Tonight was to be the last of our men’s groups until after the new year. We did not meet this past Wednesday because of Thanksgiving and in classic Scott fashion I forgot to send out the weekly reminder. The consequence was that it was just Bill and me eating my wife’s delicious chocolate-chip pumpkin-loaf and bantering about John Piper’s tendency to make everything so black and white. Please do not get me wrong–Piper asks relevant and important questions but sometimes comes across as too definitive (though for good reason considering the primary audience). One of the chapters we were supposed to cover in Don’t Waste Your Life
In his book The Problem of Wine Skins: Church Structure in a Technological Age
In the Old Testament, God’s concern with the poor consistently appears within the context of the justice of God and the working of justice among God’s people. Thus, biblically, words such as “the poor,” “the needy,” “the oppressed,” “the sojourner,” typically have moral content, relating to God’s requirements for justice. This is not easily comprehended in today’s world because “the poor” does not have such a moral content for us. It has a purely descriptive sense; one might say that for us it is a purely secular word. But what we must see is that poverty itself is of ethical significance – the poor is a moral category. In God’s world there is no human condition which escapes moral significance; and the poor, and the treatment they receive, are strong indicators of the faithfulness of God’s people.
(quoted by Waldron Scott in Bring Forth Justice
The above is a helpful observation — namely, that “poverty itself is of ethical significance … the poor, and the treatment they receive, are strong indicators of the faithfulness of God’s people.” — especially when you consider some of the observations and comments from a recent Barna survey (okay, so Barna will win no prizes for careful sociological research, but his surveys do provide helpful, if informal, snapshots of the state of the evangelical heart.):
Interestingly, evangelical Christians were only half as likely (11%) as the rest of the adult population to deem poverty to be the nation’s most vexing social challenge. Asian Americans (11%) were similarly less likely to see the issue in this way.
Only HALF AS LIKELY? Admittedly, most evangelicals would deem “salvation” as the nation’s most vexing social challenge, but still: “half as likely”? What about the (coincidental?) correlation between “evangelical Christians” and “Asian Americans”? Of course, there is no necessary (explicit or implicit) link between the two pieces of data, but the juxtaposition in a recent Barna report raises the question: what is it about “evangelical Christianity” that would produce a similar attitude toward poverty as that among “Asian Americans”? Might it be that our informal comparison between “Japanese Buddhism” and “Bible-belt Christianity” is a bit more substantive than we have been willing to allow? Is this attitude toward poverty among Asian Americans related to that body of worldview ideas/values that hinders (through willful blindness, ignorance, and stubbornness; cf Ephesians 4:17ff) Asian Americans from truly hearing the gospel of God in Jesus Christ? And do “evangelical Christians” share the same worldview structures? That is, are “evangelical Christians” similarly hindered from hearing the gospel of God in Jesus Christ?
In this light, the following paragraph from later in the same Barna report is rather interesting:
In like manner, people groups that are more affluent provided the smallest estimates of poverty. On average, people from households earning more than $60,000 as well as those who have a college degree estimated the poverty rate to be 20% – substantially below the typical estimate offered by adults, but still significantly higher than the actual rate published by the Census Bureau.
Statistically, it appears that our material “well-being” [in itself a loaded use of a loaded-term ...] and consequent lifestyle actually blinds us to the needs of those around us: think about it — we travel well-maintained roads from white-collar business districts to well manicured subdivisions: our daily commute, by design, does not take us through the most needy parts of our community; we shop at the cleanest stores in the most pristinely and carefully developed areas, often unaware of the people displaced by the development. On occasion — only about 20% of the time, to use the above statistic — we stumble uncomfortably across the “poverty” [by which WE mean those "less fortunate" {whatever that slippery term means} than us] around us and so are forced to acknowledge that “yes, it’s there” — and someone should do something about it.
The Barna article concludes:
Barna expressed surprise that devout Christians were not more engaged with the issue. “Given the extensive comments in the Bible regarding the importance of taking care of the poor, we expected to see a larger distinction between the responses of Christians and non-Christians. As churches seek social causes through which to engage people and their faith, facilitating hands-on responses to poverty would probably activate a lot of latent faith and resources.”
So I wonder (and view Piper’s chapter in new light): how far have I drifted from the gospel of God in Jesus Christ that I fail to apprehend the essential, organic — and profoundly moral — link between “a life worthy of the calling” and “my obligations to the poor”? How far have I drifted, similarly, that I fail to apprehend the essential, prime place of “suffering” as God’s good and gracious tool by which he “grows me in grace”? What gospel is it that shapes me if not the gospel of God in Jesus Christ? What spirit and mind possess me if not the Spirit and Mind of Christ who willingly laid aside his own wealth and privilege to serve a wretch like me, even paying my full debt?
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