[Jesus said,] "You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven."

“Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others,

faithfully administering God’s grace…” -- 1 Peter 4:10

The “social gospel,” as I was introduced to it in Bible college, was a mid-1800’s movement to apply Christian ethics to specific social problems (e.g. child labor, crime, liquor, racism, poverty, etc.) Like most “movements,” its beginnings were stellar in both motives and methods… bringing the message and mercy of Christ to bear on these issues was the intent of its early leaders. But then…

Critics began to carp that it was too churchy, too Bible-thumper-ish, so many of its proponents began to cave to the criticism, plucking first some, then much of the gospel content from the effort. By the 1940’s and -50’s, the program was largely one of doing humanitarian things with almost no biblical message at all, thus the pendulum had swung -- not from one extreme to another, but from a position of ethical balance to an excess of secular kindness. It wasn’t (isn’t) a particularly evil thing… it’s just not what the New Testament had in mind for the term “good works.”

Of course, the “conservatives” responded early on with “gospel” efforts of their own, insisting that folks really only need Jesus and salvation from sin -- a message certainly found in scripture, but is it complete? Why the insistence on“either/or;” why can’t it be “both/and?” Wasn’t James right when he wrote, “faith without works is dead?” Both can be done… they’re certainly not mutually exclusive and incompatible.

So, now we have a chance to help the battered, aching Haitians through their heartbreaking devastation, and we can do it through agencies or ministries that can offer both penicillin and prayer, both rice and grace, both hugs and heaven. Let’s rise to meet this crisis in as thorough a way as possible, satisfying people’s temporal and eternal needs. WE CAN DO IT!!

yours and His -- Bill

 

 

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