Last week I used the contrast of Abraham
Lincoln and William Wilberforce as examples of two different approaches to
dealing with a societal evil. This week I
will ramble into some conclusions.
The Old Testament Hebrew word
translated ‘righteous’ includes the meaning of “one who by their suffering
brings those in conflict into fellowship”.
Hence the crucified Lord is the ultimate expression of righteousness. The church abrogated its righteous role to the
courts and the legislatures. For example,
Christians should have looked at the conditions of black schools as contrasted
with white schools and said, “Separate but equal is not working, it is foolish
and it must end”. Instead the white
church in the South did little or nothing to bring about justice. We had to wait for “Brown vs. The Board of
Education”. And when segregation ended,
Christians, Bibles in hand, protested at the schoolhouses. While the decisions of the courts and the
laws to end the effects of racism are to be celebrated they never change the
heart; law cannot change the heart.
This, by the way, is one of the core messages of the Gospel. In fact, it appears that rather than change
hearts, those with hard hearts become more hard hearted in response to the
court rulings and the new laws.
I am not attempting to justify
the behavior of rioters in Baltimore or Ferguson, MO. But for multiple generations, black men,
women, and children have been subject to a system that has a façade of equality,
but hides an inner distrust, resentment, and in some cases hostility, in both
directions across the divide. Some
rioters were simply thugs and criminals using an opportunity to pillage and plunder. But even that godlessness mindset is the
result of the church not being salt and light, of abandoning a generation of
black ministers to liberation theology, or other expression of liberal theology,
of Christians running from the inner city in white flight to enjoy the security
of the suburbs, and a white’s only community and worship hour.
This is the legacy of a top down
solution to moral ills. Let us consider, briefly, other cases where there has
been an attempt to accomplish a top down approach to our society’s
problems. Prohibition was a grand
success, if you were a bootlegger or a smuggler. The War on Poverty has certainly elevated a
whole class of people into the ranks of the wealthy; unfortunately, it is the
tax-fattened bureaucrats that administer government entitlement programs. The plight of the poor has not improved; but
rather, it has, in many cases, grown worse.
We could again look at the success of the war on drugs. How many millions of dollars have been poured
into halting the importation, distribution, manufacturing, and consumption of
illegal drugs? How effective has it
been? Looking out of the window at this
moment I can see a home that is widely known as a place to purchase
pharmaceuticals you can’t get at CVS.
Here is the point: social ills
reflect a spiritual and moral failure, a.k.a. sin. There is no law solution to sin. Yes, we need laws; they serve as wonderful
moral teachers, and hopefully protect the innocent. But for too long Christians have wanted to
take the short cut of getting law to do the heavy lifting that is the
responsibility of the church. We have
called for a Moral Majority and a Christian Coalition to come together and vote
in God Fearing leaders that will pass laws that will make the U.S. a moral
nation. We have wanted the government to
make abortion illegal, without our doing the heavy lifting of teaching about the
holiness before God of sexual purity. We
have wanted the government to make sure the widows and orphans are visited in
their suffering, without our doing the heavy lifting of serving the “least of
these”.
I want laws that will protect the
unborn. I want a basic social safety
net. I want to see the police working to
protect innocents from the ravages of drug and alcohol addiction. But I know there is no short cut to these
ends. Only the Gospel can change the
heart. I have two fears. The first is that Christians are beginning to
believe that if we could get the laws we want, we can make America Heaven on
earth. Please, by all means, get involved
in the political process; write letters to congress, run for office if you
will. But for the love of real change,
let’s stop believing in top down solutions.
Moral revival will never come from Washington, or the state capitol
building, or the county courthouse. My
second fear is that Christians and politicians alike, will attempt to use
Christianity as a useful means to the ends of a fair, just, and equitable
society. We must not hope for a revival
for the safety or preservation of our nation. We must seek revival for the
glory of God and any civil blessings are simply a joyful by-product.
Only the Lord changing the hearts
of men has any real and lasting effect. If
we don’t see Christ change the hearts of our people, the blame does not fall on
the world, nor in heaven, but squarely on the people of God’s church.
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