Barney Wiget's Blog, page 42

Poor Enough To…

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I’ve always liked the beggar-to-beggar definition of evangelism – “…one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread.” Since I feel more beggarly than ever these days, I’m drawn to “my people,” not so much as an authority on God, but poor enough to reach other poor folks. Befriending the Lord’s beloved is no heroic venture. We beggars genuinely enjoy each other’s company.

It turns out that my losses are more like gains in the pursuit of sharing my testimony with not-yet-saved people. My relative “destitution” imbues me with a greater empathy for other hurting people, many of which hurt much, much more than I. My physical, emotional, financial neediness reduces any sense of superiority by which I was formerly deluded and I realize how deeply allied I am with people broken in both body and soul. My scarcity tends to construct a bridge between me and the “inadequately capitalized.” Rather than a curse; my neediness is a blessing as I embark on a kingdom seed-sowing mission.

– Originally published in The Other End of the Dark: A Memoir About Divorce, Cancer, and Things God Does Anyway (the profits of which go to Freedom House).

Show and Tell

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Showing and sharing, that’s how we introduce our friends to our Friend Jesus. We show him off by the way we live and tell people why we live that way as best we can.

Though they’re inextricably linked, some of us do a lot more sharing than showing. We try to get away with telling about Jesus without taking the trouble to bring him to class. Our assignment though is not “Show OR Tell.” No wonder people get bored with just our telling. We’ve brought no visual aid!

Rule of thumb: If it doesn’t show, don’t tell!

We witness with two hands: Practice and Proclamation. Amputate one of those hands and the message becomes garbled, even oxymoronic.

 

– Originally published in Reaching Rahab: Joining God In His Quest For Friends

 

The “Full Gospel”

 

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Is John MacArthur Right About Social Justice? (Part 3 of 6)

“The story of the fall from the book of Genesis tells of relational damage in four directions: between the self and God, the self and the self, the self and other people, and the self and the created order. The gospel story must address and restore all of these fractures for it to be good news. However, the gospel among evangelicals typically addresses only the fracture of the God-human relationship. The other three parts of the picture are seldom recognized as a vital part of Christ’s work on the cross.” Tim Suttle  

Before reading on. Slowly read that again. Does it square with your view of both the Word and the world?

My response to the question I’m asking above about John MacArthur is “No, in my opinion, Brother Mac is not right about “social justice.”

While you might be a big fan of John MacArthur and his teaching I hope you’ll give me a hearing. Like I said in Parts One and Two, I’m not attacking him personally or suggesting he’s not a man of God. It’s just that I feel so strongly about biblical social justice that I couldn’t let Mr. Mac’s teaching on the subject go unchecked.

At the same time he bemoans the growing trend of the social justice emphasis in evangelicalism, I bemoan his mistaken notion of what biblical social justice is and its essential place in evangelicalism. Without a critical thinking socially conscious Church I predict a continued waning of our influence among coming generations. Even the unbelieving community seems to care about the world that we currently inhabit and they wonder why the faith community doesn’t seem to hold similar convictions. If our faith doesn’t make any difference in this world it doesn’t reflect the inheritance Jesus died to bequeath us and has no allure to this rightfully skeptical generation. 

What in heaven’s name we’re doing on earth anyway? What are we asking for when we pray, “Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven”? Isn’t this a request for heaven’s life to be duplicated on earth through a transformed humanity, both in our personal and social lives? Don’t you think that God calls us to “save souls” AND to partner with him to create a society that more closely reflects Jesus’s kingdom?

While Brother Mac bifurcates the two: gospel preaching and social justice, I would more agree with Tim Keller, also a theologian of considerable renown: “Conservative churches tend to concentrate on one set of sins, while liberal ones concentrate on another set. Jesus, like the Old Testament prophets, does not see two categories of morality.”

