23 Jun

OF CHARITY AND JUSTICE

By Nathan Brown … Some of the commands of the Bible seem straightforward. Consider “Do justice” (Micah 6:8); “Learn to do good. Seek justice” (Isaiah 1:17); or, more poetically, “Let justice roll down like waters” (see Amos 5:24)—among many other Bible verses we could cite that urge us in this same direction. Of course, this does not mean it is easy to do, but it seems we would need to squirm quite a bit to wriggle our way out of these direct commands. And so, we do—squirm and wriggle, duck and weave—to try to diminish this call on our lives of faith. Or we simply don’t know where to start, so we move on to a different Bible study.

But, giving us the benefit of the doubt for a moment, it seems our language can also let us down when we try to talk about justice. Author of Pursuing Justice, Ken Wytsma, points out that our first thoughts on hearing about justice often take us in one of two different directions, either thinking about criminal justice or charity. Unless we work in related fields, criminal justice is not something most of us have regular contact with, nor do we want to, nor would we know how to relate in a meaningful way if we wanted to. But our default to charity is easier.

Do Charity?

Charity is good. I do not want to discourage anyone from giving. Give generously, regularly, intentionally and maybe sometimes recklessly. When someone is hungry, they need to be fed. When disaster strikes, we need to respond and to help. It is one aspect of the other action of Micah 6:8, that God also requires us “to love mercy.”

Churches and church people tend to be good at charity. We give donations and raise funds, we hold bake sales and take up collections, we donate clothes and household goods, we praise those who volunteer at soup kitchens and homeless shelters and tell stories of our mission trips and outreaches to neighborhoods across town. These are common markers of what it means to do good in our communities. I am old enough to remember when we used to mark Sabbath school attendance with recording “persons helped,” “food parcels delivered,” and “items of clothing given” as part of our reporting system for measuring our collective impact on those around us.

Again, much of this can be good. And many of these actions will be commended by Jesus, according to Matthew 25:31–46. But it can feel like we can never give enough. There are so many needs in the world and so many different causes we could support that we can despair of ever being able to give to the degree that feels like it truly makes a difference. While this might be because we don’t give enough—only rarely do we give in a way that actually costs us, rather than giving from our excess—it can also be because charity itself is not enough. If we only do charity, this brings two serious risks to fulfilling our justice calling as the people of God:

Charity does not always bring out our best.

Most of us like to be thought of as generous—and we like to be able to think of ourselves as generous. Our motives for doing good are always slippery and fickle. This was something that Jesus warned about (see Matthew 6:1–4). When our sense of generosity gets mixed up with our charity, it changes what we are doing and, according to Jesus, it changes how God views our supposed generosity. It can also change our relationship with those who might benefit from our giving. Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr cautioned that charity could work to entrench the obvious power imbalances in our world: “philanthropy combines genuine pity with the display of power and that the latter element explains why the powerful are more inclined to be generous than to grant social justice.” (Moral Man and Immoral Society, p. 127).

Many of us have experienced the awkwardness that can arise in the donor–recipient relationship. Giving can create unstated or assumed expectations. It can be a way in which the relatively wealthy and powerful can flex their privilege, and economic disparity can be styled as a societal good—all with the veneer of generosity and benevolence. Even for those of us who do not consider ourselves among the super-wealthy, making occasional donations can be a way to salve our consciences and perpetually defer the call to justice.

Charity is not a substitute for justice.

Partly for the reasons above—no matter how large the donation, perhaps even exacerbated the larger the donations become—charity can undermine justice. It can make the status quo seem necessary and side-step the questions of why some are perennially marginalized and vulnerable. Feeding a hungry person today is necessary and important; feeding a hungry person—or a succession of hungry people—every day for months and years must prompt questions about the systems that make this necessary, while such generosity seems to make that system possible. “Charity is no substitute for justice. If we never challenge a social order that allows some to accumulate wealth—even if they decide to help the less fortunate—while others are short-changed, then even acts of kindness end up supporting unjust arrangements. We must never ignore the injustices that make charity necessary, or the inequalities that make it possible” (Michael Eric Dyson, “Voice of the Day,” Sojourners, December 9, 2019).

Doing Justice

Charity is good—too often, it is necessary. Charity can be a contribution towards justice. But justice is more. Doing justice requires a deeper engagement with issues and people, as well as the systems that create and perpetuate injustice. Doing justice demands that we take action.

