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SteHole 10-08-114 |
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The
Hole in Our Gospel What
Does God Expect of Us? Richard
Stearns Thomas
Nelson, 2009, 302 pp. ISBN 978-0-7852-2918-6 |
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Richard Stearns is the president of World
Vision. This book is a passionate
apologetic for getting involved in helping the poor of the world intertwined
with his personal story and vignettes of needs and people being helped. Introduction What does God expect of us? God asks us for everything, total
commitment, to be His partners in changing the world. Being a Christian “requires much more than
just having a personal and
transforming relationship with God. It
also entails a public and
transforming relationship with the world.
If your personal faith in Christ has no positive outward expression
then [it] has a hole in it.” (2) The good news was meant to change the world. “When we committed ourselves to following
Christ, we also committed to living our lives in such a way that a watching
world would catch a glimpse of god’s character—His love, justice, and
mercy—through our words, actions, and behavior.” (3) Part I – The Hole in My Gospel—and Maybe Yours 1. A Hole in the Whole “The kingdom of which Christ spoke was one in
which the poor, the sick, the grieving, cripples, slaves, women, children,
widows, orphans, lepers, and aliens—the ‘least of these’ (Matt. 25:40
NKJV)—were to be lifted up and embraced by God.” (16) “Christ’s proclamation of the ‘kingdom of
heaven’ was a call for a redeemed world order populated by redeemed people—now.” (16) “The kingdom of God…was intended to change
and challenge everything in our fallen world in the here and now. …we are also commanded to go into the
world—to bear fruit by lifting up the poor and the marginalized, challenging
injustice wherever we find it, rejecting the worldly values found within
every culture, and loving our neighbors as ourselves.” (17) “Our charge is to
both proclaim and embody the gospel so that others can see, hear, and feel
God’s love in tangible ways.” (18) “This gospel—the whole gospel—means much more than the personal salvation of
individuals. It means a social revolution.” (20) The whole gospel means tangible compassion
for the sick and poor and biblical justice, the spiritual, physical and
social dimensions of our being. It is
the mission of the Church. (22) 3. You Lack One Thing “God expects us to serve Him on His terms—not
ours.” (39) “When we say that we want
to be His disciple, yet attach a list of conditions, Jesus refuses to accept
our terms. His terms involve
unconditional surrender.” (39) Part 2.
The Hole Gets Deeper 4. The Towering Pillars of Compassion and Justice “God will delight in His people when they obey
Him. When the hungry are fed, the poor
are cared for, and justice is established. … This is what Jesus meant when He
prayed, ‘Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.’ Charity, equity, and mercy are the marks of
the kingdom of the Messiah, and Christ wanted it to begin on earth.” (57) 5. The Three Greatest Commandments “Jesus equated loving our neighbors with loving
God. If we truly love God, He was
saying, we will express it by loving our neighbors, and when we truly love
our neighbors, it expresses our love for God.” (66) “The first two commandments…call believers
to love God and then love their neighbors, and the third one calls them to go
and disciple new believers who will
do the same.” “What does God expect?
“That love [God’s love for us and ours for Him],
when demonstrated to the world through acts of kindness, compassion, and
justice is revolutionary; and when we become the agents of it, we make
credible the message of a Savior who transforms men and women for eternity.”
(69) 7. The Stick in Your Hand “A fitting metaphor for the Christian walk is
that of enlisting in the army. Upon
enlistment, the soldier immediately surrenders control of his or her life. …
The truth is that surrender is not an easy thing to do. But without that surrender a soldier is not
useful to the army, and a Christian is not useful to God.” (89) “God didn’t need great courage and skill from
Moses; He could have used just a stick to save the nation of Israel. But He chose to use Moses—and his
stick. All He required was for Moses
to be available and obedient.” (91) “Discerning our unique calling is not always a
simple thing. We need to be quiet
enough to hear God’s still, small voice.
We must also faithfully read the Scriptures, pray diligently, follow
the Lord’s teachings, listen to wise friends who know us, and consistently
make ourselves available to serve.
Finally, we have to remain open to God’s possibilities, always willing
to take the outrageous risk and do the unpredictable thing.” (92) “American society does not talk much about
calling anymore. … A calling, which is something I do for God, is replaced by
a career, which threatens to become my god.
A career is something I chose for myself; a calling something I
receive. … A career is about upward mobility; a calling generally leads to
downward mobility.” (93, quoting John Ortberg) “Are you
willing to be open to God’s will for your life?”
