Theology for the Masses

Father,

we are children who have been given much. You have blessed us with an abundance of all things: food to fill our stomachs, every kind of entertainment to distract and occupy our minds, and every opportunity to adorn our bodies with things

stuff

the trappings of our culture that we think make us beautiful.

Father,

you teach us that the day will come when we are stripped bare of everything we hold dear, everything that we tell ourselves defines who we are, all the things we tell ourselves make us beautiful. And on that day, all you will see are those things that truly define who we are, those things that truly matter because they are the things that matter to you. And you will determine if, in fact, we are truly beautiful.

Father,

may you find on that day children who care really and truly for our brothers and sisters, your beloved creatures crafted so lovingly in your own image. May you find that we were never guilty of stealing from them those things they need to express that image fully.

Teach us to strip ourselves of the finer things of our culture that we may clothe ourselves with the finer things of your kingdom culture. Give us eyes that see the beauty that your eye beholds, that we may learn how to become beautiful in your eyes.

Scott, over at Grace is Unfair, looks at Amos and Isaiah and comes to some troubling conclusions about personal and societal sins.

In Amos, God condemns oppression of the poor and sexual sin in the same breath.  And in Isaiah, God shows that He detests both when people amass too much land at the expense of the poor and when people act as drunkards.  Neither passage suggests that God is placing a greater value judgment on personal sin or societal sin.  What does that mean for us as Christians, who desire to do God’s will?

At the end of his post, he quotes James 4:17, which says: “So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.” We know the right thing to do – therefore societal sins that we participate in are our own.

One of the themes in my Sunday school class is justice. We have looked at God’s desire for material justice [1] in the world. We have looked at such verses as Isaiah 61:8, Zech 7:8-10, and James 1:27; all of which make it crystal clear that one of our functions in this world is to work towards material justice as well as the spiritual redemption of humankind.

I get the small scale application of this issue. Well, I am lying, I kinda get it. I know how to act justly towards the individual people in my life. I might not be overly good at it, but it is something I am working towards.

I μέν see individual Christians working towards peace and material justice in individual lives as the answer to Ivan’s moral problem with God in “Rebellion,” what δέ I can’t see is how this works on a large scale. I am of the firm understanding that throwing money at the problem (and here I am most specifically thinking about aid to Africa here) only at best perpetuates the problem and quite possibly makes things worse.

Also, I am not a big fan of certain statistics used in showing the gap in material possessions between our world and the developing world. Statistics such as “X people only make $1 a day” assume that the base model for human life is a capitalistic, consumeristic model, as if to say the problem won’t be fixed until They make as much money as Us. Now, at the same time, I see the usefulness of these stats, they help shatter certain conceptions about the material conditions in which these peoples find themselves and help to highlight the need for justice in their lives. What I don’t want to do is bring the God of materialism along with the God of Christianity to the Other.

Whenever I go a thinking about a widespread, “big picture” plan of action, I keep coming the conclusion that a political solution is needed. Given the nature of certain countries’ leaders, a political solution must be predicated by a military solution. Yet, all of this seems to go against my “Kingdom of God” theology. As such, I am at a loss. I know how I would go about trying to fix the problem apart from Christian values, but when I factor those in, I am left with a myriad of contradictions.

And yet, God still demands that we help those in need, and I am to do what God demands. What I need here in an infusion of creativity and ideas. How can we help those in need in the concrete?

I get the need, I need a plan.

1. By material justice, I don’t mean equal possessions. I am talking about real and tangible justice in this world, as contrasted with waiting around for the just situation we will find in the next. [↩]