In the history of our church, we can see many good examples of this. We have been outspoken and led campaigns for freedom of conscience and religious liberty. We have championed broad access to education and health care. Early Adventists defied unjust laws in relation to fugitive slaves and campaigned for the abolition of slavery. At our best, we have advocated for peace, created inclusive communities, and spoken out against the evils of racism.

Today, we continue in all of these actions, as well as expanding our activism in new ways. As people of truth, we must find ways to confront and dismantle the disinformation that has come to blight our societies, risk our public health, and poison our politics. We must speak up to expand access to voting, making it easier rather than more difficult for as many people as possible to be engaged and heard in our political debates and in electing our leaders. We must use our choices as consumers to support companies and products that work in ways that are better for people and our environment. And there are so many more ways in which we can live justly and conscientiously, in our individual lives and through exercising our collective voices and influence.

Some will object that these actions and priorities will move us into the realm of politics. It will. Rather than being reluctant to do this, we need to learn to do it better. Yes, we must be careful and discerning in this engagement. We must also be careful not to be drawn into assuming that all “doing justice” is merely political. Politics is just one of the tools for doing justice, but when confronting systems that are unjust, racist, oppressive, and exclusionary, our political influence can be a key tool for changing these systems more for the benefit of the most vulnerable and marginalized. As people of faith, we need to get involved—or, as Proverbs 31:9 (NLT) puts it, “Speak up for the poor and helpless, and see that they get justice.”

Writing about the ongoing and necessary work of antiracism—as compared to merely claiming to be “not racist”—Ibram X. Kendi urges that we should prioritize working to change unjust policies and systems: “To fight for mental and moral change as a prerequisite for policy changes is to fight against growing fears and apathy, making it almost impossible for antiracist power to succeed. . . . Critiquing racism is not activism. An activist produces power and policy change, not mental change. If a person has no record of power or policy change, then that person is not an activist,” (How to Be an Antiracist, pp. 208–9).

Such a focus on policies and systems is not only about national politics, but also calls us to speak and act in the context of our cities and communities, where we should seek to cooperate with community leaders, other community groups and people of good will, working with and on behalf of those who most need our communities, policies, and systems to be different. This takes work, focus, listening and learning. Writing a check or submitting credit card details to make a generous donation can be helpful and important—it can even sometimes have an influence in larger justice causes—but we are also and always called to more, committing our energy, influence, and resources as we are able.

Most of the ancient Hebrew prophets urged their people to the faithful work of “doing justice.” To this, Jesus added a valuable promise: “God blesses those who hunger and thirst for justice, for they will be satisfied” (Matthew 5:6). As such, doing justice is a necessary expression of the hope we claim to live by and response to the goodness of the God we claim to serve, and it contributes to the necessary change in the world around us.

–Nathan Brown is a writer and editor at Signs Publishing in Warburton, Victoria, Australia. Nathan is co-host of a new podcast series called “Moe and Nathan Go to School” as part of the Adventist Peace Radio podcast: http://www.adventistpeace.org/podcast. Email him at: [email protected]

29 Mar

THOSE SERMONS WITHOUT ANGELS

By Nathan Brown … I’ve seen a few of these social media posts recently: earnest church members expressing their “concern” or disappointment that Adventist pastors aren’t preaching like they used to. Too many sermons these days—so the complaint goes—are “merely” about Jesus or the gospel or love or caring for others. These are sermons that you could hear in any “other” church—it is assumed—rather than the “real” Adventist preaching of prophecy and preparedness. Whether a criticism of a particular pastor or local church or the perception of a larger trend, in the minds of these concerned critics, Adventist preaching has lost its edge.

At the other end of the church, the three angels of Revelation 14 are back in focus, if they ever weren’t. The General Conference has voted that the Three Angels’ Messages will be the worldwide church’s theme for emphasis, study, and evangelism in the current quinquennium. Resources are being developed, books written, logos designed. Away from church headquarters, a plethora of independent ministries seem to compete to be the most Three-Angel-y; thus, the most “Adventist” and most worthy of your donations.

But this continuing attention on the Three Angels raises questions about whether we risk a preoccupation with the angels themselves, as some kind of shorthand, slogan or logo, rather than the messages that they and we are called to share. And perhaps if we understood these messages more deeply, we would come to recognize and hear them more commonly, even in supposedly mundane sermons and everyday faithfulness.