Should Christians do evangelism or social justice? Yes! Mac suggests that for some people, “doing justice” is a substitute for preaching the gospel. I agree with him that this is an injustice to justice. It’s not an either-or prospect. “Word” AND “deed” have to be seamlessly integrated in our kingdom efforts. Racial reconciliation and a just distribution of power and wealth go hand-in-hand with sharing the soul-saving merit of the cross.

In the same breath, God prohibits both “personal” sins, such as bowing down to graven images or having sex with an animal and things we might call “social” trespasses such as moving a neighbor’s land boundary marker or perverting the justice due to the stranger, the widow, or the orphan (Deut. 27:11–26).

Isaiah warned against idol worship (Isa. 2:8) and the injustice of grinding the poor into the ground (Isa. 3:14– 15). Amos thundered against both sexual immorality and the trafficking of the poor (Amos 2:6–7). Malachi indicted the people for divorcing their wives and for those who pay unjust wages to hired workers (Mal. 2:14–16; 3:5). James, rebuked his readers for “personal” issues, such as the use of the tongue (James 3:1–12) and for “social” matters, like not paying their field workers (James 5:1–6). He said those who possess “pure and undefiled religion” remain “unspotted from the world” and care for widows and orphans in their distress (James 1:27). It’s never either/or. It’s always both!

Southern slave owners argued that slavery was a “political” issue that ought not distract the Church from its mission of evangelism and discipleship. Southern preachers would call sinners to repentance for fornicating and gambling but not for slaveholding or lynching. I would argue that social justice is an indispensable part both our evangelizing and our disciple-making. Otherwise we don’t experience or preach the “full gospel.”

“Where there is sin,” says Russell Moore (President of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, the public-policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention), “no matter the form, the gospel speaks a word. This requires a ‘both/and’ approach from the Church, recognizing both vertical and horizontal aspects of our sin, both the personal and social.”

All those who sin sexually and those who abuse the poor, those who rip apart marriages and those who mistreat the sojourner, widow, or orphan need the same salvation that saves them from a just judgment.

A Christian brother in Hong Kong brought an unbelieving textile worker to church in hopes that he would come to Jesus. The laborer admitted afterward that the preacher had nailed him for his sins: laziness, a bad temper, and drinking too much. The brother surmised that his friend had received Jesus when the man indicated his disappointment that the preacher said nothing about the sins of his boss who employs child laborers, stiffs his employees of their wages, refuses to give them legally required holidays, and forces them to work many hours of overtime without compensating them for it. The church that day was full of CEOs and high-level management, and the preacher, for whatever reason didn’t call out their sins along with those of the laboring class.

The sad thing is the man rejected the gospel of that church for its half-finished message. He didn’t hear a “full gospel” that day.

It’s not a “full gospel” unless it improves the world. Or as Donald Kraybill puts it, “Any gospel without feet isn’t the gospel.”

Next time I’ll speak to what Mr. MacArthur calls this new “victim class” of obfuscators and whiners.

In the meantime, I’d love to hear a few of your thoughts…

Tour Guide Evangelism

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A change of paradigm might serve to improve the effectiveness of our witness. Instead of Gospel salespersons we might better think of ourselves as spiritual “Tour Guides.” It’s not like we’re selling anything and trying to profit from it, anyway. Right? Our job is to share what we’ve found and tell people where they can find it––for free!

My favorite tour guides are the ones who introduce me to fascinating places and invite me into their fascination. They’ve seen the site and given their spiel hundreds of times, yet the allure of it hasn’t waned and their joy in sharing it remains infectious. Worth every penny of the cost of the tour is the guide that is still enamored with his or her subject matter.

– Originally published in Reaching Rahab: Joining God In His Quest For Friends

Delivery Matters!

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I’ve heard some presentations of the good news that sounded terribly similar to billboard guarantees: “If you come to Jesus he will get you that job, win you that wife, or heal you of cancer!” Maybe he will and maybe he won’t, but unless the Spirit clearly compels you, don’t make promises on his behalf. His is a “gospel to the poor” but it doesn’t come, as gospel grifters would indicate, with a guaranteed path to riches.

