Have Your Faith and Rip It Too

"Any religion that professes to be concerned about the souls of men and not concerned about the city government that damns the soul, the economic conditions that corrupt the soul, the slum conditions, the social evils that cripple the soul, is a dry, dead, do-nothing religion in need of new blood."

- Baptist minister Martin Luther King, Jr., excerpted from a sermon in Atlanta, 1962 (courtesy of Wired.com)

Comments

[worth]

Astutely expressed, Sam.
I think part of the disconnect is that people (myself included) speak in terms of "what you/we SHOULD do," rather than in terms of "what I AM DOING."
What am I doing? Well, Sandy put some clothes out on the front porch and called a local charity to come pick them up. Pathetic, but at least she did something. And my group at work went to a food bank to help out for a few hours. Again, not much, but something to build on. Why don't I (not we, but I) do more? I have no answer. But I have a feeling that something bigger, and more meaningful, is hazily coming into view.

[Sam]

This relates to a well-known issue in evangelicalism - the tendency to neglect the physical/concrete care of the helpless, the poor, and the marginalized. Jesus was not a mystic philosopher who simply traveled as a peripatetic teacher espousing intellectual teachings. He concretely fed the poor, healed the sick, and cared for the whole man, not just the spirit. It is clear from the Gospels that He expected His followers to show the same care to these groups. In our zeal for powerful teaching and spiritual growth, we have tended to overlook the importance of rolling up our sleeves and getting dirty in real-life struggles and bringing the presence of Christ to these people and places.