Monday, September 24, 2018

An Open Letter to a Christian Opponent of the Statement on Social Justice and the Gospel

Dear friend, 

I have not know you too long, but I deeply respect and admire you. 

I have seen how you have chosen to take your large family into the inner city, and squeeze them into an over-priced, under renovated house, with nothing for a yard and a back alley that constantly smells like urine. 

I have seen how you have done it not reluctantly, but joyfully. Joyfully sharing the love of Christ with your neighbours. Joyfully modelling love of and for your family; how you have opened your crowded home to single mothers, kids with absentee parents, and others who have turned around and criticized you after you have shown them hospitality. 

I think that the thing that has been harder than all of these things though, is how abandoned you have felt by the church. 

You have a call from God, and you would say freely that your call is not for everyone. Yet, you must be asking sometimes: ‘is there anyone who will join me in this call?’ How many friends have joined you in this mission with great enthusiasm, only to tap out and move to the suburbs a few years later? How many have come in saying, ‘we really believe in what your doing, but we can’t handle all the FAS kids in the service?’ I know you have said, ‘it is God’s church, not mine,’ but it has to hurt. I just has to.

I know how you have fought to stay true to the Gospel when organizations that you feel so much in common with have abandoned it. You have ended up ministering by yourself because you refuse to compromise the Gospel, and then other ministries criticize you for being too liberal! I has to hurt. 

Then one day, a group of men—some influential, some not so much—put out this ‘Statement on Social Justice and the Gospel’. All at once you see the loneliness, the isolation, and the criticism of your ministry getting worse. You see the indifference for what matters so much to you heading in the opposite direction you were hoping it was heading. 

You see even more church members settling on their comfortable fundamentalist couches. You see even more brothers and sisters leaving for the suburbs. You see even more broken people stumbling in your church with stories about how they have been treated by such and such a ministry. 

How could these men do such a thing? Don’t they see that we need MORE Christians to take seriously the call to care for the poor, to love those different than themselves, and to reach out to the broken? How could they encourage such selfishness and apathy? I get it. I do get it. 

No doubt you are right about some of this. There will be Christians, who are self-righteous arm chair theologians, who will use this statement as an excuse to do less loving and more criticizing. There will be some Christians who will withdraw the few dollars that they have been giving to spend it on a better desk chair from which to troll on social media. 

But brother, please don’t lump us all in with this group. 

There are some of us who really do care about those who are left out, hurting, and broken. There are those of us who have intentionally placed ourselves around people like you, because we value your correction to our imbalances toward teaching, study, and prayer. 

Yet we care about something else: that Christians be led to serve the orphan or the widow from the joy and gratitude that the Gospel gives, not by the whip of guilt and shame (language stolen from Doug Wilson). 

Please consider that we desire the longevity of the mission to serve the poor, cloth the naked, feed the hungry, and reconcile the alienated. Longevity that will only come if the Gospel is kept free from works righteousness; even works as precious as the ones you advocate

Please hear me: the Bible is clear that the fruit of a life transformed by the Gospel is a person who cannot ignore the plight of the suffering brother or sister (Matt 25: 21 - 46). But what else? We should love our brothers and sisters much more (1 John 2:10-11). We should love the Word (Psalm 119). We should walk in consistent gratitude and joy (2 Cor 6:10, Phil 4:4, 1 Thes 5:16). We should not have any unforgiveness (Matthew 18:23 - 25). We all are growing the behave in line with what we say the Gospel has done in our lives. 

I’m not asking you to sign the statement. I’m asking you to see that behind this statement, and the desire to keep the Gospel pure is a heart that does want the ministry that you want. That does want the societal healing that you want. That does the glory of Jesus Christ as He is shown to be the catalyst for a transformed culture. 

Please trust that the Lord sees the work you are doing, and He will reward you. Please trust that for those of us who are using theology to justify our apathy, indifference, and self-righteousness, we will be held to account. But please join us in fighting for a Gospel that says, ‘nothing in my hands, I bring, simply to the cross I cling,’ whether or not you sign any statements.