Social Involvement of the New
Man
Even a casual study of the life of Jesus reveals that He was interested in man's response to the social problems he faces. Since Jesus Christ walked the earth, the thinking of the world concerning social matters has changed radically. Because of Him the world witnessed a new reverence for human life and learned something of the dignity and worth of man. Three out of every five men whom Paul passed on the streets of Rome were slaves. It was Christ's assertion that every individual has immeasurable value in the sight of God, and it was this message that helped eventually to free the slaves. he said: "Of how much more value is a man than a sheep?" (Matt. 12:12). It was Jesus who taught us that every man is a potential child of God. When He lived on earth, no one was His special pet whether on account of riches or of poverty. Rank and social distinction meant nothing to Him. It was for man as man that Christ cared. In taking our human nature upon Himself, He showed us what we might become, what God intended us to be.
Because of Jesus, woman has been lifted to her present position. In much of ancient literature woman was regarded as little more than an animal. Here is an extract from the Laws of Manu: "Day and night must women be kept in dependence by the male members of the family. They are never fit for independence. They are as impure as falsehood itself." The coming of Jesus altered all that. He elevated womanhood forever when He was born of Mary. Mary's song, "The Magnificat," is the charter of woman's liberty. Some of His
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most faithful followers were women, and He included them among His closest friends, such as Mary Magdalene, Mary, and Martha.
The coming of Jesus Christ has changed the conduct of much of the world. Christians have given their lives to help their neighbors, to relieve poverty, to care for the sick. Many hospitals, orphanages, institutions for the poor, and asylums have their origin in Him. The social conscience of man was deepened by Jesus' coming. The history of the Christian church through the centuries, with its triumphs and its failures alike, points to the fact that Christ has sensitized the life of the world. He has pointed man in a new direction.
Why then is the world in such a desperate plight? The answer is because it will not come to Jesus Christ that it may have life. The world has rejected Him. To be sure, part of its conscience is still with Jesus, but not its conduct. Christ can save the world only as He is living in the hearts of men and women. We talk glibly about the establishment of a Christian order of society through legislation and social engineering, as though we could bring it down from the skies, if only we worked hard enough. The Kingdom of God will never come that way. If the human race should suddenly turn to Christ, we would have immediately the possibility of a new Christian order. We could approach our problems in the framework of Christian understanding and brotherhood. To be sure, the problems would remain, but the atmosphere for their solution would be completely changed.
Jesus walked among the people. He was not afraid to come in contact with them — the best and the worst, the sick and well, the high and the low. "There came a leper to him, beseeching him, and kneeling down to him . . . and Jesus, moved with compassion, put forth his hand, and touched him" (Mark 1:40, 41). The dirtiest, the loneliest, the
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most forsaken person in that world was the leper. Imagine what it must have meant to him for Jesus Christ to reach out and touch him in love and compassion. Probably no human hand had touched him since his disease became evident.
Any man who cares enough to want to bless the lives of people must somehow "sit where they sit." Wilfred Grenfell became the angel of Labrador because he went there to live with the people. David Brainerd lived with the Indians in Colonial America. William Booth lived in London's East End. William Seagrave became the famous and beloved "Burma Surgeon" because he lived his life out, sick or well, in a village in Burma. He refused to return to his home, which he loved, lest he die from illness or accident away from the people of Burma; and it was there he died on March 28, 1965, in a little village not many miles from the border of Communist China.
If we are going to touch the people of our communities, we too must know their sorrows, feel for them in their temptations, stand with them in their heartbreaks. Jesus Christ entered into the arena of our troubles, and He wept with them that wept and rejoiced with them that rejoiced.
This is the reason that I have such an interest in those who are working in the "inner-city churches." It is probably the most frustrating ministry in America today — to face teeming areas of people living in substandard housing, thousands of them unemployed. Religious ideas have little meaning for them. Their lives are totally disorganized. The inner-city pastor faces all their frustrations and tries compassionately to enter into their problems. During the last fifteen years the rush of white church members to suburbs has caused such a religious upheaval that a whole new urban ministry has emerged. Religious urban projects are springing up all over the country. To capture the attention of the changing, television-oriented
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city dweller living in an apartment house requires bold new techniques of evangelism and Christian leadership.