The Angels Are Not the Message

The ideal delivery system is one that we don’t notice. If we are noticing the system, it is likely that there is a problem. When I am in my office, reading and sending many emails each day, I am thinking about what I am writing, not the functions of the email software or the hardware of our internet servers—unless these systems stop working.

Throughout the Bible story, one of God’s key messaging systems has been angel delivery. As dramatic as this tends to be, the risk is that the appearance of the messenger tends to overwhelm the recipients, which is why so many angelic messages begin with, “Do not be afraid.” The natural human reaction can get in the way of good communication. Yet the angel would be the first to urge that they themselves are only the messenger, not the message.

Similarly, proclaiming, sharing and living the messages of the Three Angels do not always require a scripture reading of Revelation 14:6–14, an explanation or depiction of the angels, or a stylized triple-angel logo. It isn’t that the angels are unimportant, but they are not the message. There’s a place for that specific Bible study, but read the messages again . . . Wherever the gospel is shared, whenever diverse people are invited, welcomed and included; when the created goodness of our world is affirmed, protected and celebrated; when the injustice, oppression and the systemic evils in our world are condemned and undermined; wherever people are called to live differently and better; whenever we anticipate and imagine a world in which evil will be undone and creation restored, the messages of the angels are shouted again.

The Messages Are Good News

When reading the Bible through, by the time we get to page 1031 (in my Bible), the key messages of the angels are not new. These messages are a summary of the good news of God’s intentions for our world, including His plan to remove evil and restore us and our world to what they were always meant to be. Revelation 14 has an added element of end-time urgency, but even the warnings of judgment against the fallen systems of this world and those who profit from them or are deceived by them are themes that have been growing across the breadth of scripture.

The earliest Hebrew prophets were insistent that a day would come to destroy wickedness and those who have refused to give it up. That our world is broken and fallen is not news to anyone paying attention. But the real news is that a different story, a different ending, and a different way of living is possible—and necessary.

This is what makes the good news “good.” For us and for all who choose, the world as it is does not have to be this way. The “eternal Good News” is that God offers a choice, an alternative, that “everyone who believes in Him will not perish” (John 3:16*). The content of the messages of the angels is an expansion and specific application of this good news, expanded beyond all human prejudices to include everyone and applied in a final warning to and demarcation of those who insist on evil.

Such judgment is a two-sided equation. Judgment can be for or against. For those who suffer injustice, judgment means liberation and restoration. For those who benefit from injustice or just don’t care, judgment is a grave danger. God’s announcement of the liberation of the slaves in Exodus sounds very different if one is a Hebrew or an Egyptian, a slave or an oppressor.

So how do we live in expectation of such judgment? Jesus’ answer was given in the second half of His end-time sermon in Matthew 25. Wherever we live and act with hope, anticipation, faithfulness, and compassion, we respond to and enact the messages of these angels. When we begin to see with God’s eyes and work for greater justice and mercy in our world, we are doing the work the angels have urged us to do. And whenever we worship the God who promises ultimate justice and restoration, we answer their call.

A Sermon Without Angels

As such, these messages are heard and repeated in a million ways. The angels are part of the picture, but they are not the point. In fact, the angels might be a distraction. Not that I have anything against angels but in a world where stories of angels are often misunderstood or dismissed, there might be better ways to share their messages. We don’t need to quote the angels to sound their call.

And within our community of faith, we need to be careful about mistaking the Bible study for the application or the invitation. One could be suspicious that Paul was writing to a particular faith community that understood itself as repeating the shouts of the angels and aspired to a superior understanding of the Bible’s prophecies: “If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn’t love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God’s secret plans and possessed all knowledge, . . . but didn’t love others, I would be nothing” (1 Corinthians 13:1, 2).

It can be helpful for us to understand our faith with the picture of angels flying with an urgent message. But Paul would caution that the loudest proclamations are not always most faithful. We live and share this understanding most fully when we love our neighbors, our communities, even our enemies and those who might persecute us, and even if at great cost and self-sacrifice. Without that, we are only making more noise in an already noisy world.

Often the strongest invitation is given quietly. The most faithful sermons are not always the most dramatic, sensational or complicated. The best story we tell is always the story of Jesus. And the best witness probably doesn’t have a logo.

Rather, love is our edge, the thing that makes our faith real and unique, the thing that will set all our preaching, sharing and serving apart. That is the most Adventist-y thing we can be looking for and living out. That is the worship that most honors our Creator God and all those who are equally created in His image, with whom we are firstly recipients of the angels’ call.

