Just What's A Canker Sore
8 years ago
Sunday, August 06, 2006
I watched 'Hotel Rwanda' last night with a few guys from church. What a powerful movie! And to think that it's all true is too terrible for words. It raises an interesting point about intervention. There is a quote on the back of the DVD cover that says:
"All it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing."
It's so true. Why do we stand back and let so many attrocities happen? I find it really hard to get my head around the concept that we are all made in the image of God, and yet we are capable of such blind hatred. I just don't understand it.
I want to do more. I want to be more aware, and I want to help change to eventuate. KK was telling us last night about how his aunt and uncle are trapped in Chad at the moment, hiding out in an orphanage. Isn't that awful? I didn't even know there was something going on in Chad! So I'm looking into it at the moment and I want to write letters to the news programs and try to encourage them to look into this. That seems to me to be the first step to getting someone to intervene and help these people. We need to be aware of this stuff! I'm wanting to send out emails to make people aware of this situation, and get others to email news programs to get them to cover it. If enough of us write, then maybe something can happen! So after I do some more research I want to see if there is something I can do to help instead of sitting back and thinking how hopeless it all is. I hope you'll join me. Don't you think this is important?
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a little trivia: there is more in the bible about DOING JUSTICE and SHOWING LOVE than on telling people that JESUS will get them to eternal life.
if we don't live our FAITH by our WORKS then all we are is hipocrites and our faith is meaningless.
GOOD JOB tink for grabbing the idea and running with it!!!
Money helps too.
Define "social justice".
and...
Prove that it is a 'calling', as you say.
We are suppose to be our brother's keeper but how far and to what extent?
proof of calling: Micah 6:8, matthew 25 (sheep and goats), Acts!!! it5 is a BASE Christian calling that Jesus gives us as HIS witnesses to the world.
if you personally havent heard Jesus call your name your not alone, however we have an overiding CALL as Christians to do what is Right!!!
"What you did to the least of these, you did for me.".
Just because we are concerned for people's souls, does not mean we should forget about their bodies dan their rights as humans. How better to show God's love than to advocate for them, and to love them as God would! Didn't Jesus uphold the cause of those he saw persecuted? How about what he did for the woman caught in adultery? He saved her from an injust situation.
I think we are definitely called to love and seve others, not just in a way that saves their souls, but in a way that upholds the values of God.
I wonder if separating social justice out hasn't been the evil one's greatest triumph.
Jesus didn't ever call people to a purely personalised heaven - he called them into God's Kingdom. he called them to follow him. He saves them so they can lay down their lives for their brothers and sisters and enemies.
That means living a totally different radical life with a passion for God and through that social justice.
You can't love God and not be passionate about justice! Regardless if the recipient 'gets saved'.We are called to live a new radical way that foreshadows a time when compassion and justice triumph.
True worship is the perfume of loving one's neighbour as one's self. True religion reaches into the gutter to the street kid. Genuine Faith means serrving God not money - can't do both!
God is restoring broken humanity, by sending us as sheeps to the wolves ... but we westerners have turned it all into a personalised quest for 'quality'living where physical comfort, prosperty, gnostic experiences and tuneful music anaesthesise us from the beggars, the poor, the imprisoned and, God forbid - the uncool!
jesus becomes our personal saviour, and the Holy Spirit our personal genie, an antidote to feeling down!
If you are not passionate about God's justice you are not in the Kigndom. Full stop!
However, I am quite taken aback by the naivety and bigotry of some of these comments...
If you are not passionate about God's justice you are not in the Kigndom. Full stop!
Gee, I'm glad you're not God. What a world that would be. What happened to John 3:16? What happened to being forgiven of sins? What happened to the whole reason that Christ came to the earth? You sound like a JW dude, preaching salvation based on works.
I have never said that we do not have a responsibility to take care of those around us. In fact, if you actually read what I said (instead of skim read the bits that you think are wrong, blow them out of proportion and then argue some narrow minded, emotive falacy) then you would know that I am actually totally in favour of a certain type of social justice - I believe in the Matthew 25 version of social justice: Clothe the naked, feed the hungry, water the thirsty. Allow me to quote myself:
I would almost rather do whatever I can to meet the needs of the people around me - but then again maybe this is a type of social justice.
What do you want? Me to rally in the streets with a whole load of whingers about the price of petrol? Pfft... what rubbish. A whole pack of whingers banding together to march along a street that nobody cares about or listens to anyway. Good luck to ya.
Let me ask you, friend of Soldier, when was the last time you bent down in the gutter and helped out a street kid? And if every Christian was stooped over a gutter, who is out there providing the REAL help to our society, picking up the pieces of a people who value material goods above their soul.
It is pathetic to think that the child in the gutter is in more need of God's love than the child in my class who doesn't know God. A cannot think of the words to describe the idiocy of that attitude.
I tell you what, your narrow understanding of social justice has no place in the comings and goings of my day. I will do everything I can to help a student in my class who is struggling, and I will pour my soul out to improve the lives of the kids in my class. I will do these things for the SOLE PURPOSE that they will come to know how much God loves them, not to uphold any stupid law or standard. Love, NOT JUSTICE, is my motivator.
So peddle your cultish theories elsewhere.
You cannot be passionate about God and his Kingdom and not be passionate about the Justice of God against an injust world. God hates sin - not abstract sin, but the alienation and injustice that destroy people made in his image.
two of my favorite quotes are:
"Pure and lasting religion in the sight of God our Father means that we must care for orphans and widows in their troubles, and refuse to let the world corrupt us."
"Quit your worship charades.
I can't stand your trivial religious games:
Monthly conferences, weekly Sabbaths, special meetings—
meetings, meetings, meetings—I can't stand one more!
Meetings for this, meetings for that. I hate them!
You've worn me out!
I'm sick of your religion, religion, religion,
while you go right on sinning.
When you put on your next prayer-performance,
I'll be looking the other way.
No matter how long or loud or often you pray,
I'll not be listening.
And do you know why? Because you've been tearing
people to pieces, and your hands are bloody.
Go home and wash up.
Clean up your act.
Sweep your lives clean of your evildoings
so I don't have to look at them any longer.
Say no to wrong.
Learn to do good.
Work for justice.
Help the down-and-out.
Stand up for the homeless.
Go to bat for the defenseless.
Do you know who said them?
Full marks for you for caring for your kids - but understand love means nothing without understanding justice. You can't have love without justice - just sentimentalism.
Hey, what's your beef about protestors? Are you to slack to act on an issue you feel passionately about? Maybe not oil-prices, but why wouldn't you get out of your armchair and march. You sound so comfortablly out of touch!
I wasn't havinng a go at you in my post - but you've taken it that way, maybe the cap fits?!... I don't think you've read my post at all!
Your comments about kids in gutters make me bloody angry! How dare you point the finger to justify yourself. I have done so recently. I've had them overnight at my place.
*hyperventilates* I feel better now!
I forgive you ;)