Jul 23, 2010
DeYoung on Social Justice and the Church
You can read DeYoung's post on Luke 4:16-21 here. Below is one of his responses to numerous comments:
Daren, those are excellent questions, and a I certainly don’t want to discourage brothers and sisters sacrificing to meet the needs of those around the world. My sense is that we should speak less about what we must do and more in terms of what we can do. That is, I’d like to see the church inspire its members by saying “Here are opportunities to love” rather than putting a burden on folks that says, “This is a matter of justice. We are responsible to fix this.” I think it’s also important to see the difference between the church’s mission (to make disciples) and the calling God may have on our lives as individuals (politics, medicine, agriculture, etc.). A doctor doesn’t have to evangelize his patients to justify being a doctor. But on the other hand, the mission of the church is not to build hospitals. May God bless you as serve.
Comments
Dirk on Jul 23, 2010 2:51pm
Richard,
Good quote from DeYoung.
It is an interesting dialectic game that has gone on in evangelicaldom in the past twenty years. The neoevangelical culture (now Calvinistic-Emergent) spawned the glitz, glitter and glamour prosperity excesses, the name-it-and-claim-it gospel, and the pomposity of televangelist and self-esteem empires. Self-centeredness and affluence ruled the day. Sins abounded with cheap grace and easy-believism...
In large the pendulum is now swinging back, but not back to the true Gospel of the Bible. It is swinging WAY over to Social Gospel of purpose-driven works theology.
And again, good quote!
Because He lives,
dirk