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Some of our readers would say there are a lot of fervent Christians who are involved in issues like abortion, sex trafficking, and religious freedom. Are you arguing that poverty should be a higher priority for them?

As Christians we have to have a list of priorities. Sometimes I think we get our priorities turned upside down. If Jesus were living today and tithing, what would his check register say? I am pretty sure [his money] wouldn't be going to the symphony. I am pretty sure it wouldn't be going to his alma mater as a first priority. I think it would be going to the least of these.

I think abortion is on that list. I think it breaks his heart. But how can you care about abortion and not care about the 26,000 children that die every day of preventable causes? It dwarfs the abortion problem in America. Five times as many children die around the world of preventable causes than die in abortions.

We are told we have the mind of Christ. It is hard to know the mind of Christ. But it would certainly be compassion for the sick and the lame and the broken and the poor, and I think you could argue that Jesus put them above all else in his concern.

John Green runs a ministry in Chicago for male prostitutes. And he offers them a variety of social services to help them move out of that lifestyle—job counseling, psychological counseling. Still he says that the greatest injustice he could practice would be to fail to tell them about Jesus. What do you think about that?

I agree. You could argue the mainline churches have been all about works whereas the evangelical churches have been all about faith and belief. Another way to frame the faith-and-works debate is truth and love. Truth is about what we believe is the right thing and love is about what we are doing about it. If you have love without truth, it's misguided love. If you have truth without love, what good is truth? I once had a pastor that said it's not what you believe that counts. It's what you believe enough to do.

I say within World Vision, if we offer bread but don't offer the Bread of Life, if we offer water but don't offer Living Water, then we are no better than the ones that we might criticize who offer only words.

Are you at liberty to do that when you are on the field for World Vision?

It varies a great deal by context. Much of sub-Saharan Africa is overtly Christian, and we have Bible schools and Bible-based AIDS curriculum. But in Mauritania or Banda Aceh or parts of China, we have to be very guarded about expressing our faith. In Mauritania the penalty for proselytism is death. So we plant seeds, we try to love people. As you probably know, in a place like Mauritania we hire Muslims. Our leadership is Christian but we have mostly Muslim staff. We try to witness to the staff through our lives and deeds and words. When I look at places like that, where Christian missionaries can't go or can't go freely, I think we are preparing the ground for a future day by showing them (hopefully) the face of Christ in human form so that they have a different understanding of what it means to be a Christian.

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June (Web-only) 2009, Vol. 53