Dear Christians,
In an effort to try and understand your ideas and thought processes more, I want to ask a few questions and I want a Biblical answer, with some rules that need to be followed with that, that helps me to understand some things that I seem to be at odds with people about. These are things that run through my head and cause me to be frustrated, but I think that most of the frustration comes with lack of understanding. So here are the questions:
- What is the Gospel and what is its purpose, and what is it working towards?
- When viewing the world, what problem requires most of our (Christians) attention, social injustice, sin, or other?
- How is it that man should interact with human laws and government?
- Does economic inequality show a lack of true Christian behavior?
- Do equality, fairness, and sameness all have the same meaning?
- How should a Christian behave in a world where social injustice is not only allowed, but even encouraged?
Now here are the rules:
- You must have a Biblical reference for all your answers, or you will have a hard time proving that what you say is actually Biblical.
- No stand alone OT verses. OT verses are good to use, but only with a NT verse that has either the same words, or same ideas. If it does not use the same words, it may be good to explain how they connect.
- Stay away from current issues as your main point, I feel that these questions greatly affect how the issues are viewed without singling out one particular issue.
- No saying, “You said this before” or “Well you are against this”, without their being mention to it in the comments.
- Try and use this as an understanding tool, not an attack tool. I am intending this to be a way for me and others to understand each other, not fight each other.
16 Comments
This is pretty easy. The Gospel is to love God and love others.
This is not a question that can be answered Biblically. The Bible does not say “issue X” requires most of your attention. But…the Bible’s number one issue that it talks about is how we treat the poor and the least of these. And no…I am not going to list every Bible verse that talks about the poor.
As we see in Romans, man should submit to the laws of the government. But Christians should also work to change unjust laws.
No. But Christians ignoring inequality does.
No…and this is not a Biblical question so I cannot really support it Biblically.
They should work to change the injustice. And they should do what they can to not participate in the injustice.
Now…one point on your rules. Proof texting will prove little. You cannot prove a point by giving a Bible verse. I do not base my views on justice and in equality on specific Bible verses, but instead base them on over-arching themes throughout scripture.
Hey Andy you asked:
The gospel is the message that Christ is the only name under heaven by which men be saved. (Acts 4:12)this is through His finished work on the cross by becoming sin for His own and giving them His righteousness (2 Cor 5:21) And we are connected to that work of Christ through faith in Him. (Rom 4:6)
Other. Making disciples of every nation was Christ’s final commandment to the apostles (Matt 28:19). This of course requires a knowledge of what the gospel is (above). Feeding the hungry and all that stuff follows as an add on.
As Christians we should obey the government (Rom 13:1) yet in matter of evangelism or worship of Christ where the government denies us these rights disobedience to man is required in order to obedient to God. (Acts 4:19)
I think so to some degree (not that we should be global communists) but we are to follow the NT exapmles of looking out for the rest of the body. (sese Rom 15:25-26, and ***Acts 2:41-47***) We are to look out for the rest of the body, I mean Christians in North Korea hardly even have bibles they memorize a book and pass it along, while we in posh America have gender nuetral bibles.
I don’t know might be synonyms check with Webster.
We need to come with the counter cultural message of the gospel of Jesus Christ and exalt God as the rightful abrogator of right and wrong. Ultimatly a secular worldview has no reason to believe in absolutes like right and wrong but Christians do. These counter cultural messages are both found in the word so ultimatly we need to preach the word. (2 Tim 4:2)
“sese” sorry I stuttered. lol
Oh and also that Dave guy seems like a theological liberal. “Over-arching themes throughout the bible” that’s like a standard liberal phrase. They usually use it to nix the passages that talk about God’s wrath…saying that violates the “theme” of the bible.
You are right…but unfortunately that has nothing to do with this post.
Funny…I thought it was simply looking at the Bible as one book instead of a bunch of random prrof texts. That is proper hermenuetics.
Again…that has nothing to do with this post. And you are wrong in your assumption that I would want to nix God’s wrath. interestingly, the greatest wrath that we see from Jesus is towards those that hold legalistic views on their interpretation of the Bible.
1 - There are multiple facets of the Gospel, but the Good News centers on the fact that God has provided a way out of the darkness that is sin and oppression and that we can enter into it.