(94) Part 3. A
Hole in the World 8. The Greatest Challenge of the New Millennium The greatest challenge the world faces is the
growing chasm between the richest and poorest people on earth. “We have not
yet made the commitment to share with others an appreciable part of our
excessive wealth.” (98, 99 quoting
President Jimmy Carter) In the past, three major impediments prevented
people from loving distant neighbors: awareness,
access, and ability. (101)
Today these barriers have been erased. 9. One Hundred Crashing Jetliners 26,500 children die of preventable causes related
to poverty every day, almost 10 million a year. The plight of the suffering is not personal
for us. When it’s your child, it’s
very personal. For God it is personal
because every one of these children is His
child. We must pray for God to soften our hearts and love as He loves. To walk by on the other side of the road is
wrong. (107-110) 10. What’s Wrong with This Picture? Statistics do not make things personal. They seem to excuse our inaction. We tend to make value judgments about the
poor. They made bad choices, or were
lazy or stupid. Racial or cultural
stereotypes lead us to wonder why their governments are ineffective, their
leaders corrupt, their development weak. We may feel sorry for them, thus lessening
their dignity. “If we are to see the
poor as God sees them, we first have to repent of our judgmental attitudes
and feelings of superiority.” (117) Almost all poverty is fundamentally the result of
a lack of options. People are trapped
in circumstances beyond their power to change—social, cultural, political,
and economic systems that do not reward their labor. The one lost thing every person needs is
hope. (118-19) The average income in the U.S.A. is $105 a
day. 2.6 billion people
(40% of the world) live on less than $2 a day. “For Christians, this is a justice issue
or, stated more bluntly, a moral issue in which those of us who have plenty
seem willing to allow others to have nothing.” “It is not our fault that people are poor,
but it is our responsibility to do
something about it.” (123) 11. Caught in the Web Poverty is extremely complex and there are no
simple solutions. It is more than the
absence of things, like food,
medicine, and clean water. “While
providing things like these in urgent situations is sometimes necessary, it
neither addresses the underlying stubbornness of poverty, nor is it
sustainable; it just creates a dependency.
Frankly, giving things to the poor does much more to make the giver
feel good than it does to fundamentally address and improve the condition of
those in need.” (126) The root cause of poverty is often injustice. People have been exploited
or manipulated by unjust people and structures. While these systems must be challenged,
there are also more subtle factors at play, such as a poverty of spirit, loss
of faith, loss of hope, sinfulness.
But salvation of the soul in itself does not bring food or clean
water. Many of the world’s poorest
people are Christians. Perhaps the
biggest mistake is to overlook the assets and strengths that are always
present among poor people and to build on those. (128)
“They need us to love them first and then listen to them. They need us to see their assets and their
God-given abilities. When we see them
as God sees them, we will glimpse His image in their faces….” (130) 12. The Horsemen of the Apocalypse Chronic hunger and malnutrition are the number
one health risk globally. Almost 1 in
7 people worldwide do not have enough food to sustain them. About 9 million a year die of hunger and
related causes. (135) The poor live in a “perfect storm” for disease. Unsafe drinking water is the second leading
cause. Malaria is one of the world’s
deadliest diseases, resulting in somewhere around 2 million deaths per year. (143) Almost 1/3 of the world is infected
with TB. (145) HIV infects 33 million
people, 70% in Africa. India ranks #2
and Ukraine has the fastest growth. 15
million children are AIDs orphans. In
Africa everyone is either infected or affected. No one escapes. Africa is losing its most productive people. 13. Spiders, Spiders, and More Spiders One sixth of the world, 2/3 of them women, are
illiterate. (155) Two million children
are caught up in the sex trade. Women
provide 2/3 of the world’s labor but earn 10% of the world’s wages.
(156) “The single most significant
thing that can be done to cure extreme poverty is this: protect, educate, and nurture girls and women and provide them with
equal rights and opportunities—educationally, economically, and socially.”
(157) Wars, civil strife and other violence produce poverty,
unspeakable atrocities, and other social, economic, and emotional
consequences. There are 9.9 million
refugees driven to other countries and 23.7 million internally
displaced. Imagine their lives! The economic cost of government militaries
is estimated at $1.2 trillion (The U.S. accounts for half.) By contrast $65 billion would lift a
billion people out of extreme poverty.
(158) Part 4. A
Hole in the Church 15. A Tale of Two Churches Why have we not done more to come to the aid of
Christians and others in extreme poverty?
