Let me say up front that my thoughts are not fully developed here. I imagine even reading the title will raise concern for some, applause from others, and perhaps even anger and outright rejection of anything that follows. If you happen to be reading, I’d ask only for charity in the places it seems I have exaggerated, misunderstood, or misspoken. Selfishly, this writing is more for my benefit to try and articulate the longings of my heart than it is about trying to persuade anyone else. I am convicted that what follows is accurate and faithful to Scripture. I am equally convicted that these issues are not simply reasoned through human wisdom. I do not claim to have received a special revelation from God, but I do cite His grace as the source of my understanding and growing awareness as I read the Scriptures. My aim is to present my understanding as it arises from the Bible. It is not a political position. I am not calling into question the core tenants of the Evangelical Christian faith. Instead, I am arguing that the title of this writing implies an often neglected core tenant of the faith community I proudly serve and enjoy.
Any time I begin thinking about communal/societal/systemic sin issues, I feel a great burden to have several clarifications and justifications waiting in the wings because of how quickly my perspective can be dismissed by large portions of the church. It feels very unpopular to hold a position that cries for societal-level engagement from Christians who love Jesus and are on mission to proclaim His message of salvation. But however unpopular it may be, I am compelled by Scripture to speak.
God’s desire for His people to engage individuals with the Gospel does not require us to remain detached from, aloof to, or passive towards systemic issues of injustice in our cities, states, nation, and world. In fact, God’s desire for His people to engage individuals requires us to confront institutions possessing wicked philosophies and harmful social agendas. Some of these are blatant. The KKK obviously has an evil agenda and seeks the ill of minorities, especially blacks. Others might be less conspicuous. The injustice may not result from active dismissal/abuse/opposition but instead be indirectly tied to the advancement of a particular social group. For example, who do politicians cater to most frequently? They cater to those with the money and power and influence to keep them in office. Or maybe they cater to the fears, desires, dreams of the majority culture. This happens where I live. (I’ve deleted and rewritten this because it just isn’t clear in my mind how to present this idea without sounding like I’m condemning government, which I’m not!)
In any case, I believe God’s desire is for His people to understand culture well enough to engage it in the very places it is broken, corrupt, and unjust. Otherwise, the argument seems to me to remain that we tell oppressed people to “just bloom where you’re planted” as if the wickedness of their disadvantaged position is somehow irrelevant to their human flourishing. If the external pressures faced by those of racial, socio-economic, gender, etc. minorities aren’t critiqued and combatted, can we really say we love these same individual sinners as Christ loves them? Are we really willing to say that the Gospel will be compelling to people when we ignore the ways they have been maligned by the Church, local, state, and federal government, and the like? If Jesus in Luke 4 is really the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophesy that liberty is proclaimed to the captives…can we be faithful to Jesus Christ if we ignore people claiming to be held captive as if their personal experience of captivity isn’t relevant?
Here is where I think the church just ends up failing so often. What we essentially do by inactivity, dismissal, or stiff-necked apathy is to say that the experience of another human being is invalid because it differs from our own. We elevate our personal experience as the only one worth having in order to interpret and understand the entire counsel of God. We foolishly and unnecessarily suffer a flattened understanding of God and His Word when we think our own experience is the only one necessary to understand the entire heart and mind of God. When we refuse to learn from experiences that differ from our own…and lets’ be honest, we like to think that these experiences are invalid, so we call them sinful or ignorant or worse…we prove to possess a special kind of arrogance. We can be so smug in the dismissal of others’ experiences because we’ve never taken the time to try and understand them. We’ve failed to “love our neighbors as ourselves” when we do this. We don’t even try to gain empathy for people different than us! How is this Christian? Let me try and give an example. There has been a lot of rioting by African Americans in the last several months. The typical response I’ve heard is to condemn their behavior and think no further about it. Is that really the best response the Church of the Risen Jesus Christ can offer? What a total lack of empathy. Can we at least try and ask “Why”? even though we may never be able to understand criminal activity being an expression of our emotions, fears, anger, etc.?
I do not anticipate the rioter’s experience to ever be mine personally. Nor do I condone criminal behavior. Nor am I justifying actions that are clearly against the law of the United States. But people making those decisions are not in a vacuum. They don’t exist in a bubble preventing external factors from contributing to their behavior. Maybe violence is part of their natural disposition, but that does not mean that these riots have been carried out by violent people who just like destroying things. There are factors behind their choices, and no matter how right we may be to condemn their decisions to respond violently, we lack Christ-like empathy when we fail to feel compassion towards them.
If the Church cannot consider that there are society-level forces contributing to a rioter’s decision, then we stand a real chance to become and/or remain irrelevant to an entire population of people who need the Gospel.
Here’s where I see this in Scripture. If you read the prophets, you see God promising judgment on entire nations, often because of their response (or lack there of) toward the poor and marginalized. God’s own people are not exempt. In fact, they are held to an even stricter standard because they know Yahweh intimately. They know His particular heart toward the outsider and His compassion for the needs of all people. But judgment isn’t God’s way to get even or to punish. Judgment has a purifying effect. God judges individuals and nations so that he can purify the hearts and lives of people resulting in shalom. God has purposed in Christ to reconcile all things to Himself and make right every wrong. As God’s people living in the already but not yet tension of the Kingdom of God, our mission is to kingdom work. We participate in God’s redemptive plan. His plan is always to the individual sinner. One salvation causes a raucous in Heaven, a party of epic proportions. But the implications of the Gospel extend beyond the lives of individuals. These individuals make up physical members of institutions, governments, organizations, supper clubs and many other groups. And the Christian witness is to be like leaven in a loaf of bread. It is to infuse all aspects of one’s culture. We don’t do this expecting a utopia on earth before Jesus returns. But we hold out the hope of change on a societal level because of the power of the Gospel to reconcile and transform sinners. If we don’t think the Gospel is relevant to systems and corporations and institutions, then I’m not sure we understand its power.
I will end with one final point, since this has become longer than I anticipated. Could it be that one of the most compelling ways the Church can present the Gospel is by speaking against the injustices being perpetrated within our own cities, states, nation, and around the world? Do I really want to look a homeless person in the eye and say, “if you believe in Jesus, you’ll learn how to glorify God as a bum?” Given his life of overwhelming fear and hardship, I’m not sure I’ve even told him Good News about Jesus if I never engage a culture in which the horrendous reality of homelessness is an actual problem in a country of such extravagant wealth. Again there are many ways to outright dismiss this hypothetical man’s problems as personal failures to succeed. But there is a better way forward than that. There is a Christian way forward. It’s a way that loves him enough to cry out against the injustice of homelessness as a reality that never should be.
Father, give me eyes to see the needs around me. Fill my heart with empathy for ALL people, especially those who I tend to marginalize and ignore. May the Gospel always inform my actions and provide true hope of transformation of both individuals and societies. Would you bring peace where there is none. Would you bring understanding and compassion where I am blind and hardened? Would your heart for the outsider be my heart as well. For your glory alone, I pray.
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