to stand up for the defining issues of our faith. It agitates me to find fellow evangelicals get up in arms about the evils of corruption and how the Israelis treat the Palestinians, but never raise an eye brow that we have damn near 50 million deaths attributed to abortion. Seriously! Then you have the people who would impose government charity, but would never step foot into a soup kitchen or ring the bell for Salvation Army. Maybe its my anger at Christian hypocrisy that causes me to go on tirades, but what are we defining as charity these days? There's a book that Ive dabbled in called "When Helping Hurts", and it discusses the the proposition that even when you think your helping, your only helping the symptoms, you not curing the disease. Our society, our government, our world is trying to solve symptoms instead of going after root causes. Were not allowing people to fail, and its killing us. This social justice movement is an umbrella term for providing aid, for redistributing wealth, for trying to play God, for allowing ourselves to be in touch with nefarious acts, by citing moral superiority. To this I ask, on what level should we be interventionists, and on what side isolationists? For those disenfranchised by Iraq and Afghanistan, why do you beg and plead to send troops to the Sudan, or back to Haiti, or across the globe to engage in a military excursion devoid of our national interest?
But back to social justice. Can and how do we monitor justice regarding social entitlements? How do you quantify it? Can you honestly look at someone and say, "wow.... that demands justice!"? I don't think we can, but Christians, you need to wake up on this... allow yourself to use your sense of individualism, and your love for Christ to be a blessing, not within the realm of being hip or aligning with world leaders, but because God requires us to love our neighbor. When the government or an organization tries to monopolize goodwill, it makes it a brand and thus all sense of true community and true love is absent in the act of charity. Social justice has merits in the movement and that's the hearts of the individual for there fellow man. The best philanthropist is the one who picks his friend up and takes him out to eat or gives his brother or sister in Christ money to make it through the holidays, or works at a soup kitchen and makes friends there, who invests themselves in others who are down on their luck.
Christ never got government involved in his act, he knew better. Government corrupts all it touches. Jesus knew that if true change, true social justice, it would involve a person's capacity to just love his or her friends. If we are to be true Christians, can we look at ourselves if we let bureaucracies centralize power in the guise of benevolence? If we look at our duties to God, to love, to life, can we simply swallow our core principles in order to further ancillary goals? I ask that you'd stop being lazy. Stop allowing an erosion to take place. Preserve the sense that Christ stood up against tyrants, against politicians, against platitudes, and hollow statements. I fear this new social movement, is one of redirecting the core Christian moral compass. I fear it dilutes our passions and concerns. It seeks to make us an appeasing, lukewarm, and droll body that has little backbone. I also fear its a way to push a Unitarian government that plays on morality and uses those who seek a kingdom not of this Earth, and impose a tyranny through the forfeiting of liberties for a justice that one could see might hold divinity. Do not be fooled by words my friends... beware the prophets who seek a profit.
I have so many questions, and by questions I mean moments of shock and revulsion. First, you seem to imply or border on overtly stating that no charity outside of christian charity is real charity ("Christ is the only way to bring about true change"). From this I'm gathering that you don't consider any form of benevolence sans Christ to be considered morally or ethically good. I find this incongruent with my own worldview. I have several internationally minded friends who are at this very moment engaged in literally hands on foreign aid work in areas such as palestine and burundi. There is no denying the good work they're doing to develop these areas that are in such great need of it. However, neither of them would negate their own efforts or those of others engaged in similar aid work based on your decree that true charity that brings about true change only occurs when we're professing our faith. We share a similar faith, you and I, but this idea that you present is disconcerting for the following reason - what version of christianity are you invoking? Is it your set of christian values and ideologies? Is it the teachings of a particular denominational or non-denominational church? How about the Protestant sect entirely and/or Catholicism? Perhaps it includes all of the Judeo-Christian religions? Does it include Islam? Does it exclude Buddhism, Shintoism, Hinduism and all the other -isms beyond and in between? You see my problem with this argument is that fundamentally your definition of charity is dependent on your definition of christianity, and moreover you exclude the possibility of there being any good done by anyone who isn't or wasn't "Christian".
ReplyDeleteMy second gripe, if you'll continue to indulge me, is that you're implying that with nationally mandated "charity", such as healthcare, there will subsequently be a vacuum of charitable need. My friend, I live in Baltimore and I can tell you that there is no end of need here. And while it's true that I don't actively volunteer in any organized form of charity, it's become my common practice to carry several easily reached dollar bills in pocket on my 10 block walk home from work cause I'm almost always guaranteed to encounter at least one person who needs a handout. Sometimes I'm able to help and sometimes I'm not. But the point is that charity, regardless of how many national mandates there may be for it, will always be needed, especially interpersonal charity at the very basic, individual and human level. Furthermore, what you call government charity, I, and others of similar thinking, call raising the bar or, in other words, progress.
Finally, and I'm not gonna belabor this point. Obama's not the anti-christ, he's not a false prophet. Can we please stop invoking biblical end times sentimentality over a President who's not only seeking to save lives through healthcare reform but who also just followed an administration that was nothing less than the harbinger of death in political, bureaucratic form.