“Evangelism as a method, is dangerous,” says Carl Medearis, “because it’s something we ‘do’ to other people. Nobody likes to be ‘done.’”

A woman was struggling to get her dog to take some medicine. She lifted him up in her arms in a vain attempt to shove it down his throat. He squirmed and fussed until she dropped him and the medicine on the kitchen floor. At which point he lapped it all up. He didn’t mind the medicine; he just didn’t like the way she was giving it to him! Delivery is important.

– Originally published in Reaching Rahab: Joining God In His Quest For Friends

Doing Justice to Justice

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Is John MacArthur Right About Social Justice? (Part 2 of 6)

“When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.” Archbishop Dom Helder Camara

As much respect as I have for John MacArthur and his ministry I’m posting a series of my own to counter his theses that social justice is not biblical, that anyone who pushes against injustice in a whiner, and that the only way to preach the gospel is to begin by rubbing people’s noses in their sin.

It’s true that no one recruited me as “Theology Police Commissioner,” but I can’t in good conscience stand by and watch Mr. Mac shred this crucial topic. Justice is no ancillary theme in Scripture. This isn’t about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. It’s central to following Jesus.

This is no polemic against MacArthur as a brother and Bible scholar. It’s not him, but his teaching on this subject that I can’t help but present what I think is a more biblical and Christ-reflecting way. I have no need to pad my ego by arguing with such a famous preacher, but I feel compelled to say something, because I feel his views on this topic are toxic to the evangelical community. My motive is to provide an alternative view that I believe is healthier and more biblical, to say nothing of being more Christ-like in tone.

In Part 1 I pushed back on Mr. Mac’s false equivalence between biblical social justice and secular socialism. Let me build on that a little here.

“Social justice, by its very definition,” says MacArthur, “is a temporal sort of economic concept, not a spiritual concept. So on its face injecting a temporal economic sociological concept into the gospel is injecting something alien into the gospel. . . it’s not included as a part of the spiritual gospel.”

I love Dorothy Day’s response to those who accused her of being a communist since she served and stood up for the poor: “Because the communists are for it doesn’t mean we have to be against it.” All truth, in other words, is God’s truth, wherever it might be found. Though at most points the teachings of socialism and Scripture are mutually exclusive, there are some places in which they overlap.

Those, like Brother Mac, who eschew the social implications of the gospel in favor of activities more “spiritual,” might heed Father John Bettuolucci’s warning: “Prayer and evangelism without social action leads to pietistic withdrawal from the realities of the human condition and an escape from social problems rather than a confrontation and challenge to change.”

Martin Luther King Jr. wrote from his Birmingham jail cell, “I have heard so many ministers say, ‘Those [civil rights] are social issues with which the Gospel has no real concern’. . . If the Church of today does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early Church, it will lose its authentic ring, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century.” I lament the fulfillment of this prophecy in the twenty-first century Church.

Let’s be clear, it’s the will and power of God working through his willing subjects, and not human effort (socialism), that gives us any hope of realizing a better society. The Kingdom does not come by human ingenuity and effort, but will not come without it. “The establishment of a community of righteousness in mankind,” wrote Walter Rauschenbusch, “is just as much a saving act of God as the salvation of an individual from his natural selfishness and moral inability.”

In my opinion, Brother Mac exclusively preaches––and preaches hard­––the concept of retributive justice and has all but entirely omitted the notion of distributive justice. He teaches that a just God is consistent in retribution and neglects, at least in this series, to show how God is also compassionate in distribution.

He seems more interested in bad people getting what’s coming to them in the next life than in vulnerable people getting what should be coming to them in this one!