2 - The Gospel call us to no longer worry about our sins because of #1. Once we do that, we are called to live godly lives, following His will and doing His work on this earth. This work includes fighting the injustice and oppression, building others up, and spreading the good news.
3 - I agree with Dave and Bob on that.
4 - Same as #3
4 - Not at all.
5 - Try to transform the system though a variety of means.
Smiles…are you going to answer your own questions?
I can’t seem to make the trackbacks work, so here’s my response: http://ex-leper.blogspot.com/2006/08/dear-christians.html
Good questions!
Here’s my thoughts on your quesitons.
1) What is the Gospel and what is its purpose, and what is it working towards? The gospel simply put is the good news, while the purpose of the good news is the proclaimation of God’s degree (message of his love for us through Jesus on the cross), and it is working towards the culmination of His kingdom.
When viewing the world, what problem requires most of our (Christians) attention, social injustice, sin, or other? I think the biggest problem is the issue of pride. I do not really mean that in the sense of sin, but in acknowedging that God is real, personal, loving, and gracious to us. Our biggest concern should be to save the lost. When the non-believer becomes a believer they submit to God’s will and place God first in their lives. Pride keeps us from serving or following God. The issue is not really a focus of sin but a submission of follow God (which relates very closely to the sin of pride). Our focus should be to win the lost.
3) How is it that man should interact with human laws and government? Nothing different than those listed above (dave, puritanbob, henry)
4. Does economic inequality show a lack of true Christian behavior? This is an interesting site:http://www.channel4.com/4money/funnymoney/richometer/index.html
You put in how much money you earn a year and it tells you how you compare on a scale of the 6 billion people on the p;anet. It is sad to see so many American churches (and american christians) holding onto their money. And it seems like we have not acted like the early church where they sold house and home so that there was no needy person among them. but after saying all of that what Dave and puritanbob said somes it up nicely. short answer no, but Christians ignoring their Christian duty is wrong.
5. Do equality, fairness, and sameness all have the same meaning? I don’t care to answer that question because it seems not related to the biblical disscusion. Try a thesaurus.
6. How should a Christian behave in a world where social injustice is not only allowed, but even encouraged? Our primary goal is asked in the first qusetion. This is not primary. It can be a means to the end. We send food to a starving country in hopes to build a relationship that soon translates into a realtionship with God. But I believe the spiritual issues are more important than the ones you are asking about. The eternal issues seems to outway those of your question.
Here is a question for all of you.
While it is cleat the the “eternal”/”spiritual” issues are primary in the Gospel, it also appears pretty clear that the social concerns are also important.
We often saw Jesus deal with the physical needs - healing, food, etc before dealing with the spiritual needs, did we not?
I do not believe that one can escape the physical needs (i.e. social concerns) by saying that the spiritual needs are primary.
Jesus dealt with both together - not one or the other.
With that said…I believe that you can deal with the spiritual needs by meeting the physical needs. We love people as Jesus loved people by meeting their needs - by feeding the hungry, visiting the prisoners, clothing the naked, etc.
Yes and no. Jesus always preached about the Kingdom of God. He often met people’s physical needs, but He always met their spiritual needs. I cannot think of a single instance in which Jesus met someone’s physical needs without also addressing spiritual needs.
On the other hand, I can think of several instances in which Jesus addressed spiritual needs and did nothing about physical or social needs. For example, consider the Samaritan woman at the well. (John 4) In fact, Jesus asked the woman to tend to His needs by getting Him a drink of water. Not only did He not help her physically, He was a bit of a sponge. ;)
The spiritual needs come first. After all, if Christians merely feed, clothe, and heal people without ever telling them about the Gospel … then all we’re doing is to send well-fed, well-clothed, healthy people to Hell.
Now, if your point is that it is shockingly inconsiderate (and ineffective) to preach the Gospel to someone who is starving to death without also feeding them … then I agree. Feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and healing the sick is how Christians demonstrate the love of God. Our actions are a better way to show God’s love than any amount of pretty language. St. Francis said it best: “Preach the Gospel at all times and when necessary use words.” Just don’t lose sight of the goal! Our primary mission is the Great Commission (Matthew 28):
To go along with what Naaman said in that spiritual needs are primary and physical needs are secondary, I would like to point out something from the gospel of John. John gives us seven miracles in his gospel account whith the interntion to demonstrate the validity of the gospel and that those who believe upon Christ will be saved (John 20:31). Whenever John uses the word signs or miraculous signs, he is using one Greek word. That Greek word has the idea of the miracle pointing to something else. So in John 2, Jesus turing water into wine, the miracle was a physical miracle. However, the interntion of John was not to point out that those people had physical needs and we must meet them. What he was doing was trying to use the miracle to show a message. The miracle is an illustration of a spiritual truth. SO I think to elevate physical needs over spiritual needs, and I almost dare say to equate them, would not be in keeping with what the biblical writers would have us to believe.
