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The third R—redistribution—tends to make some folks nervous. They hear the word and think it’s some sort of Robin Hood thing or a Communist conspiracy—taking from the rich and giving to the poor. That’s not what I mean at all. That wouldn’t work anyway. I’m not suggesting that we move money around or level everything out so everyone has exactly the same amount. What I envision is Christians developing a new perspective on resources.
In the Bible, the book of Ruth demonstrates the principle of redistribution quite well. When we talk about redistribution, we’re really talking about stewardship. The problem, of course, is that we’ve gotten away from the understanding that all of the resources belong to God, and that we are stewards of whatever portion of those resources He has entrusted to us.
billionaires have the resources and businesses to provide job opportunities and fund nonprofits that can offer training schools for those who have never worked before.
Habitat for Humanity is one of the most effective Christian organizations involved in redistribution efforts.
When people have ownership over something, if they help pay for it or build it, they are much more likely to take care of it than if it is just handed to them for free.
Relocation is imitating Christ, who “made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness” (Phil. 2:7) so He could show us the full extent of God’s love. Reconciliation is God bringing people into relationship with Himself and other people. Redistribution is caring for others’ needs as we care for our own.
So how do we live in a way that others can see Christ in us but not fall into the trap of making ourselves godlike? The answer is in the quality of the teaching we receive—and in our own diligence in seeking out the truth.
we can discern His call on our lives at different levels. Throughout Scripture, we read about God’s concern for people who are vulnerable or suffering: the poor, the widows and orphans, the foreigners in the land, and so on. All Christians should feel a sense of calling to where there is pain in our society. Then if we hear something more specific from God, perhaps that requires some urgency, we should be willing to go to a different place. Maybe the call is like Paul’s and it’s about a certain group of people—the homeless, prisoners, people with AIDS, or whomever. Then our geographic location
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when we say yes to God, sometimes we have to grow to believe He is with us like He promised—even if there is no sign of His presence until later. When we finish our task—when we arrive at that place He wants us to be—then we can see how much of a grace act it was for Him to bring us there. So in a sense, obedience opens up the grace. When we have the will to obey God, He affirms that and opens up His grace even more to us.
the truth is that there is enough time and enough wealth to go around. The people in the churches every Sunday outnumber the people who are on the streets and the number of people on welfare. If the church took up the responsibility of caring for the poor, of living incarnationally, of participating in the unspeakable gift of giving, our world would look much different from the way it does today. Justice is a stewardship issue, caring for the poor is a stewardship issue, loving our neighbor as we love ourselves is a stewardship issue. We have the resources, but our priorities aren’t there yet.
In many ways, black theology and white theology in churches in America have been like two sides of a coin when it comes to thinking about justice and redemption.
white theology (especially white evangelical theology) has tended to focus on the personal side of redemption. Emphasis has been placed on evangelism, salvation, and individual spiritual growth and holiness—with the Bible being regarded as a devotional book that inspires believers individually.
Black theology has a very different take on both redemption and justice, in part because much of it has been developed in response to white oppression. In terms of redemption—or liberation—black theology builds on the “Let my people go!” model of Moses. It celebrates God’s history of delivering His people from slavery and oppression and regards redemption as communal as well as individual.
White theology, however, has a serious problem: because the church added “racial” to reconciliation as part of the gospel in an effort to accommodate racism, the stream was poisoned. Even today, many church leaders maintain that it is inappropriate or even evil to organize their congregations to get them to protest injustice. Thus, the struggle to understand biblical truth about justice and redemption continues.
Black theology is alien to most white people—and if they hear a little bit of it in a negative context or out of context, they’re likely to have a serious problem with it. Racism creates anger. Because of the blatant racism of the past and its common occurrence today, many white Christians do just enough social good in the black community to salve their consciences while maintaining imperialistic theology. They do just enough to get by without repentance.
The white community sees the reaction of the black community and thinks it is too strong, too violent, and too much. But we in the black community feel we have been oppressed too long and that the changes boasted are, in reality, a far cry from the rhetoric and the legislation. So, of course, we tend to react strongly. Both sides are yelling too loudly to listen to one another. We have accommodated the racism and the segregation in society for so long that we have lost our ability to hear or understand one another.
I want to see us continue on this journey toward developing and practicing theology that embraces both the redemptive justice of the cross and social and economic justice in our communities. If I can say, at the end of my life, that I lived to see justice welcomed back into the church in America, that will be a wonderful thing.
justice is any act of reconciliation that restores any part of God’s creation back to its original intent, purpose, or image.
God has always wanted the vulnerable in society to be cared for. He never intended for them to languish in poverty, abuse, slavery, homelessness, or other types of devastation. When we care for individuals who are trapped in these ways—when we show them love and help them move toward freedom and wholeness—we participate in bringing a little part of God’s kingdom back into alignment with His greater plan.
My own son’s love for me led me to where I could discover and experience God’s love for me.
He told me I’d become a different person after the beating. He thought I’d lost my fire because I was talking about forgiveness. It seemed like I was a more submissive person now, and he didn’t like that. He had to get to know his daddy all over again—and even though he still loved me, he didn’t like the new version of me as much as he had liked the old version.
Tragically, Spencer suffered a massive heart attack just three days later at the age of forty-four.
Our world was destroyed that day—our hearts were broken, our vision for the future was shattered, and we didn’t know what we were going to do.
I got up and said to God, out loud in front of everybody, “God, I’m really mad at You. You took my son. I would have liked to have given him back to You, but You took him, and I didn’t have a chance.”
