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When The World Does More Than Us
Working from home gives me a great ability to observe the popular news stories of the day as they unfold through the glorification of the media. Today, there was much coverage time paid to the pro-Tibet supporters who hung banners from the San Francisco bridge. In case you missed the story, here a link to the CNN story. The protest was scaled by the Students for a Free Tibet movement and in a non-confrontational way, yet still inciting some social unrest, they made their message clear around national news, and I am sure it traveled internationally. Other nations had similar controversies today, like in France where pro-Tibet supports caused the Olympic torch to be put out twice as it had to be rerouted by bus.
All of this is in conjunction with the upcoming Olympics taking place in China, where many perceive China as violating human rights in the Tibet region, something that is fairly well documented and known about. World Vision has a report about some of the problems and the protests they have caused. All this led me to one question:
Why is the world better activists than Christians?
The human-rights issues in Tibet (and Darfur, Sudan, etc) are something every Christian should have awareness and conviction about. Yet, it seems like Christians are one of the most silent voices on the issue. Obviously there are some Christian groups doing something about it, but by-and-large it hardly feels like a hot button issue. I can understand why Christians don’t hold the same banners as groups like Peta or the Sierra Club (thought sometimes we should), but human-rights issues we should be as passionate, if not more, than those in the world. I understand too the difference between peaceful protest and those that cause civil unrest, and I definitely think Christians should opt for the peaceful form.
What was even more amazing to me, as I flipped through the news today, was two separate interviews that were the only “Christian” related subjects today. The first was a woman who was asked why she wanted McCain to remove Mit Romney from the list of possible vice-presidential candidates. Her reasoning is that he has allowed same-sex marriages in his state as well as waffles on abortion even after his conversion. She said as a Christian, those are not values we can stand for. Secondly, in a separate interview, a school in the midwest was having some ‘wacky clothing’ week, and one of the days was a cross-dressing day. There was an old curmudgeon from the Christian media world talking about how it was some sort of abomination that this was taking place, even though little to no parents or students really saw it as a problem.
That’s what Christians stand for in America? Has it really gotten this bad? Why has evangelism become so difficult and been met with so much resistance? Because the world has sometimes come to represent Christ better than Christians. Obviously that is not a universal statement in all social and moral areas, but when the non-Christians of the world are concerned about a lot of these global issues and Christians have essentially remained mute, what appeal is that?
A lot of this was summed up in what went down with Joel Hunter. Joel was a Theology of Ministry professor of mine at Reformed Theological Seminary and is currently the lead pastor at Northland Church in Orlando. When I had heard he was elected to head to Christian Coalition (founded by Pat Robertson), I was rather surprised, but hoped he would bring much vision to the organization, which he did attempt to do. He offered a broader vision to the group, including ‘compassion issues’ such as human rights. He was quickly asked to step down from his position, because they were worried that they would lose focus on what the Coalition stands for? If the Christian Coalition doesn’t stand for compassion, I think they need to remove the word Christian from their title.
Why don’t Christians stand for compassion anymore?
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To answer your question, I would submit that it is out of an undue fear that we will slip into the “social gospel” that became prevalent in the mid-twentieth century. We have allowed any sort of social action to become associated with the theological left of the last century. Perhaps this is endemic to another great ill that plagues the Church in the U.S.: an unwillingness to learn from those with whom we disagree.