Time to Rethink How We Do Church?

There are over 2,000 verses in the Bible that deal with social justice issues; how God’s people ought to care about and for the “least of these” in our midst. A number of those verses contain prophesies of God’s wrath to be visited upon religious and secular leaders and their communities who do not adequately care for the poor and marginalized who live among them. (For a representative sample of those verses, click on "Scripture Verses" in the column to the right.)

How is it then that in “Christian” America, where our infant mortality rate rivals third world countries, where unemployment remains high, where everyday millions of children go to bed hungry, how is it that 99% of the average American church’s income is spent on itself? Maybe it’s time to rethink how we do church.

Lazy Jesus?

A conservative friend who purports to be a Christian, told me recently that poor people are lazy. Let’s test that theory with a syllogism:

Poor people are lazy.
Jesus, by His own admission, was so poor He was homeless (Luke 9:58).
Therefore, Jesus was lazy.

I don't think a true Christian wants to go there. Perhaps a new definition of poor is in order?

"The Righteous Care About Justice for the Poor"

Proverbs 29:7 – The righteous care about justice for the poor, but the wicked have no such concern.

The Hebrew word translated as “righteous” is tsaddı̂yq (pronounced tsad-deek'). It literally means just, justified or lawful (in this case, obedient to God’s law). The Hebrew word translated as “wicked” in this verse is râshâ‛ (pronounced raw-shaw'). Though râshâ‛ is translated as wicked in a number of the Old Testament passages, it is also often translated as “condemned” or “ungodly”.

As forceful as these words were when Solomon first wrote them, they are even more so when translated in the light of the New Testament. The righteous person who cares about justice for the poor is the one who has laid aside ego and picked up his cross to follow Jesus wherever he goes... even into the hood or the barrio. The person who has “no concern” for the poor is the râshâ‛, the ungodly one who is eternally condemned.

It amazes me that so many professing Christians in our state and national legislatures can ignore warnings like this in Scripture as they hurry to dismantle or severely cut programs that provide formula for hungry new born babies and adequate health care for permanently disabled veterans in order to pay for the tax cuts requested by their corporate sponsors.

Great Quote!

"Civil disobedience is, traditionally, the breaking of a civil law to obey a higher law, sometimes with the hope of changing the unjust civil law. ... But we should speak of such actions as divine obedience, rather than civil disobedience. The term 'disobedience' is not appropriate because any law that does not protect and enhance human life is no real law."
- Sister Anne Montgomery, R.S.C.J.

The Tea Party's America

A few months ago I stopped into a local fast food restaurant for lunch. It was after the lunch rush and there was only one woman working the counter and one cook in the back. The woman waiting on me appeared to be in her late fifties or sixties, and looked very tired. As I was placing my order, an older gentleman who had been in the dinning area began heading toward the exit. The woman behind the counter shouted at him and ran around the counter, grabbed him and ushered him back to his seat. She returned to the counter, apologized and began taking my order again. Once again she had to stop before I was finished and lead the older man back to his seat.

When she returned, she explained with tears in her eyes that the man was her father and he had advanced Alzheimer’s. I told her I understood what she was going through because my mother had died with the disease three years earlier. The woman told me, "Back when I had a full-time job I took him to an Alzheimer’s day care Monday through Friday, but they aren’t open on weekends.” She went on to say that her manager was not working that day, but she was pretty sure when her boss found out she was bringing her dad to work with her, she would lose this job too.

Our local congresswoman, Marsha Blackburn (TN), is a Tea Party Republican who voted against healthcare reform and was opposed to extending unemployment benefits. If anyone in her family is stricken with a catastrophic disease, she will certainly be able to adequately provide for their needs…with the nice salary, health benefits and perks provided to her through the taxes on low wage earners like the people in her district working multiple minimum wage jobs trying to make ends meet. 

Captain, Captain- The Everly Brothers

Qualifications for Being a Servant

"You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve. You don't have to know about Plato and Aristotle to serve. You don't have to know Einstein's theory of relativity to serve. You don't have to know the second theory of thermodynamics in physics to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love. And you can be that servant."

- Martin Luther King Jr.

The Truly Righteous Always Promote Justice

Any way you read it...

Proverbs 29:7 NIV -- The righteous care about justice for the poor, but the wicked have no such concern.

Proverbs 29:7 NASB -- The righteous is concerned for the rights of the poor, The wicked does not understand such concern.

Proverbs 29:7 CEV -- The wicked don't care about the rights of the poor, but good people do.

Proverbs 29:7 KJV -- The righteous considereth the cause of the poor: but the wicked regardeth not to know it.

Proverbs 29:7 ESV -- A righteous man knows the rights of the poor; a wicked man does not understand such knowledge.

False Doctrine

Matthew 4:23: “Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people.”

John 14:12:  “I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.”

History proves that Jesus was not saying in John 14:12 that each believer would perform greater miracles than He did. Rather, the gathered disciples, the church, in the power of the Holy Spirit would do “greater” works than Jesus in both number and geographic territory. So if Jesus both preached the Gospel and healed the sick, then it follows that those who call themselves his disciples should be doing likewise.

I find it quite ironic then that the Christian Right who are so self-assured in their belief that they are the “true” followers of Christ today, are determined to deny adequate health care to those who cannot afford it.  In the guise of “protecting” them from the so-called inadequacies of “socialized medicine” Tea Party and conservative Republican Christians want to deny to the unemployed, under-employed, and low wage workers any access at all to the healthcare they and their families need. Thus the working poor and the unemployed are left without the opportunity for the healing Jesus provided for free to those who needed it by the very people who claim to be His followers.

Too many of those who have been called by Christ to do what “I have been doing” for the poor and disfranchised among us are instead putting most of their time and energy into protecting their tax shelters; leaving the least of Christ’s brothers (Matt. 25:40) to fend for themselves. 

St. Jerome

"All riches come from iniquity, and unless one has lost, another cannot gain. Hence that common opinion seems to be very true, 'the rich man is unjust, or the heir to an unjust one.' Opulence is always the result of theft, if not committed by the actual possessor, then by his predecessor." -- St. Jerome

St. Jerome is recognized as a saint in both the Roman Catholic and Orthodox traditions. I am neither, but being an orthodox Christian (small “o”) and a pro-labor, pro-civil rights, pro-immigrant Democrat, his teaching certainly resonates with me. I can’t help but wonder how right-wing Republican and Tea Party activists in the Catholic and Orthodox faiths reconcile their beliefs with the words of this early church father.