As far as the east is from the west

Psalm 103:6-14

6   The LORD works righteousness
and justice for all who are oppressed.
7   He made known his ways to Moses,
his acts to the people of Israel.
8   The LORD is merciful and gracious,
slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
9   He will not always chide,
nor will he keep his anger forever.
10   He does not deal with us according to our sins,
nor repay us according to our iniquities.
11   For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him;
12   as far as the east is from the west,
so far does he remove our transgressions from us.
13   As a father shows compassion to his children,
so the LORD shows compassion to those who fear him.
14   For he knows our frame;
he remembers that we are dust.


Thursday I drove from Tallahassee to Boone, NC for a dear friend's wedding.  As I watched this

turn to this

and finally this

I listened to a recorded reading of The Hole in Our Gospel by Richard Stearns, U.S. President of World Vision.  World Vision is Christian humanitarian organization working to address the roots of poverty and injustice around the world.  (Where IJM has a pointed focus through its collaborative casework model toward seven types of injustice— slavery, sex trafficking, unprosecuted rape, police brutality, illegal property seizure, illegal detention, and citizenship rights— all in the developing world, World Vision paints a broader stroke through emergency aid, microfinance, child sponsorships, and provision of basic staples to meet the needs of impoverished peoples both internationally and in the United States.)  Currently, the organization works with nearly 100 million people in almost 100 countries.  If you haven't heard of their child sponsorship program, check it out.

The Hole in Our Gospel was not written for our comfort.  Stearns calls readers to understand the gospel holistically; not only that we might love the Lord our God with all our hearts and love our neighbors as ourselves, but that we might define "loving our neighbors" beyond evangelism.  He calls us to pray that our hearts would be broken by the things that break God's heart, near or far, no matter whether our actions directly or immediately save a soul.  He notes that the contemporary church harps on sins of commission to the detriment of attention to sins of omission.  Scripture, he asserts, seems to imply that our Lord is more dismayed by the latter.  (See James 4:17; Luke 12:47; Luke 12:48; 2 Peter 2:21; and John 9:41.)  He takes liberty in paraphrasing Matthew 25:34-40 to address today's church:

"For I was hungry, while you had all you needed.  I was thirsty, but you drank bottled water.  I was a stranger, and you wanted me deported.  I needed clothes, but you needed more clothes.  I was sick, and you pointed out the behaviors that led to my sickness.  I was in prison, and you said I was getting what I deserved."

Ouch.

Many of Stearn's illustrations came from his experiences in India, and even in the city where I lived.  Hearing his thoughts helped me to process some of what I have seen.  I feel so far from the East right now; as if there is no way India could be on the same planet as America.  Reflecting on the profound disparity between my home country and the place I've called home for the past nine months, I reach one conclusion: the distance from east to west could hardly be further.  For the psalmist's illustrative purposes, that distance is our greatest hope; one through which we bask in mercy and in grace.  The chasm's physical distance and its social and economic implications, however, should call us to action.

Consider the 10/40 Window.  From North Africa to China, 10 to 40 degrees North of the equator, an estimated 2 billion people have not heard the gospel.  Many of those same people are starving and oppressed; among them live the majority of the world's 27 million slaves.  Both their physical and spiritual needs should be met.  Why wouldn't we help?

Stearns writes that the disparity between rich and poor is a relatively recent phenomenon in human history.  Around 1820, the difference between the wealth of nations didn't vary much beyond a 4:1 ratio.  As of 2002, the disparity was 75:1.  The problem is august, and will become worse without severe intervention.  We've grown comfortable brushing off convictions to serve the poor through misconstruing Christ's words to his disciples in Matthew 26:11: "For you always have the poor with you..."  Context is crucial here.  The link above will display the entire chapter.  Take a look.  The second part of that verse reads, "but you will not always have me."  This statement was made solely in reference to a one-time choice to expend a sum directly on honoring the Lord incarnate rather than giving money to the poor, in the context of making the most of his limited (and now expired, should we need reminding) time on earth as a man; not on brushing off the poor because they'll be around forever.  Even if the directive was to flat-out ignore the poor when attention could alternatively be given to Christ in the flesh, the premise is no longer valid.  Christ is no longer on earth in human form.  As should further go without saying, a message of apathy to the poor (let alone a message of ambivalence to help the poor because total eradication of worldwide poverty must be impossible) stands in direct conflict with nearly all of Christ's teachings.

Some would have us believe that the poor and oppressed, particularly those outside our own nation, are simply not our problem; that we've worked hard for all we have, and we should get to keep the fruits of our labor to ourselves.  Those people must have created their own messes, right?  That's got to be justification enough to leave them be.  Stearns' paraphrase, "I was sick, and you pointed out the behaviors that led to my sickness" was particularly convicting to me.  I would be embarrassed to admit how frequently I mount that soap box.  At times I'm tempted to turn to a date rape victim and ask, "What were you thinking going to that night club?"  Or to ask a single mother struggling to feed her family, "Why in the world did you have so many children?"  I certainly didn't learn this trait from Jesus.

To be sure, Christ admonished sinners whom he had cleansed to "go and sin no more," but only after addressing condemning crowds: "Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone."  From east to west, none of us is too different from that adulterous woman.  The distance between us should not be so vast.

Last summer political personality Glenn Beck took arms against a sea of troubles, proclaiming, "Social justice and economic justice are code words.  The rallying cry of both the communist front and the fascist front.  And if we don't get off the social justice/ economic justice bandwagon, you are in great danger.  All of our faiths.  My faith, your faith, whatever your church is, this is effecting all of them.  It is a perversion of the gospel, and every member of every church should be concerned.
...
If you have a priest that is pushing social justice, go find another parish.  Go alert your bishop and tell them, 'Excuse me, are you down with this whole social justice thing?'  If it's my church, I'm alerting the church authorities: 'Excuse me, what's this social justice thing?'  And if they say, 'Yeah, we're all in on this social justice thing,' I am in the wrong place."

Indeed, terms like "social justice" must be defined.  But in establishing definition, we must examine what leads us to draw lines where we do.  What do we scramble to keep to ourselves, and why?  If we're talking about giving our time and money to aid and empower the poor and oppressed, and that "social justice" is a perversion of the gospel...we're all in trouble.

Human rights activism, or social justice, has long been considered a left-wing, liberal trumpet call— a line of work reserved for hippies and new age fringe.  This is not the case, nor should it be allowed to be the case.  As the psalmist wrote that our Lord remembers we are dust (verse 14 up top) we would do well to remember the same.  We are all children of the one true God.  We all have a responsibility to care for our brothers and sisters, no matter how distant or disparate their existences may seem.  We will all be held accountable, one day, for what we have left undone.  In Christ's own words:

"And proclaim as you go, saying, 'The kingdom of heaven is at hand.'  Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons.  You received without paying; give without pay."