The Church's Mission
Yet here is where the tension in the church becomes acute. What is the church's primary mission? Is it redemptive or social — or both? There are those who hold that even evangelism should be reinterpreted along the lines of social engineering and political pressure. We are witnessing today the greatest emphasis on ecclesiastical organizations, resolutions, pronouncements, lobbying, and even the law itself to bring into being and enforce the social changes envisioned by church leaders as a part of the world where the church shall be the dominating influence. When most major Protestant denominations have their annual councils, assemblies, or conventions, they make pronouncements on matters having to do with disarmament, federal aid to education, birth control, the United Nations, and any number of social and political issues. Very rarely are any resolutions passed that have to do with the redemptive witness of the Gospel.
There are those who think always in terms of mass action. The masses, group masses, have obligations, duties, and responsibilities. They feel that laws must be enacted that will compel the group to heed those responsibilities and that this is the major part of the Christian mission. There are others in the church who think that the mission of the church is not to give direction to society. Certainly there is a sense in which the church is to advise, warn, and challenge by proclaiming the absolute criteria by which God will judge mankind — such as the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount,
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by proclaiming God's divine purpose through government in a fallen society, and by preaching the whole council of God, which involves man's environment and physical being as well as his soul. Yet there are those who disagree violently with this position. There is no doubt that the church is in danger of getting off the main track and getting lost on a side road. We have been trying to solve every ill of society as though society were made up of regenerate men to whom we had an obligation to speak with Christian advice. We are beginning to realize that, while the law must guarantee human rights and restrain those who violate those rights, whenever men lack sympathy for the law they will not long respect it even when they cannot repeal it. Thus the government may try to legislate Christian behavior, but it soon finds that man remains unchanged.
The changing of men is the primary mission of the church. The only way to change men is get them converted to Jesus Christ. Then they will have the capacity to live up to the Christian command to "Love thy neighbor."
Also I am afraid the church is trying to speak out on too many issues we know to be wrong — racial injustice, crime, gambling, dishonesty, pornography. On these matters we must thunder forth as the prophets of God. However, I am not so sure that the corporate body of the church has a right to make political decisions. I am not sure that the leaders of the church have a right to speak without consultation for the whole membership of the church. There is no doubt that the American Protestant church came dangerously close in both the 1960 and the 1964 elections to getting involved in politics. Many church bodies openly opposed Kennedy, and four years later many church groups passed resolutions against Goldwater.
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As a result of the church's straying off the main track of its ministry, many of its members are restive and dissatisfied. Some refuse to give any more money to the church. Many are looking elsewhere for spiritual food. One of the great labor leaders of this country recently confided to a friend of mine: "I go to church on Sunday, and all I hear is social advice; and my heart is hungry for spiritual nourishment." A President of the United States told me that he was sick and tired of hearing preachers give advice on international affairs when they did not have the facts straight. It is perfectly proper for a clergyman to give his own personal views on any subject as a citizen, but it becomes a different matter when the church speaks as the church on every social and political issue that comes along, especially when the issue settled either way is not a moral or a spiritual problem. Devout and spiritually minded men often take opposing sides.
I am convinced that if the church went back to its main task of preaching the Gospel and getting people converted to Christ it would have far more impact on the social structure of the nation than it can have in any other thing it could possibly do.
Christ's Ministry
There is recorded in the Gospel of Luke an interesting incident in the ministry of Christ: "And one of the company said unto him, Master, speak to my brother, that he divide the inheritance with me. And he said unto him, Man, who made me a judge or a divider over you? And he said unto them, Take heed, and beware of covetousness: for a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth" (Luke 12:13-15).