Here’s a fraction of the references that clearly refer to the distributive aspect of the God’s justice and how he requires it of us:

Proverbs 29:7 The righteous care about justice for the poor, but the wicked have no such concern.
Micah 6:8 “What does the Lord require of you, but to do justly, love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?”
Psalm 140:12 I know that the LORD secures justice for the poor and upholds the cause of the needy.
Isaiah 1:17 Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow.
Luke 11:42 “… you neglect justice and the love of God.”

The clarity of these passages notwithstanding, Mac completely vaults over the compassionate aspect of God’s justice. He devotes thousands of words to prove that God justly punishes sinners but fails to teach that the same God, in the interest of justice, rescues the oppressed.

“Our charge is to both proclaim and embody the gospel so that others can see, hear, and feel God’s love in tangible ways,” wrote Richard Stearns, “It’s not either / or but both. We do justice and preach grace. It’s ministry by word and deed in harmony with each other.”

I understand Mac’s point that doing justice is not a prerequisite to being born again, but I believe that the “gospel” message includes both what Jesus saves us from (sin in all its forms, personal and social) and what he saves us to (personal and public righteousness).

Sometimes we preachers call people out for the sinful behaviors common to our audience, hoping that they will turn from them and turn to Jesus. When I preach on the street in San Francisco’s Tenderloin I typically cite not only their personal sins like substance abuse, but the “social” sins that typically go with them––thievery, violence, exploitation of the weaker. I’m praying that they’ll let go of these and come to Jesus to replace these behaviors (both private and public) with generosity, peacemaking, and the sort. Jesus sets us free from immorality––both personal and social. And he saves us to better morals––both personal and social.

In this series Brother Mac cites from passages from all over the book of Ezekiel, but I noticed a number of other verses curiously absent wherein the prophet directly addresses social justice.

Most shocking is the prophet’s description of the “sin of Sodom.” It wasn’t their sexual perversity that was in the forefront of God’s mind, but their proud, overstuffed, apathy toward the suffering of others!

“Justice,” says John Perkins, “is what love looks like in public.” Jesus boiled it down to two things: Love God and love people.

“The true gospel involves a turning to neighbor in love as well (as to God). The two are inseparable. Any robust conception of the gospel must take into account Jesus’s teaching about loving God and neighbor.” Tim Suttle

I have more to say on this, but I’d love to hear from you. Whether you agree or disagree with me, please weigh in to add or subtract something from my thesis.

Next time we’ll talk about the “Full Gospel.”

Just a Few of My Problems with “The Wall”

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“Build the wall! Build it now!” they chant.*

I have a number of problems with the wall that the president promised to construct and put it on Mexico’s tab. I’ve written on this before. (See below.) Here are a few more reasons of mine that I believe it’s a really bad idea.

(I mean no disrespect for those who think differently than me. I only wish to give you something more to think about.)

First of all, it’s the president’s irrational campaign promise that his base loves to hear in light of the fear he stokes in his rallies.  (It reminds of another national leader obsessed with a shrine to himself.)

It plays well as a symbol and a monument to fear of those on the other side of the wall. The president says repeatedly (that’s his MO, BTW, tell a lie enough times and people get lulled into buying what they weren’t shopping for) that he’s only trying to protect the American people from the horde of criminals and terrorists pouring over the border. That’s the “crisis” he’s invented.

The wall would serve as a sculpture to separation, an artistic representation of bigotry and antipathy toward “the other.” When Mr. Trump compares his wall to the wall around West Bank or when Christians compare it to the wall around Jerusalem it’s comparing apples with moon dust!

See: More on the POTUS Wall

Sure, it might help make ICE’s job easier, though not even all border patrol agents agree that it would. Even if it did, at what cost? $5 billion? Is that how we want to spend our resources when our schools suck, millions can’t afford health care, and the homeless problem all over the country is gargantuan and growing by the day?

