The gospel should compel us to move out into the world, addressing both earthly and eternal suffering. But we so often choose one over the other.
The danger of splitting the church’s mission like that is explained powerfully in this excerpt from John Piper’s address to the Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization:
One truth is that when the gospel takes root in our souls it impels us out toward the alleviation of all unjust suffering in this age. That’s what love does!The other truth is that when the gospel takes root in our souls it awakens us to the horrible reality of eternal suffering in hell, under the wrath of a just and omnipotent God. And it impels us to rescue the perishing, and to warn people to flee from the wrath to come (1 Thess 1:10).I plead with you. Don’t choose between those two truths. Embrace them both. It doesn’t mean we all spend our time in the same way. God forbid. But it means we let the Bible define reality and define love.Could Lausanne say—could the evangelical church say—we Christians care about all suffering, especially eternal suffering? I hope we can say that. But if we feel resistant to saying “especially eternal suffering,” or if we feel resistant to saying “we care about all suffering in this age,” then either we have a defective view of hell or a defective heart.I pray that Lausanne would have neither.
Practice makes perfect, they say. Today, I watched with a smile as our 7-year-old daughter practiced giving.
Seemingly out of nowhere, Ginger offered to prepare me breakfast. She spoke with unusual politeness. She offered to get my coat and gloves before I went outside.
What caused this sudden burst of other-centered kindness? She had just finished wrapping the Christmas gifts she had bought her family.
She wasn’t aware of the connection, but I saw it clearly. You see, Ginger is usually rather self-absorbed. (Aren’t we all? Adults just hide it better than grade-schoolers!)
The act of wrapping gifts that she had bought with her own money affected her mindset. Thinking about giving put her in a certain frame of mind—an other-centered frame of mind.
We all need opportunities to practice other-centeredness, because it doesn’t come naturally. One thing I do: I always drive by one or two vacant parking spaces, instead choosing one further from the store.
Leaving a nearer parking space for someone else exercises my other-centered muscles. It is a small way of practicing generosity, and it just feels right.
Perhaps you know the satisfying feeling of a 22-ounce hammer striking a nail squarely to drive it deep and true.
Or the way tomatoes, basil, and garlic harmonize with salt and olive oil, and then sing a glorious chorus of deliciousness.
When design and reality are congruent, they produce beauty and joy. You, friend, were designed to be generous—like your Designer.
We are called to “count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others” (Philippians 2:3-4).
Each time we practice generosity and other-centeredness, the giver, the receiver, and the Creator are all blessed greatly. Because that’s how He designed it to be.
Pope Francis recently wrote: “I prefer a church which is bruised, hurting and dirty because it has been out on the streets, rather than a church which is unhealthy from being confined and from clinging to its own security.”
A challenge to all Christians, don’t you think? How often are we (as institutions and individuals) motivated more by our own security than God’s command to get our hands dirty?
Have you ever heard of Deacon Lawrence in Rome? In the year 257, Emperor Valerian confiscated church property and declared that Christians were forbidden to gather. Many church leaders were beheaded.
The Roman prefect demanded that Lawrence hand over all “the treasure of the church.” Lawrence said that it would take him three days to gather it. He quickly hid as much of the church’s property as he could. On the third day, he gathered the sick, the widows, the orphans, and the poor outside the prefect’s window. When he appeared before the prefect, Lawrence pointed to the crowd outside and said, “These are the treasure of the church.”
It is unfortunate that in the centuries after this incident, so much money has been spent on making our churches bigger, fancier, more comfortable. Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox—all have been guilty of this. Guilty of making “the treasure of the church” our buildings and programs.
A little more from Pope Francis: “More than by fear of going astray, my hope is that we will be moved by the fear of remaining shut up within structures which give us a false sense of security, within rules which make us harsh judges, within habits which make us feel safe, while at our door people are starving and Jesus does not tire of saying to us, ‘Give them something to eat.'”
I remember seeing a megachurch with five baseball diamonds on the church property. They had a huge softball league of church members playing other church members. I wonder what opportunities for relational evangelism in their city they have missed?
John Piper has said: “To be a Christian is to move toward need, not comfort.”
I know you like to stay in your comfort zone. So do I. But, as long as God’s people do that, we offer no comfort to those who need it. Jesus left His comfort zone, and so must we.
