more from The Hole in Our Gospel, Richard Stearns

Is this not gorgeous?  Beautiful sunset in Uganda!

This is true - can't be ignored.  He writes the following after talking about Jesus' mission statement in Luke 4: 

"Proclaiming the whole gospel, then, means much more than evangelism in the hopes that people will hear and respond to the good news of salvation by faith in Christ.  It also encompasses tangible compassion for the sick and the poor, as well as biblical justice, efforts to right the wrongs that are so prevalent in our world.  God is concerned about the spiritual, physical, and social dimensions of our being.  This whole gospel is truly good news for the poor, and it is the foundation for a social revolution that has the power to change the world.  And if this was Jesus' mission, it is also the mission of all who claim to follow Him.  It is my mission, it is your mission, and it is the mission of the Church." (p.22)

Had heard this before, but couldn't remember who did this experiment.  Jim Wallis and some of his seminary buddies did it years ago:

"They went through all 66 books of the Bible and underlined every passage and verse that dealt with poverty, wealth, justice, and oppression.  Then one of Jim's fellow students took a pair of scissors and physically cut every one of those verses out of the Bible.  The result was a volume in tatters that barely held together.  Beginning with the Mosiac books, through the books of history, the Psalms and Proverbs, and the Major and Minor Prophets, to the four Gospels, the book of Acts, the Epistles and into Revelation, so central were these themes to Scripture that the resulting Bible was in shambles.  (According to The Poverty and Justice Bible, there are almost two thousand verses in Scripture that deal with poverty and justice.)  When Jim would speak on these issues, he would hold his ragged book in the air and proclaim, 'Brothers and sisters, this is our American Bible; it is full of holes.  Each one of us might as well take our Bibles, a pair of scissors, and begin cutting out all the scriptures we pay no attention to, all the biblical texts that we just ignore.'  Jim's Bible was literally full of holes." (p.24)

One of my sisters-in-law is reading this book also right now and as we talked about it on Sunday, I began to realize that God is waking us up - the American church will either continue to make itself feel better by writing a check here and there to send to some "good effort" or we will wake up to the fact that this was never what Jesus meant.  Not once do I see Him giving money to the poor as a means of loving them.  I'm not saying that this is not sometimes what is needed and what is sometimes the most loving, but in general, that isn't what He has called us to.  Even Randy said after returning from Africa that they don't really need our money, they need us.  Life on life, people loving people.  It's all Jesus did and it's what He longs to do through us, the Church.  BUT IT'S HARD!!  How much easier it is to throw some money to them and say that we've done all we can do.  It is SO hard to engage with and touch people and actually deal with the fact that there is so much suffering in the world - here and abroad.  God have mercy on us!