Church Voices

I’ve made no secret that I think Mark Driscoll has reached ninja level in the pantheon of coolness. But this latest writing makes me consider adding a level of coolness above ninja. I just can’t think of what that might be. From the story:

On one side is Prosperity Theology which essentially says that if you are a holy person with enough faith you will drive an Escalade with rims in Jesus’ name. But what appears to be even more popular among younger missionally minded Christians is an overreaction to Prosperity Theology, called Poverty Theology, where if you really love Jesus you will live very minimally because, like Bono, you believe that Jesus loves the poor, likely more than the rich.

The problem with both Prosperity Theology and Poverty Theology is that they are both half right and both half wrong. What they share is that they are both wrong to make money the issue. The real issue is not money, but righteousness. Therefore, there are not two kinds of people—rich and poor—but rather four kinds of people as categorized here:

I’ve long been lobbing rhetorical hand grenades at people like Rod Parsley and other health and wealthers. Unfortunately I find myself caught in the crossfire from those who equate poorness with holiness, and wealth with sin.

I think this focus on money may be a bit misguided. While there are a great many physical concerns that the church should be meeting, there’s (especially in the US) a greater spiritual concern that gets overlooked. Jesus also spent a good bit of his time including those who were excluded (ie women, Samaritans, children etc). Paul, in Ephesians 3 talks about the ultimate inclusion of the gentiles into the covenant from which they were defined as excluded.

So, who in our society is excluded? Who is the untouchable “other” that is held up as the anti-example of what not to be? Because, if we’re perfectly honest, the concept of helping the poor is as entrenched in our society as possible both inside and outside the church. Helping the poor is no more revolutionary or admirable as helping our relatives or friends (after all, even the pagans do that). So who would it be revolutionary to minister to?

How about child molestors? Would ministering to the Catholic priests found guilty of this crime scandalize all the right people? Or the guy who kicked off all of the Megan’s Laws with his heinous crime?

Or corporate criminals. Enron’s Ken Lay jumps to mind. But there have been others who have deliberately cooked the books and ripped off a lot of people.

Or your garden variety racists? There was a guy who lived about 30 minutes from my hometown who was a grand wizard in the KKK and had a huge confederate flag on his barn. WWJD?

Slopping some soup into a bowl and handing it to a homeless person is almost expected come Christmas time. Its so mainstream that you get tax deductions from the government for giving to organizations that help the poor. Now, many high schools require some sort of community service before graduation. While helping the poor is, and will continue to be a part of what the church does, it by no means isn’t all the church should be doing, and, in western cultures anyway, isn’t the revolutionary type of love that Jesus demonstrated.