He is so other-centered that He left comfort behind, knowing pain and death were ahead. He was willing to do it for you. If you bear His name as a Christ-follower, He is calling you (and your church) to be increasingly other-centered while your concern for your own safety and comfort decrease.
Would you forgive the man who murdered your children and husband? In this guest post, Lisa Easterbrooks shares the story she just heard in Rwanda about Adele, who did far more than forgive. The love and reconciliation Adele has demonstrated is tangible evidence of God’s power at work.
Rwanda is an amazing place. It’s a place that has seen much evil, yet also stunning examples of love and forgiveness. As you know, during a 100-day period in 1994, about 1 million Rwandans were brutally killed by their friends and neighbors while the world stood by and watched. It was genocide. It has been 20 years since the massacre, one that compares only with events like the Jewish Holocaust, the Darfur Genocide, and the deeds of the Khmer Rouge.
There has been justice for many of the killers in Rwanda. Surprisingly, there has also been healing and forgiveness. Rwanda has set up special village courts, called the gacaca, to judge those accused of killing in the genocide. One of the questions the court asks family members of victims is if they forgive the killer. If the killer has been forgiven, he does not go to jail. He is reintegrated into society.
Adele is a Tutsi woman who lost 3 of her children at the hand of a young man. He also killed her husband, a pastor, as they hid together in a church. After she recovered from her own injuries, she began to think, “I can be a bitter, angry, resentful old woman, but I’m not going to do that. I’m going to go into the prisons and minister to the murderers.” Adele became known as the mother of that prison. She brought in food. She brought in clothing.
One day a young man came weeping to Adele, kissing her feet. She recognized him. The same young man who had killed her loved ones. Luis asked her, “Adele, would you forgive me?” She stood him up and embraced him and said, “In the name of Jesus, I will forgive you.” Luis was baptized and became a model prisoner.
But there’s more. All of Luis’ family had been killed during the genocide. He had nowhere to go when he was released from prison. So, Adele adopted him as her son. Luis now lives in her home. How is this possible? It is not possible for mere human hearts, of course. That kind of forgiveness, well, isn’t what God has done for us? We have sinned so deeply against Him — we killed His Son, we worship other gods, we hurt His children, and yet we find ourselves adopted as His children.
The only possible explanation for this Adele’s amazing forgiveness is that she had first experienced God’s forgiveness. God has been working Rwanda to spread the gospel of forgiveness, healing, and reconciliation. We talk a lot about forgiveness in our churches in the US. But I doubt if anyone understands forgiveness more than Luis. We talk about the healing the gospel can bring, but do we really believe it? Rwanda is evidence. This woman is evidence.
The gospel has been healing this land. So many have forgiven, forgiveness is all they have left. If they continue to hate those that perpetrated this violence, they are on a dangerous road that leads back to the same place. But God has another vision. Isaiah 61:1-3 is a most apt passage for this country:
The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me,
because the Lord has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim freedom for the captives
and release from darkness for the prisoners,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor
and the day of vengeance of our God,
to comfort all who mourn,
and provide for those who grieve in Zion—
to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes,
the oil of joy instead of mourning,
and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair.
They will be called oaks of righteousness,
a planting of the Lord for the display of his splendor.
God is binding up the broken-hearted in Rwanda. He is releasing the prisoners from darkness and comforting all who mourn. His splendor is being displayed. The more Rwandans see Jesus, the farther away from genocide they get. Please pray that many see Him, so the verses above may continue to come to life in Rwanda.
Lisa Easterbrooks works for the Education Development Center, a non-profit that creates learning opportunities for people around in 30 countries. Lisa gets to go to Africa a lot for her work…most recently to support the Literacy Language and Learning Initiative in Rwanda, to improve the quality of teaching and learning for children in grades 1-4.
This is the humbling, sobering list of problems that ladies bring to a support group led by Liz Polk in Ethiopia. She and her husband Jason are friends of mine who serve families struggling with extreme poverty, HIV/AIDS, and a shortage of hope.
There is one woman in Liz’ group, however, who shines in the midst of it all; her name is Tigist. It’s not that Tigist doesn’t have the sorts of problems listed above. But, in the midst of them she exudes joy, reaches out to others, and gives glory to God for the way he is caring for her in the profound struggles of her life.