At the wake and the funeral, I also said, “God, I would like to give my son back to You tonight as a seed of reconciliation, so that from this seed, many others will grow. I pray that reconciliation will sprout all over this nation, and my son’s death will not have been in vain.”
once again, Spencer had a big impact on who I would become. After his wake, for a while I wondered, Who is going to do this? Who is going to carry on his ministry of reconciliation? Then I realized that I needed to do it. I needed to make reconciliation a priority in my life again—and at the same time I would be honoring Spencer’s memory.
Our family, in agreement with others in our ministry, decided to call the new center built by the volunteers the Spencer Perkins Center of Reconciliation and Development.
In a way the center saved me from grief. At the same time, it’s how I do my grieving. When I’m out in the yard pulling up grass or inside working on a building or teaching a group of young people about reconciliation and justice, I’m thinking about Spencer. I’m thinking about him, feeling the pain of him not being here, and hoping that his death has made me more committed to Christ and to the ministry of reconciliation.
We do not give people dignity; God gives it to them, but we must work to affirm it in others and ourselves.
When our source of dignity becomes broken or unavailable, we often feel lost and discouraged.
God created all things. He knows the purest expression of our dignity. Because we are made in His image, even in our fallen state we have a sense of creativity and beauty. Conversion and dignity are the realization that we bear God’s face—the image of God. Conversion is to turn around when we realize that we are sinners going away from God. Conversion is finding that His love is sufficient for all that we need. We are united with our Maker, and we discover that He gave us the capacity and calling to be creative. Our response to God’s love is confidence in who we are in Him.
Acts 1:8; Galatians 2:20; and 2 Timothy 2:1–2. These three passages have become my life’s ministry.
Sadly, when many look at the church in America today, they don’t see a group of disciples characterized by love for one another. Instead, they see (and hear) a group of people making a lot of noise about issues—abortion, homosexuality, and other social and political hot topics.
The real advantage for us, of course, is that the more we practice loving the people who are hard for us to love, the more we reflect Jesus’s character and build our “grace muscles” so we can respond in an even more Christlike manner the next time.
It seems to me that we have a limited and distorted idea of love. Somehow we’ve developed the mind-set that to love one person or group, we have to hate another person or group. So we direct our love toward the groups we’re part of—our families, our denominations, our political parties, our ethnic groups—and feel free to hate anyone outside of these boxes. We may not hate them individually, but we hate them collectively. We condemn people for not belonging to the same groups we belong to—we look down on them for not thinking like us, worshiping like us, voting like us, or looking like us.
The fact that we ought to forgive others is a burden. The fact that we can forgive others is a blessing.
Mr. Winter also reminded me of what God had taught me back in Brandon—that racism enslaves the oppressor as well as the oppressed. To hear not just a white man, but a former governor of Mississippi, acknowledge those truths and apologize to me and African Americans everywhere was pretty amazing. It was a healing moment,
We don’t want to use guilt to try to get people to help us; we want to use understanding about how God liberates us to enter into renewed relationships and move forward together. I need to be able to say to a white person I’m asking to help me with something, “This is not about you being wrong or me being wronged. This is about the time being right for us to work together in ways we never could before.”
do we listen carefully for the still, small voice of God when we pray? Once we hear it, are we willing to obey, even if what God says doesn’t exactly address the concerns we brought to Him in the first place?
Prayer led Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego right into a fiery furnace. It led Daniel right into a lions’ den. Prayer allows us to prioritize the kingdom and the will of God, not our own desires. Prayer is meant to change our list of desires so that we instead seek God’s kingdom and the things He wants rather than the comforts and riches of this world.
The way I’ve come to define prayer is that it is seeking and listening for the voice of God in relationship to His will.
Prayer is not a substitute for action; it is a preparation for action.
Recently I was in a theological discussion with a group of people. They asked me what I thought should be the church’s next great venture. My answer was pretty simple: unstop our ears—take these earbuds out of our ears. There is too much noise in our society right now, and that noise just keeps getting louder. We need quiet time for reflection. We need to be still and know that God is God.
During my lifetime, I fear that more people have seen the church as a messy contradiction defined by division and hot-button issues than have seen it as a prophetic voice living out the gospel. Most people outside the church see it estranged regarding issues of race, economics, sexuality, and so many other things. They see the church as a place that condemns, rather than loves. They hear the voice of the church speaking a language of hate, rather than a language of redemption and reconciliation. We have lost the fullness of the gospel. It’s time to recover the fullness of the gospel, to
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It is incredibly important for churches to be present in low-income communities. When churches are located solely in affluent suburbs, congregations often end up catering to the culture of the rich and either patronize the poor or forget about them altogether. A lot of these larger churches have an effective message and the ability to mobilize people well. I would like to see them using those attributes to aid in the planting of intentional, multiethnic, multiclass churches in low-income areas.
When we meet in smaller groups, we start to empathize with people more, to make their needs our own. We begin to love more fully and want the same things for the other members of our community that we want for our own lives and our own families.
When we start to care for others in this way, we find our lives quickly become intertwined. Our care for the poor stops looking like a handout and starts looking like the way we care for family members and those we love.
This is really what our worship should be all about—seeking and telling the truth.
Acts 2:44 says that believers held everything in common. Everything. They supported one another and looked after people’s needs, making sure that every community member was cared for.
Everyone wants to fight crime, fight violence, fight racism, and fight injustice, but love is still the final fight, and unless we have these communities of love, we will never see this dream realized.
