The most telling example is the wage debate. Many within the church believe that it is noble to accept wages that are inadequate for survival, and a good deal of these churches will even preach that it is sinful to accept government assistance. Basically, you are expected to work 60, 70, 80 hours a week, whatever it takes, to survive.
Oh, and don't forget to give 10% of those earnings to the offering plate. I must add a sidenote here: yes, tithing is Biblical, yes tithing is appropriate, but so is paying a livable wage (James 5:1-6). You can't exactly tithe if you have no excess to tithe.
I previously blogged on ten things I feel the church should be doing to address poverty. You can find that article here. The final item I placed on the list is living wage advocacy. Yet in the wake of one of the worst eras of income inequity in history, the church remains silent. They are enjoying too much of the adulations of the wealthy; they are enjoying the comfort and prosperity that comes from preaching sermons that assuage the guilt of those who gather their wealth into barns, against the admonition of Jesus in Luke 12:13-21:
13Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.”
14Jesus replied, “Man, who appointed me a judge or an arbiter between you?” 15Then he said to them, “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions.”
16And he told them this parable: “The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest. 17He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’
18“Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store my surplus grain. 19And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.” ’
20“But
God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded
from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’
21“This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward God.”
The Bible, not surprisingly, has a good deal to say about wealth. The problem is, the wealth the Bible describes has little to do with money or material goods. And the hirelings who sit the pulpit prefer to teach the Bible to the exclusion of the admonition against greed. Otherwise, we certainly would find a frightening conviction in the words of Ezekial 16:49, which could as well be describing the culture of modern America as of ancient Sodom: 49‘Now
this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were
arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy.
But those are not the only words the Bible has to say about greed. We can point to the rich young ruler in Matthew 10:17-27, but that is commonly dismissed by evangelicals as being instructions to one particular individual and not to the church at large. Or we can address the instance of Ananias and Sapphira, who were struck dead for lying to God about the proceeds from the sale of the property, but evangelicals will say that has to do with their lying hearts, not their greed.
It is harder, though, to escape the words of the Lukean beatitudes found in Luke 6, but the response is to simply teach the Beatitudes found in Matthew instead, because those words do not include the following:
It is harder, though, to escape the words of the Lukean beatitudes found in Luke 6, but the response is to simply teach the Beatitudes found in Matthew instead, because those words do not include the following:
24“But woe to you who are rich,
for you have already received your comfort.
25Woe to you who are well fed now,
for you will go hungry.
Woe to you who laugh now,
for you will mourn and weep.
26Woe to you when everyone speaks well of you,
for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets.
Now, to be sure, we are admonished in Exodus 23:3 and again in Leviticus 19:15 not to favor the poor over the rich in judgment. But those are admonitions against favoritism, and the judgment of the church has favored the wealthy (which is also forbidden) for far too long.
If the church is to survive the post Christian age, they must again become agents of social change and not concern themselves with minutia. The "Great Awakening" periods in US History were also periods of great social change, as the church recognized its need to address the pressing social issues.
The problem is, the church should not need to be "awakened" to that, the church should be doing that before, during, and after the awareness for that need arises.
Evangelicalism is not about producing books and movies on how to live the Christian life. Those are important tools for the exhortation and discipleship of the believer, but they should be viewed as supplements, and never replacements. The ultimate tool for evangelism has already been written. But it is not enough to preach those words, it is essential to live them.
In the 60's and 70's, there was a massive wave of new thought within and around the church. Although there were some great doctrinal realizations, the offshoot was a number of aberrant faiths. Many people followed Jim Jones into the jungles of Guyana because he preached a gospel of action not of words. Unfortunately, they didn't see the massive deception in his words, and it cost them their lives, but there is a lesson we can take from the tragedy: people will follow action, they're tired of words.
We have been empowered to be world changers. We are not only discouraged from holding the world too closely, we are FORBIDDEN on multiple occasions from doing so (sample passages: Matthew 6:24; 1 John 2:15). And yet the world consumes us and owns us.
It's time to stop accepting injustice, racism, poverty, bigotry, and hatred and start working to change it. We will not eradicate it entirely, but that is not a justification for us to stop trying. We must be lights in the darkness, and we must hold on to each other moving forward.
If the church is to survive the post Christian age, they must again become agents of social change and not concern themselves with minutia. The "Great Awakening" periods in US History were also periods of great social change, as the church recognized its need to address the pressing social issues.
The problem is, the church should not need to be "awakened" to that, the church should be doing that before, during, and after the awareness for that need arises.
Evangelicalism is not about producing books and movies on how to live the Christian life. Those are important tools for the exhortation and discipleship of the believer, but they should be viewed as supplements, and never replacements. The ultimate tool for evangelism has already been written. But it is not enough to preach those words, it is essential to live them.
In the 60's and 70's, there was a massive wave of new thought within and around the church. Although there were some great doctrinal realizations, the offshoot was a number of aberrant faiths. Many people followed Jim Jones into the jungles of Guyana because he preached a gospel of action not of words. Unfortunately, they didn't see the massive deception in his words, and it cost them their lives, but there is a lesson we can take from the tragedy: people will follow action, they're tired of words.
We have been empowered to be world changers. We are not only discouraged from holding the world too closely, we are FORBIDDEN on multiple occasions from doing so (sample passages: Matthew 6:24; 1 John 2:15). And yet the world consumes us and owns us.
It's time to stop accepting injustice, racism, poverty, bigotry, and hatred and start working to change it. We will not eradicate it entirely, but that is not a justification for us to stop trying. We must be lights in the darkness, and we must hold on to each other moving forward.
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