We already have an internationally recognized monument. She’s not a celebration of fear, but of compassion and hospitality. It’s best-known inscription reads:

“Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

“Your tired, poor, homeless, huddled masses, those yearning to breathe free…” What could better describe those who have made the arduous, life-threatening trek up here from Central America?

A lesser-known earlier part of the poem describes the Lady in the harbor. She’s…

“A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.”

She’s the “Mother of Exiles,” whose torch serves to light the way to a better place, a place with a “world-wide welcome.” Not exactly the message Mr. Trump’s touts and tweets about his wall!

In good conscience we don’t dare display both a statue that says, “Welcome” and a wall that shouts, “Stay out!”

I say if we’re going to build the wall we should tear down the statue and use the materials for the wall. We could then put the savings into educating, feeding, housing, and providing health care for people; with some left over to do some community development where these “tired, poor, huddled masses” are fleeing from. Just a thought.

*(You gotta appreciate the complexity and nuance of the one syllable Trump rally chants: “Lock her up!” “Drain the swamp!” “Build the wall!” What they lack in depth they make up for in cadence and memorability. And if you do forget how they go, for ready reference, they fit nicely on your hat or beer koozie.)

Consider one or more of these:

On Fear and Anger (Why so many people voted for and continue to endorse Donald Truim’s presidency) 

Romans 13 and the Refugee Crisis

Christians at the Border (Part 1 of 3)

Rejected, Not Dejected

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Let’s be honest, it’s not always this easy. Most people, repeated enticements of the Spirit notwithstanding, are less than enthused about handing over the reins of their lives to Someone they can’t even see. Therefore, if we hope to reach reachable Rahabs we have to be willing to be rejected most times. Since we can’t predict people’s readiness to receive the truth, we have to risk it and give the Spirit something to work with.

No, it doesn’t always happen quite so easily as in Rahab’s case. But we should give the gospel itself and our personal story a little more credit, and the Spirit’s serenade a little more opportunity to find its way into their consciousness.

– Originally published in Reaching Rahab: Joining God In His Quest For Friends

He is the way, not the guy in the way!

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Christianity as a construct is to many people like a house with a sign on it that says, “Christianity: Do Not Enter!” On the contrary, the house into which we invite people is the house of Jesus. He’s at the door (more accurately, he is the Door) inviting people into his house. “He’s not the guy in the way. He is the way.”

The saving thing that God does is light years above our pay grade. His rescue mission is a supernatural act. Depending on our ability to “save” people is a fool’s errand. We have zero talent for it. We live in God’s story and we tell his story, but he’s the one who pulls people into the narrative.

– Originally published in Reaching Rahab: Joining God In His Quest For Friends

 

Is Social Justice “Sanctified Socialism”?

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Is John MacArthur Right About Social Justice? (Part 1 of 6)

“True Christian salvation involves a simultaneous turning toward God and humanity… When we submit to God, we submit to the common good.” Tim Suttle

Pushing back on a John MacArthur teaching is like challenging Steph Curry to a little one-on-one! But in this case I can’t help myself. Brother Mac is and always has been the real deal. He’s a passionate lover of Jesus and brilliant teacher of truth, at least insofar as he sees it. But I have to take exception to his take on the concept of “social justice” in his sermon series called: “Social Justice and the Gospel.” 

As much respect as I have for him and his ministry, I intend in this series of my own to refute his theses that social justice is not a biblical idea, that anyone who seeks justice in a “whiner,” and that the only way to preach the gospel is to rub people’s noses in their sin.

I agree with him Mac that there are some pretty anemic versions of Christianity out there along with a lot of weak presentations of the gospel by preachers. Grace may be free, but it doesn’t come cheap. It cost Jesus his all to provide it and requires our all to live into it. I also concur with his stated and restated thesis that sin is sin and sinners are sinners. Nobody gets a pass for bad behavior by blaming-shifting onto others. We have to own our own stuff and release it to Jesus who paid for it in full. Brother Mac and I run parallel on these things.

