briefermadness

Here I am a moderate Democrat stuck in the body of a conservative evangelical Christian. Why can't I just be normal? Anyway, found this great quote from an interview with Jim Wallis:

"What would you say to an evangelical church that is beginning to think about moving beyond charity, such as feeding the poor, and to actually working for justice?

I would tell them, "You can’t just keep pulling people’s bodies out of the river without sending somebody upstream to see what or who is throwing them in." When Martin Luther King, Jr. talked about being the conscience of the State, I think he meant, "Don’t just be the servant of the state, meaning that you will clean up the mess caused by bad social policy. Don’t just put a band-aid on the sores of society. Don’t just be service providers—be prophetic interrogators." Why are some of the people shopping in food banks and soup kitchens as a way of life? Those are supposed to be a temporary solution. Why are working moms with children living in shelters as their permanent long-term housing? It’s supposed to be temporary. Domhild DeCamera, the wonderful Brazilian archbishop, said, "When I fed the hungry, they called me a saint. When I asked why people are hungry, they called me a Communist." The Bible is not just saying, "Let’s do soup kitchens." The prophets hold people accountable—kings, rulers, lawyers, judges, employers, decision-makers. The litmus test the Old Testament prophets used for a country’s righteousness was not its Gross National Product or its military fire-power, but how that country treated the poor and most vulnerable. A society is responsible not just for charity. The word justice and oppression is throughout the Bible. Karl Marx didn’t make up that word. Read Amos, Isaiah or Jeremiah. There is oppression in this world, unfairness. There is hard-ness of heart, structures and policies and attitudes that are unjust. The Biblical cry challenges them all the time. It is Biblical, part of that prophetic tradition, to speak the language of justice. "