Social Action

Why are the poor poor?

It seems few are asking this question anymore—just when we need most to be asking it, just when interest in helping the poor has apparently reached an all time high.

I don’t recall ever hearing and seeing so many radio and TV ads for charitable causes, donation displays at retailers’ cash registers, or businesses prominently displaying how they’re helping the needy (or how they’re saving the world from environmental catastrophe—or both).

Evangelicals seem to be giving poverty more attention as well—in increasingly passionate terms and from quarters not historically known for that emphasis. Witness this observation from Southern Baptist, David Platt:

Meanwhile, the poor man is outside our gate. And he is hungry…. We certainly wouldn’t ignore our kids while we sang songs and entertained ourselves, but we are content with ignoring other parents’ kids. Many of them are our spiritual brothers and sisters in developing nations. They are suffering from malnutrition, deformed bodies and brains, and preventable diseases. At most, we are throwing our scraps to them while we indulge in our pleasures here….

This is not what the people of God do. Regardless of what we say or sing or study on Sunday morning, rich people who neglect the poor are not the people of God. (Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream, p.115)

As N. T. Wright observes, “kingdom of God has been a flag of convenience under which all sorts of ships have sailed.”¹ These ships are social, political, nationalistic, and theological. Their corresponding agendas often have little to do with the arrival of the kingdom of God announced by Jesus. The kingdom as found and presented in the New Testament will not be pressed into a one-dimensional box. There are passages which indicate a present kingdom aspect (Luke 17:21) and others which indicate a future aspect (Matthew 25:34; Luke 21:17, 31). Multiple texts demonstrate that the gospel of the kingdom was the message of Jesus and the apostles (Luke 4:43; 9:1, 2). Jesus “instructed the seventy to proclaim, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you’ ” (Luke 10:1, 9). In Acts we find Philip who “preached good news about the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ….” (Acts 8:12). The Apostle Paul in Ephesus “entered the synagogue and for three months spoke boldly, reasoning and persuading them about the kingdom of God” (Acts 19:8). Near the end of his ministry, Paul “expounded to them, testifying to the kingdom of God….” (Acts 28:23).

The opening of the gospel of Mark proclaims the “beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ.” Jesus arrives on the scene, “preaching the gospel [of the kingdom, KJV] of God” (1:14). He announces that “the time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe in the gospel” (v. 15). The phrase “is near” can be understood as referring to something still to happen. However, as France comments, “If Jesus is understood to have proclaimed as ‘near’ something which had still not arrived even at the time when Mark wrote his gospel (let alone 2,000 years later), this is hardly less of an embarrassment than if he had claimed that ‘it’ was already present.”²

Have you ever wondered if there is more to the Christian life than your “relatively safe” life in the United States? Is your soul restless to impact the world in a greater fashion? Gary Haugen delivers a challenge to lay people and pastors alike in this powerful but short treatment of Christian social justice.

Addressed primarily to lay people in the church, the author uses numerous real-life incidents to illustrate the need to overcome fear, help readers begin to see the needs in the world, and argue that rescuing souls from physical slavery is a prerequisite to rescuing souls from eternal slavery. Finally, he challenges Christians leading a “comfortable” life to make the choice to be brave rather than safe. One major weakness of the book is the author’s view that “social justice” is a prerequisite to evangelism. In reality, he argues that freedom from physical bondage affords an opportunity to communicate the gospel to oppressed people. This view is generally accurate; however, the definition of “social justice” varies widely and his point can be easily misunderstood (see below for more discussion of this).

Rather than offering a theological treatise, Haugen relates a series of real life incidents from history and modern times. Interspersed with these illustrations are brief discussions of Bible verses that demonstrate God’s desire for justice and the need for Christians to communicate God’s love to the world in both words and action.