Saving the World or Changing It

AMEN to this article by Brian Swarts from the Micah Challenge. It pretty much hits my spiritual beliefs right on the head. :) It also has a lot to do with Liberation Theology, which was very popular here in Nica, and says that Salvation Theology was used by the Catholic Church to keep the powerful in power and the poor underneath. So, I would love to copy the entire article for you, but I imagine that would involve plagiarism lol, so I am copying a very long excerpt from it, and including the link to the full article. Enjoy! (Italics are mine).

"Even though nearly every nation on earth, including the US, committed to the Millennium Development Goals to cut extreme poverty in half by 2015, poverty in places like sub-Saharan Africa has actually increased over the last several years while foreign aid to fight poverty has decreased.

The greatest victories of the Church have often been victories over our own moral failings, like the abolition of slavery. Today, one of the greatest moral failures for US churches is that while Christian growth in places like Africa has fast outpaced church growth in America, the gap between rich Americans and impoverished Africans has also grown. The question we have to ask ourselves is that, in trying to save Africa, have we begun to lose our own souls? How we deal with this issue is the great moral calling of the new generation of Christian leaders.

The reality is that while U.S. churches have been very generous in giving to global mission or humanitarian efforts over the last 30 years, there has been no organized Christian movement against global poverty in the way William Wilberforce mobilized Christians against slavery in the British Empire or churches stood as the moral force behind the sweeping social change of the civil rights movement. In a world where the difference between poor and rich is often as arbitrary as one’s skin color or nationality, and where poverty is a form of bondage or death for millions, it cannot be that extreme poverty isn’t worthy of the same moral outrage as slavery or segregation.

Ironically, it is our own religiosity that has been our biggest stumbling block. We have let the evangelical mission to save the world get in the way of our ability to actually change it. The Great Commission, the call to disciple all nations, has overshadowed the Greatest Commandment, the call to love both God and neighbor. This is the result of a generation of Christian mission that has put spiritual conversion, or evangelism, in competition with social change. What we need today is a new, missional generation led by what might be called “The Greatest Commission,” or the belief that true spiritual conversion cannot be separated from social change. Greatest Commission evangelicals would believe that planting churches is important, but also insist that these churches must play a role in creating communities that are more just, prosperous and compassionate."

Here's the link:
http://www.neueministry.com/2008/09/the-greatest-commission

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