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Here was a test case. A man brought an economic problem to Jesus. In those days if a man had two sons, the father's property went to them in the proportion of two-thirds to the elder and the remaining one-third to the younger. In this case, perhaps, the younger son was claiming more than his third or maybe the older brother had seized more than his allotted two-thirds. It is not likely that this man would have faced Jesus with an unjust or unreasonable demand. We therefore give him the benefit of the doubt. His demand was just. And what did Jesus say? He replied: "Man, who made me a judge or divider over you? What a disappointing answer! Here is a man with a reasonable economic problem, and he is turned away by Christ. He probably went home to tell his friends that Jesus was not interested in social affairs. He probably said that Jesus was cold and indiferent to his material needs.
This was a genuine economic problem, one on which the church often speaks and passes many resolutions today. Did Christ look into the case and then pass a resolution? Did He study this economic question? No! He replied with apparent indifference: "Man, who made me a judge or a divider over you?" In other words, Jesus said, He had not been appointed to this office of arbitrator in economic matters. The claims of the questioner may have been perfectly fair or they may not have been. Jesus felt that this was a matter for the authorities to decide.
Then Jesus turned to the main theme of his ministry and said: "Take heed, and beware of covetousness: for a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth." Here we see Jesus deliberately refusing to become enmeshed in an economic problem; He pointed to something far deeper. There was a more subtle complaint, a more deep-seated problem involved.
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Social Injustices
There is no doubt that today we see social injustice everywhere. Looking on our American scene, Jesus would see something even deeper. He would say: "Beware of covetousness, beware of the spirit of perpetual discontent with what life offers, forever wanting more, forever looking at other people's conditions in life and never being content." Here is the social policy of Jesus. If only we in the church would begin at the root of our problems, which is the disease of human nature. However, we have become blundering social physicians, giving medicine here and putting ointment there on the sores of the world, but the sores break out again somewhere else. The great need is for the church to call in the great Physician who alone can properly diagnose the case. He will look beneath the mere skin eruptions and pronounce on the cause of it all — sin. If we in the church want a cause to fight, let's fight sin. Let's reveal its hideousness. Let's show that Jeremiah was correct when he said: "The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked" (Jeremiah 17:9). Then, when the center of man's trouble is dealt with, when this disease is eradicated, then and only then will man live with man as brother with brother.
Do not get me wrong. I believe in taking a stand on the moral, social, and spiritual issues of our day. I had not been preaching long before I decided that I would never preach to another segregated audience in any situation over which we had control. This was long before the Supreme Court decision of 1954. I lost many supporters. I had many threatening letters. I was called a radical, a liberal, and a Communist. Certain churches no longer would have me in their pulpits.
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However, I felt this was the Christian position and I could do no other.
In my crusades I have preached on every conceivable social issue. I have used my radio program The Hour of Decision to preach on every social issue of our day. I have talked on everything from bad housing to highway safety. However, the social issues of our day have not been the main theme of my preaching. My main theme has been the same as that of the early Apostles: "That Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures" (1 Cor. 15:3-4).
When Philip the evangelist was preaching to the Ethiopian nobleman on the hot desert road, the Scripture says: "He preached unto him Jesus." The African nobleman was probably being driven by slaves, and slavery was the greatest social injustice of that day. There is no record that Philip rebuked him for his slavery. He preached to him Jesus.
To the hungry, Jesus said: "I am the water of life." To the tired, He said: "Come unto me all you that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." To the guilt-laden person, He said: "Your sins are forgiven." Even to the dead, He said: "I am the resurrection."
There is another problem that has to do with social concern. The Apostle Paul said: "I have learned how to be content wherever I am: (Philippians 4:11). When the Apostle Paul wrote this, he was in a Roman jail. This is an astounding statement to come from one who was so dissatisfied with his own spiritual life that he called himself the chief of sinners, and on another occasion said he had not attained but was still pressing toward the mark. What did he mean? He meant that he had mastered the secret of being perfectly satisfied with any condition of life in which it pleased God to place him.
