Monday Meditation #21
On the heels of an American election in which the Left is rejoicing and the Right is reeling, I came across something related while reading Tim Keller’s Ministries of Mercy: The Call of the Jericho Road. The context of the quote is in reference to the church stepping up to meet the social problems of society.
While accomplishing that task, Francis Schaeffer said, Christians may be at times, “cobelligerents” with the Left or the Right, but never allies. “If there is social injustice, say there is social injustice. If we need order, say we need order. . . . But do not align yourself as though you are in either of these camps: You are an ally of neither. The church of the Lord Jesus Christ is different from either—totally different.”
The ideology of the Left believes big government and social reform will solve social ills, while the Right believes big business and economic growth will do it. The Left expects a citizen to be held legally accountable for the use of his wealth, but totally autonomous in other areas, such as sexual morality. The Right expects a citizen to be held legally accountable in areas of personal morality, but totally autonomous in the use of wealth. The North American “idol”—radical individualism—lies beneath both ideologies. A Christian sees either “solution” as fundamentally humanistic and simplistic.
The causes of our worsening social problems are far more complex than either the secularists of the Right or Left understand. We wrestle not with flesh and blood, but with powers and principalities! We have seen there is great social injustice—racial prejudice, greed, avarice—by those with the greatest wealth in the country (and sadly, within the evangelical church itself). At the same time, there is a general breakdown of order—of the family and the morals of the nation. There is more premarital sex (and thus there are more unwed mothers), more divorce, child neglect and abuse, more crime. Neither a simple redistribution of wealth nor simple economic growth and prosperity can mend broken families; nor can they turn low-skilled mothers into engineers or technicians.
Only the ministry of the church of Jesus Christ, and the millions of “mini-churches” (Christian homes) throughout the country can attack the roots of social problems. Only the church can minister to the whole person. Only the gospel understands that sin has ruined us both individually and socially. We cannot be viewed individualistically (as the capitalists do) or collectively (as the Communists do) but as related to God. Only Christians, armed with the Word and Spirit, planning and working to spread the kingdom of righteousness of Christ, can transform a nation as well as a neighborhood as well as a broken heart.
— Timothy J. Keller, Ministries of Mercy: The Call of the Jericho Road, p. 26. Embedded quote from Francis Schaeffer, The Church at the End of the Twentieth Century, p. 37.
Amen and amen.
I love the line at the where he says “we cannot be viewed individualistically…or collectively..but as related to God.” It just screams to me, “You are not your own. You were bought at a price!”
I am curious about this though: are these ideologies always so black and white – Left/Right, conservative/liberal, etc…? Do they stay the same throughout various political climates and so on?
The ideologies don’t necessarily change, but the labels that we give them will. For example, you may have heard people say that a “classical liberal” is a “modern conservative.” Also, in our U.S. government I think that the struggle between Left and Right will always be there, regardless of where the midpoint falls. The thing you need to keep in mind is that the strategy for building the Kingdom is not through political means, but through the cross. As one late 19th century politician said, “One of the greatest delusions in the world is the hope that the evils of this world are to be cured by legislation.”