Justice > Charity

I love this newsletter and the ability afforded to me to share some of the ideas that float through my mind with you people who I care for and pray for. I hope that these emails are thought provoking, that they “spark” conversation about what you agree with or disagree with. This email is meant to be a dialogue that together we can make a better world.

After my latest email, I felt that my words were a bit more clunky than maybe I’d like them to be. Perhaps that is what is good about the email, that I don’t spend much time overthinking what I will send. I believe the conversation I am trying to drive about “serfdom” and capitalism is an important one, though it has been a difficult one for me to grapple with.

My passion for the topic has been birthed from the government shutdown and the tens of millions of Americans who were anxious because of the lack of funding for SNAP benefits. But, if you read the book Poverty by America, you will see that the entire United States is using government subsidy.

In the midst of these SNAP benefits being unavailable, a young mom began calling churches to see if any of them would help buy formula for her baby. Some said yes, but interestingly, some said no. How is it that a church could honestly listen to a mother asking to feed her baby and say “no”? How can you refuse charity, especially to one like this?

Of course, the young lady posted this to Tik-Tok and she went viral, exposing her local churches for their lack of charity.

We need to go a level deeper in this conversation. Charity is important. Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, house the homeless, etc. The Bible is very clear about how we should be generous in our charitable acts, taking care of those in need around us.

But the Bible also calls us to go the next step, which is to bring forth justice for the oppressed. To do so, we need to ask why the people in our community are hungry/naked/homeless. To actively seek to reverse what is causing this difficulty.

If individuals take the task of justice upon themselves, investing in their individual communities, suddenly the dependence on big government is weakened.

It is a scandal that there are churches who will not give charity to those who call asking to help feed their children. But the bigger scandal is that she has to call on strangers at all. That she feels the need to post videos on the internet just to get someone to pay attention to her plight.

It is scandalous that we have created a system where we are one government shutdown from a missed check and an empty pantry. Millions of Americans are one unexpected bill away from emergency. Does any of this sound like “the land of the free”? Maybe we are free, but we have chose to become enslaved by debt, by big government, and by dominating companies. In our attempt to live well, we have been sold a synthetic dream.

Our churches need to be places that do not just treat the symptoms, but heals the diseases that people are facing. Not just charity, but justice.

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