This Is Our City

Rachael says, "If my generation cares so deeply about global issues of justice and poverty that they are willing to change eating, clothing, and living habits, where are they? A significant challenge for nonprofits and ministries remains recruiting people who will commit to serve long-term outside the United States." Where is the generation that cares deeply about seeing those on the road to hell hearing the gospel, meeting Jesus and becoming born again? This is extremely sad. This is another gospel for sure.

I too am afraid of American Christians. American Christianity is a disease that replaces the true Gospel with a gospel of feel goodism. Too many churches go on "missions" where they dig wells and make sandwiches and the pat the backs of the downtrodden and tell them God has a wonderful plan for their life, but never tell the soul changing Gospel. They tend to try and make life a little nicer place to go to Hell from, rather than proclaim the Gospel of Christ. Liberal Christianity and quiet "anonymous Christian" theology are rotting the Church.

This is not Christianity. This is another gospel, a social justice gospel concerned with building utopias on earth. Alleviating global world poverty, redistribution of wealth, fair trade coffees, consumer activism, none of this is the gospel and it is a huge distraction from fulfilling the great commission. Sending youth groups on missions to build or dig wells is not the great commission and robs the kids of the experience of sharing the gospel. You find none of this kind of activity in the Gospels, none of this kind of activity in the book of Acts, none in the Epistles. I agree completely with Roger McKinney and J Thomas, social justice is a by product of the redeemed heart. The theologically liberal mainstream church (Episcopalians, Methodists, Presbyterians) had a precipitous drop in membership and they’re the pioneers in social justice, that is their ONLY gospel. Now it’s being foisted on Evangelicals because we’ve failed to believe and preach the power of the supernatural gospel.

PS, another fantastic book is "Envy: A theory of social behavior" by Helmut Schoeck. Schoeck wrote that the genius of Christianity in the 17th century was its ability to restrain the debilitating effects of envy which has afflicted all people on earth since the creation. Envy does enormous damage and keeps poor people very poor.

I got into economics after several mission trips overseas and observing the desperate poverty of the people. It has taken me a decade of intense study of poverty and theory to understand why some nations are poor and others so unbelievably rich. I could recommend several books, but if you read only one on the subject I would recommend Acemoglu and Robinson’s “Why Nations Fail.” The authors show that escaping poverty and crime requires that a nation build certain types of institutions. What they don’t show is that those institutions first appeared in Christian nations of Western Europe and are based on Biblical principles of government, law and economics.