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He was not dependent upon circumstances for happiness. He did not cherish a grievance against life when he was short of money, or deprived of comfort or exposed to unfair criticism. He thought more of what he could give than of what he could get. He could say honestly: "For to me to live is Christ" (Philippians 1:21). In other words, life to Paul simply meant Jesus Christ, Christ to love and serve, and Christ to preach and worship.
True Values
Although Christ said that a man's life does not consist of the things he has, we in the church are very dangerously near to teaching the people that "things" are life's most important possessions. I live in Appalachia, which has been written up around the world as a poverty area in the United States. I know families who do not have as much as some families in New York and Philadelphia. They are considered poor by the standards of Wall Street. However, they have a joy, a radiance, and a peace rooted deep in their spiritual faith that gives them contentment and peace. I know millionaires in New York, Texas, and California who are almost ready to blow their brains out because they cannot resist the pressures of their lives. Which is the wealthiest? Who is the richer? Paul could say from jail: "I am content." What could be worse than a cold, rat-infested Roman dungeon? We in the church are in danger of reversing the story of the prodigal son. Jesus said the prodigal son came to himself, left the far country, and went back to his father. Instead of trying to get the prodigal son out of the far country, we in the church are trying to make the prodigal son comfortable and happy in the world's pigpen.
Certainly Paul suffered a spiritual discontentment that drove him
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on and on through every conceivable suffering that he might win men to Christ. Certainly we as Christian citizens have no right to be content with our social order until the principles of Christ are applied to all men. As long as there is enslaved one man who should be free, as long as slums and ghettos exist, as long as any person goes to bed hungry at night, as long as the color of a man's skin is his prison, there must be a divine discontent.
Christian Responsibility
This sounds like a paradox, but it is not. We as Christians have two responsibilities. One, to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ as the only answer to man's deepest needs. Two, to apply as best we can the principles of Christianity to the social conditions around us.
Jesus taught that the Christian is "the salt of the earth" (Matthew 5:13). Jesus used salt because salt adds zest to food, and salt is a preservative. Some food would spoil without it. Our national society would become corrupt. Greed and lust and hate would lead our nation into a veritable hell if it were not for the Christian salt. You take all the Christians out of America and see what chaos would be created overnight. It is partially because the church has lost its saltiness that we have such appalling moral and social needs now. A pinch of salt is effective out of all proportion to its amount.
He also said: "Ye are the light of the world" (Matthew 5:14). The darkness of our world is getting ever darker. There is only one true light shining, the light of Jesus Christ, which is reflected by those who trust and believe in Him. Jesus Himself had come to shed light that men might see God through Him. His followers are to shine and to radiate His light. He said: "Let your light so shine before men" (Matthew 5:16).
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Christ indicates that the world is the sphere of the light and the salt. Present problems in our national life are serious, and every Christian has a definite responsibility. The Christian is a citizen of two worlds. In view of this dual citizenship, he is told in the Scriptures not only to pray for those in political authority but to participate and serve his government. The Christian is the only real light-bearer in the world. Just as there is danger that salt shall lose it's saltiness, so there is danger that light may be lost in darkness if it is not tended and given a chance to shine. The lives of the early Christians were their invincible witness. The world may argue against a creed, but it cannot argue against changed lives.
That is what the simple Gospel of Jesus Christ does when it is preached in the power and authority of the Holy Spirit.
Not only does the Christian follow Christ and learn of Him, but he also must act. The world judges the Christian by his life, not by his belief. His acts are an indication of his faith. The Apostle James said: "A man may say, Thou hast faith, and I have works: show me your faith without your works, and I will show you my faith by what I do" (James 2:18). An evangelist was once asked if he did not think the world was growing worse. He replied: "If it is, then I am determined it shall be in spite of me." We can paraphrase that: "If the world is growing worse, then it will be in spite of the Gospel of Christ and those of us who trust in Him."