Dave asked:
“While it is cleat the the “eternal”/”spiritual” issues are primary in the Gospel, it also appears pretty clear that the social concerns are also important.
We often saw Jesus deal with the physical needs - healing, food, etc before dealing with the spiritual needs, did we not?
I do not believe that one can escape the physical needs (i.e. social concerns) by saying that the spiritual needs are primary.
Jesus dealt with both together - not one or the other.”
Eh…I don’t think so. Christ after feeding the five thousand (I assume this is what you refer to when you say Jesus fed people) said to the people, “You seek Me not because you saw the signs but because you ate the loaves and were full, labor not for the food which perishes but for the food which endures to eternal life.) (John 6) So here is the biblical contrast we have “food which perishes” and “food which endures”. Ultimately there is a distinction, people can be fed and sleep on pillows and go to hell because there is no true gospel. (The gospel isn’t doing good, and loving my neighbor that’s the law) The gospel is a command to come to an unreserved trust in Christ Jesus to save us from the judgment we deserve. This is the food which endures to everlasting life, we know this because IN THE SAME chapter Christ says, “My flesh is food indeed, and My blood drink in deed.”
Also, Christ makes a distinction between humanity as He says “Unless you eat My flesh and drink my blood you have no life in you.” Christ claims that He is the only hope to have life, if you do not have Christ as savior you do not have life. This being said the proclamation of Christ and His gospel MUST be preeminent to all humanitarian works. Moreover, we are without question to engage in humanitarian works, this is pure and undefiled religion James says. As well as John who says caring for other is fruit of genuine love for God.
So its not one or the other, it’s Christ’s gospel being preeminent and the other stemming from that glory.
So when Dave says:
“With that said…I believe that you can deal with the spiritual needs by meeting the physical needs. We love people as Jesus loved people by meeting their needs - by feeding the hungry, visiting the prisoners, clothing the naked, etc”
I have to say absolutely not. Salvation of sinners is not found in giving them full bellies, this is food that perishes by itself. Salvation (meeting the true spiritual need) is found through faith (which comes by hearing the gospel proclamation [word of God]) in the person of Jesus Christ this is the food that endures. Again not to say that we do not do those things but doing them IS NOT THE GOSPEL.
I agree…like I said - they go together.
Who elevated physical needs over spiritual needs? I know that I never said that.
I never said that sinners would receive salvation by feeding them or clothing them. But I did say that spiritual needs could me met through meeting their physical needs. The essence of the Gospel, of Jesus’ ministry, is that God loves us so much that he gave his son to die for us. And we must accept that. One of the ways that this love is manifested is through the meeting of Jesus needs. Matthew 25 is pretty clear:
God doesn’t ask, “Did you convert the sinner?” Instead God asks, “Did you feed the hungry, clothe the naked, …”
Our acts of love are a direct manifestation of the Gospel - Jesus loves us, and we are to love others (and God).
Dave,
I did not mean to put words in your mouth. For that, I apologize. I merely wished to communicated that we have to be careful when we look at what the biblcal writers did when they recorded the miracles. The point of the miracle stories (Feeding of the 5000 or 4000, raising the dead, changing water into wine, etc.) was to illustrate a spiritual problem, not highlight a physical one. However, after my recent trip to Chicago, which I love that city and would love to go back anytime, I have begun to question if I do take care of the physical needs enough of other people. Acts 6:1-7 records the chosing of the first deacons, I guess is what they should be called, to make sure the the “distribution” (v. 1, ESV) was equal between Jews and Greeks. Also, the passage you point does point to feeding hungry, taking care of the sick, visiting those in prison. I feel personally that I need to be doing that more. But I do think we need to be cautious of those who would take these verses out of their appropriate contexts.
Smiles…are you going to answer your own questions?
I am curious to see your responses…