But after reading the transcripts of each of his sermons in this series I have to say that I think he has deviated from a biblical worldview in regard to the themes of social justice, compassion for the vulnerable, and the role of the gospel witness. With a decidedly adversarial tone he claims that “social justice” isn’t even found in the Bible but is a socialistic transplant from secular society into the Church. He says therefore that preachers who are faithful to the gospel will eschew it altogether.

He goes on to attack as “whiners” all those who claim to have been victimized, whether by a person or by an unjust system. With broad and clumsy strokes Brother Mac paints those who disagree with him into a theological corner. As a street-preaching, Bible-teaching, social justice-advocating follower of Jesus I respectfully reject each of these claims.

Just as it took him several sermons to unpack his opinions it will take at least half a dozen posts for me to pose mine. These topics are not only dear to my heart, but are some of the very things that I believe the Evangelical Church gets wrong these days, which reduces the advance of the kingdom and depletes our reputation in the world. I say with all due respect that this sagely preacher gets it wrong in a few places and I mean to share why I think so. [FYI: Since I’ll quote him throughout, feel free to read or listen to his sermons for yourself and see whether or not I’m being true to their context.]

First of all, Mr. Mac says, “Social justice … is part of classic socialism.” Not true. The Bible is replete with examples and commands for believers to live justly in society and to preach it as an indispensible component of Christ’s kingdom. Of all the sins that roiled the prophets, besides idolatry, injustice in a social context was at the top of their list. Scan Isaiah through Malachi and see for yourself.

We can’t rightly separate personal piety from social justice. This alleged split between spiritual and social leads to a warped view of Scripture and eludes kingdom ethics. For instance, Amos condemned social injustice and sexual sin in the same breath, “They trample the heads of the poor; father and son go in to the same girl.” (Amos 2:7).

Brother Mac relegates “social justice” to the liberal wings of the Church and has written off their emphasis as a “salvation by works.” Those Liberals only care about the poor because they’re trying to work their way to heaven! Though, in some cases, there is some truth in that broad-brush allegation, it doesn’t expunge the biblical mandate for the justified to “do justly.” God requires, says Micah, not only that we “walk humbly with God,” but that we “do justly and love mercy.” (Micah 6:8)

Mr. Mac throws the proverbial baby out with bath water and seems to consider doing works of justice as extracurricular in favor of doing the real work of the church. Social reform is to him and his dispensational theology, “polishing the brass on a sinking ship.” The idea is that since the world will just get worse and worse till Jesus returns, we have no responsibility to make this a place that better reflects God’s new order and a better place for us and future generations. His is a “left behind” theology that relegates the world to such certain destruction that there’s nothing that can or should be done to abate it is a fatalistic theology to which I don’t ascribe.

“I think the church now must be more vigorously engaged in Scripture, after having been lazy for a very long time,” says Walter Brueggemann. “And the church must do a much better job of social analysis than we have done, because very many church people think that social analysis feels like communism. And clearly the prophets were doing social analysis before anybody ever heard of Karl Marx.”

Brother Mac’s gospel is, in my opinion, simply too individualistic and fatalistic. It is individualistic because it is only about me and God, and how my sins will be atoned. It is fatalistic because I won’t get the benefits of it until I die.

“The typical evangelical gospel is a gospel built for death,” says Tim Suttle. “But the gospel Jesus preached was a gospel built for life.”

Richard Stearns, CEO of World Vision says “There’s a hole in our gospel.” To my thinking, ours is not a “full gospel” until it improves the world. Following Jesus requires much more than just having a personal and transforming relationship with God. It also involves a public and transforming relationship with the world.

BTW, in case you think I have no value for evangelism, I refer you to my book on that topic: Reaching Rahab: Joining God In His Quest For Friends.

Next time we’ll talk about “Doing Justice to Justice.” Stay tuned… In the meantime, feel free to affirm or refute my thinking on this. I’d love to hear from you.