We continue to wrestle with walking on the ridge path of good works. The issue is we don’t want to climb up from the bottom of the right side of the ridge only to fall off the left side of the ridge. The left side would represent doing good works with the wrong attitude. There is a tendency to judge those at the bottom of the other side of the ridge or to be prideful about doing good works.
K: “I feel like I was rescued from the bottom of the right side where I was comfortably complacent, but now I feel like I am hanging over the left side of the ridge path by my fingernails. How can we get to the point where we don’t look down on or judge others who do not seem to be doing anything?”
It is possible to have a judgmental or prideful attitude as we practice exceptional love and speaking words of life and light to the needy. Let’s not do that. There may be other thoughts and emotions that appear to be judgmental, but are they?
I have been accused of favoring certain ministries over others, or coming across like one type of ministry is better or more important than another. I admit that I have cynically called certain ministries “planting church flowers.” But does our strong advocacy for intentionally reaching out to the poor and trying to appropriately address some of their physical and spiritual needs mean we are doing this? Here is a typical conversation (last night in fact).
L: “Our [well off] neighbors have needs also. Their needs are not any less important than the needs of the poor.
M: “Yes, we all have needs, but they are not necessarily the same.”
K: “Why do you seem to favor ministries that reach out to the poor? Do you think other ministries like XXX are good?”
M: “Okay, here is my concern. If I were orchestrating everything, yes, I would have many different types of ministries. There are lots of needs out there; therefore, lots of different things need to be done. However, I disagree that it doesn’t matter what you do. I think that needs are not equal and what you do and how you allocate effort to address those needs does matter to God. For example, Spain is 76% Christian and has plenty of Christian witnesses and thousands of missionaries available in their culture. In contrast, there are people groups with no Christian witness in their culture. If you were going to send out missionaries, where would be a sensible place to send them? Are the needs of these two people groups the same such that sending a missionary to Spain or an unreached people group is like Dial and Ivory? If you advocate that there is a disproportionate emphasis on one “ministry” over the other in relation to the needs does this mean you are being judgmental or that one ministry is more important than the other? My neighbor may have needs, but he has a disproportionate access to help to meet those needs.”
K: “What about if he has a severe depression? He would not be able to get that help because he is depressed.”
M: “Yes, he would need help. But imagine having a severe depression AND living in poverty with all the obstacles and limited access that goes with it. It is not a fair comparison.”
It may not be fair to pit one ministry against another, but some ministries are well supported and others are not. For example, churches typically allocate a disproportionate amount of resources on themselves versus their community. The number of dollars and volunteer time that gets allocated for children’s and youth ministries does not compare to most any other ministry that addresses the major cultural crises of our day. Our church will get more people to volunteer for a church clean up day than they will to feed the poor. If you point that out or advocate for a more balanced emphasis, does that mean you are judging or elevating one ministry as more important than another? We may need to have a children’s and youth ministry, but at the expense of more pressing needs? How about paying someone in need of work to clean our church and we all go down and spend some time with people that are neglected by the church and have no church of their own to clean up?
I'm with K, though. A student is not above his teacher. We need to get to the ridge path. The view is different from up there. Maybe from there we can more clearly see how to best reach down and give a hand up to others clawing their way to the ridge. Until that time, let's keep our eyes on our own footing and look up to the ridge for a helping hand.
8 comments:
should we then have greater emphasis on helping even poorer people across the world? i mean our poor (those in america) are extremely wealthy compared to those in other countries around the world. so, does that mean those poor should be shown greater love than poor in our own country?
Yes.
What do you mean we?
we meaning christians like you were talking about in your post.
that is one of the shortest answers you have given to any question.
hahahah...I thought you would like that!
The problem becomes out of sight out of mind. I think becoming involved in helping the poor locally probably goes a long way toward helping people be compassionate to those far a way. Like they say, all politics are local.
I would think the other important factor would be the leadership. They need to help us keep a proper perspective and keep the issues in front of us.
Right now, the problems seem to be a lack of awareness about our local problems, an equating of love and compassion, the separating of evangelizm and compassion, and foreign evangelistic mission efforts being disproportionally represented.
Beth Moore stated in her study 'loving well' that we expect people in our lives to get up and give us a hug when they are in a wheel chair, they can’t get up, they aren’t there yet. I loved this idea. I was expecting people around me to do things they could not do. It’s small steps to climb the ‘mountain’ and it’s even bigger steps to not fall off the other side. I liked what you guys were talking about in church about mentoring the guy, I think the church(as in the whole body of Christ) needs mentoring too…we don’t expect the guy to do things he was never taught or doesn’t know how to do. The body of Christ has become dulled by distractions and we need a wakeup call, it’s the small steps(applauding those) and reaching down from the mountain to pull one another up that starts the ring in the alarm. We need to be, as a body of believers, a belaying system! ‘By this shall all know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another’ Jn. 13:35
Marchea,
I agree. Its like body needs to be rescued from the distractions and comforts they are used to. But what will wake and set free the body to Love Jesus with all that we are? I wish I knew.
Keith
Prayer. I also love the quote 'be the change you want to see' One person, one group can make a difference and start a collective movement....the early church started with only a few that were allowing the Holy Spirit to use them...everytime they got together and prayed the Holy Spirit showed up! Why do we think it's any different today?
Marci:
I definitely agree that we have to focus on ourselves. We can't give what we don't got. Unfortunately, I think that's why there isn't more mentoring going on. There are not enough people living it in such a way that they could teach others how. We tend to primarily transmit head knowledge to each other. That won't cut it.
This has to be done in community. We have to get together on this.
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