“We need only to read our church bulletin to see where our priorities
have been placed. How many of the
announcements involve programs that focus more on meeting our needs than the
needs of those outside the church?” (180) 17. AWOL for the Greatest Humanitarian Crisis of All Time [AIDS] “One of the disturbing things about Church
history is the Church’s appalling track record of being on the wrong side of
the great social issues of the day.” (190) “A Church that has lost its voice for
justice is a Church that has lost its relevance in the world.” (193, quoting
Martin Luther King Jr.) “What will our
grandchildren ask us when they look back twenty-five or fifty years from now
and wonder how we could have just sat by and watched when justice was demanded?”
(194) “The fact of the matter is, we are all blind, and our only
solution is to pray that God will show
us our blindness.” (197) 18. Putting the American Dream to Death Not all parts of the American dream are
consistent with Christian values. “He
wants us to invest His money on His behalf by undertaking His kingdom
work. This is precisely the view Jesus
presented in the parable of the talents….” (206) “He wants us to embrace a kingdom view of
our money, possessions, and abilities, recognizing that all we have comes
from Him. He wants us to hold them
lightly and be willing to use them on His behalf. Three clear principles…:
“That’s the bottom line for all of us—whose
‘game’ are we in? Our own? Or God’s? … If we’re in God’s game, we need
to put the American Dream to death, because God’s game is a different game
altogether.” (209) 19. Two Percent of Two Percent “Whenever we deal with money, we are dealing with
dynamite.” What we control becomes our
controller. The greatest diffuser is
giving it away. “Giving, both how we
give and how much we give, is the clearest outward expression of who our God
really is.” (212-13) Income of American churchgoers is $5.2
trillion. A little over 1% of that
amount could lift the poorest billion people out of extreme poverty. About 24% of evangelical Christians
tithe. The average giving of American
church members in 2005 was 2.58%.
About 2% of all church income goes to overseas missions of any
kind. That’s six pennies per day per
person. “The bottom line is that the
commitment that American Christians, the wealthiest Christians in all
history, are making to the world is just about 2 percent of 2
percent—actually about five
ten-thousandths of our income.” (217)
[Statistics from empty tomb http://www.emptytomb.org/scg05pressadv.html]
21. Why We’re Not So Popular Anymore “For most of my life, being a ‘Christian’ has
been perceived as a good thing in our culture.” (226) “Christian,
after all, was a synonym for ‘good people…”
(227) But the Christian “brand” has taken a beating. We have become defined by those things we
are against rather than those we are for.
(229) “If we are to truly let
our lights shine before the world, it must be through those do’s [vs. the don’ts] that the world finds so attractive.”
(230) 22. A Tale of Two Real Churches There are some 340,000 Christian churches in the
United States and about 155 million regular churchgoers. Think of the resources, the
possibilities! (237) Part 5.
Repairing the Hole 23. What Are You Going to Do About It? “We have, in fact, reduced the gospel to a mere
transaction involving the right beliefs rather than seeing in it the power to
change the world.” (243) “But a
changed world requires change agents,
and change agents are people who have first been changed themselves.” (244) “We are postresurrection disciples, and if we are to live like postresurrection disciples, everything in our lives must
change. The question for us is whether
we are willing to make that commitment—to live and act differently, and to
repair the hole in our own gospel.” (245) “The whole
gospel involves more than preaching; it also means caring about the whole person and finding ways to meet
that individual’s needs.” (248) 24. How Many Loaves Do You Have? “We might imagine that God’s vision for our world
is like a great jigsaw puzzle. You and
I are the pieces in His hand, and He places them in just the spots where our
particular shapes, sizes, and patterns best fit with the other pieces. The full picture only takes shape as all of
the pieces come together in their proper places. In this view, no single piece is
insignificant.” (250) “God has created
each of us with a unique contribution to make to our world and our times.”
(251) “God never asks us to give what
we do not have… But he cannot use what we will not give. … if
we are unwilling, we will assuredly
miss out on every opportunity to be used by God in a powerful and amazing
way.” (253) 25. Time, Talent, and Treasure “If you will assess what you have to offer in
terms of your time, your treasure, and your talents, you will have a better
understanding of how you might uniquely serve.” (259) 26. A Mountain of Mustard Seeds “This gospel we have been given—the whole
gospel—is God’s vision for a new way of living.” (276) “We are the revolution.” “It starts with you. In the end, God simply calls you to be
faithful to the things He has given you to do.” (277) |
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