Liz first got a sense of how special Tigist is when another group member thanked Tigist publically, saying, “Several months ago I was so sick I couldn’t get out of bed; I had no one to care for me. I might have died if Tigist didn’t bring me food and water until I could get out of bed again.”
Liz says this about Tigist: “This is a woman whose life has been ravaged by HIV/AIDS, who lives with suffering beyond what many of us can imagine, and who we might be tempted to say is entitled to complain a little. Instead she visits neighbors who are sicker than she and holds out words of truth and life — words made credible by her own suffering.”
Tigist’s ministry brings these words to life, don’t you think?
Do all things without grumbling or complaining that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, among whom you shine like lights in the world, holding fast to the word of life. —Philippians 2:14-15
The Polks and the rest of their team are not only addressing the very dire physical needs in their community. They are also planting churches, and preaching the truth about Jesus.
That’s Tangible Theology, isn’t it? To “shine like lights in the world” so the message of the gospel will be proclaimed with credibility, and will draw the hurting and lost into the arms of Christ.
Click here to learn more about the Polks’ ministry, and even how you can go there on a short-term missions trip and participate in God’s ministry of mercy in Ethiopia.
When I tell people that my job involves helping widows and refugees and the poor, some of them respond, “Oh, that must be very rewarding!” I think this reveals a misunderstanding about the motivation for merciful deeds. Their response carries an implicit assumption that I must be in ministry because of the ways I benefit from it. Why else would I do something so challenging that pays so little? (I do, of course, like my work and it is frequently rewarding. But my income was the same eighteen years ago when I was a newspaper editor, and I work much harder now.)
If we do ministry only for personal reward, we are going to burn out when it gets hard. Altruism is a different motivation for service—an “unselfish regard for or devotion to the welfare of others.” When believers live truly selfless lives we display an altruism that many in the secular world will find attractive, yet foreign. When we care for hurting people, let’s be careful not to let them praise us for our altruism; instead, let’s help them see that we possess an alien altruism.
Selfless deeds are a part of the apologetic of mercy because they reflect the ethics of another world—the kingdom of God. Princeton University professor Robert George, author of Making Men Moral: Civil Liberties and Public Morality, argues that without God there is no credible reason to love your neighbor:
Why … on a secularist understanding, should people restrain themselves—and even bear the sometimes-heavy burden of moral duties—out of regard for the rights of others? On purely atheistic and materialistic premises, how can it be rational for someone to bear heavy burdens and suffer great cost—perhaps even death—to honor other people’s rights? No satisfactory answer is forthcoming. None, I submit, is possible.
On the other side of the spectrum we find atheists Richard Dawkins and Ayn Rand. Dawkins believes altruism is a defect, not a virtue. Survival depends on putting individual needs first. This “me-first gospel” could claim author and philosopher Ayn Rand as its chief prophet. She wrote,
Man—every man—is an end in himself, not a means to the ends of others; he must live for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself; he must work for his rational self-interest, with the achievement of his own happiness as the highest moral purpose of his life.
Dawkins and Rand have argued that survival of the fittest and natural selection are the fundamental laws that guide human behavior. As such, it was hard for them to give a rational answer to the question, “Why is it good to care for the weak?” After all, if the weak are coddled instead of culled, they will slow and weaken the herd, right?
When we abandon God as the source of altruism and ultimate goodness, selfishness is what we have left. We can cover it up with good deeds so we appear less selfish, but our motivation is still selfishness!
Perhaps you don’t like the word selfish. Instead, one could say that atheism leads people toward autonomy while Christ leads them toward community. Regardless, when “survival of the fittest” is the rule we follow, the only moral law is “every man for himself.” Most people live according to that law, whether they acknowledge it or not.
Believers offer the world a radical alternative. Altruism is a powerful apologetic argument because it is so rare and unexpected. God’s people serve others selflessly, not because we are inherently good, but because we resemble the selfless One who made us, saved us, and sent us to show His love to the world. He loved us, so we love the people He has made. Instead of Ayn Rand’s “me-first gospel,” Christians are motivated by Christ’s “others-first” gospel:
Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. (Philippians 2:3-8)
(This post is an excerpt from Tangible, chapter 4.)