So those humdrum gospel sermons that are “merely” about Jesus suddenly take on a fresh urgency. These preachers are speaking in tune with the angels if they are again reminding us of the story of Jesus, the grace and love of God, and urging us again to surrender our lives to His invitation to follow Him with all our lives. Even in the most “unprecedented” of times, the most important thing any of us can say to the world is to insist that God is good, that we can see this still in the now-broken world that He has made, and that we can see and accept it most fully in the story of Jesus. This is the best, everlasting and ever-new Good News that we offer to our world.

–Nathan Brown is a writer and editor at Signs Publishing in Warburton, Victoria, Australia. Nathan is co-host of a new podcast series called “Moe and Nathan Go to School” as part of the Adventist Peace Radio podcast: http://www.adventistpeace.org/podcast. Email him at: nathanbrown@ signspublishing.com.au

* Bible quotations are from the New Living Translation.

05 Jan

MORE THAN EQUALITY

By Nathan Brown — It was a relaxed and sunny Sunday morning at a camp- meeting in a distant state. Over a breakfast of pancakes and other good things, I had shared a worship reflection as part of the youth program, situated, as youth venues often are at such events, on the far side of the campground. The program had come to an end and I was enjoying the sunshine and talking with a few friends as the crowd dispersed.

My relaxed conversation and state of mind were interrupted by a phone call, asking if I could do a book promotion before the next session began in the main venue in a few minutes’ time. I arranged to drop by the temporary camp bookstore to collect the books to be featured as I hurried to the stage on the other side of the campground.

The plan went smoothly enough, as I grabbed the books at the front of the bookstore with the ease of an incident-free relay baton change and arrived at the next venue with time to catch my breath before being introduced and delivering a presentation of the two or three books I had been asked to promote to the small morning Bible-study crowd. Returning the sample books to the bookstore at a more leisurely pace, I also returned to my more relaxed state of mind—and then my phone buzzed again.

A concerned someone had posted on my social media wall, direct-messaged me, posted on the host conference’s social media feeds and that of the publishing house I work for, all in quick succession in the few minutes since I had stepped onto the stage to promote the books. The “problem” was the T-shirt I was wearing. Dressed as I was for a Sunday-morning breakfast in the youth program with no time to change as I hurried across the campground, even if it had occurred to me (perhaps a T-shirt was underdressed for the main venue), apparently more “troubling” than my casual dress was the single word on the T-shirt: EQUALITY.

It was only a single complainant, but over the following weeks, he was persistent in seeking an “explanation” and trying to draw conference leaders into the conversation about wearing an item of clothing emblazoned with such a “political” message at an Adventist camp meeting. His protest is symbolic of a sense of uneasiness that many church members seem to have about the language of equality, justice, and tolerance that should be more a part of how we address the world around us.

There are two levels at which we need to think about these concepts in larger and more faithful ways. The first is the primary context in which these ethical principles are usually debated: in the political, legal, economic and cultural structures that organize and regulate our lives together. Here we are called to “speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves; ensure justice for those being crushed” (Proverbs 31:8).

To this task, we bring insights from our origin story that all human beings are created in the image of God (see Genesis 1:27), and affirmed by the incarnation of Jesus and the invitation He offered to “everyone who believes in Him” (John 3:16) for salvation and citizenship in the present and coming Kingdom of God. In short, we have deep theological reasons to insist that all people are created and valued as equals and society should treat them as such, with a particular focus on and prioritization of those who are most marginalized, vulnerable, and excluded.

Rather than contested concepts, as these tend to be in our societal and political contexts, at the second level in our personal attitudes and actions, they should be considered the bare minimum for our public engagement. Some ethicists argue that Christian love, as it is directed toward those in the world around us, could be defined as “equal regard” and Gushee and Stassen argue that such an understanding “is basic to any Christian understanding of love. . . But it seems somehow incomplete” (Ethics: Following Jesus in Contemporary Context, p. 113).

Authentic Christian ethics must include equality, tolerance and more careful and thoughtful ways of speaking and acting.* These are actually the least we can do, but our faithful calling is much higher and deeper—a call to lead in all our human and communal interactions with love, humility, service and kindness.

Thinking about equality in this way fits by analogy with a statement from English novelist E. M. Forster, describing tolerance as “just a makeshift, suitable for an over-crowded and overheated planet. It carries on when love gives out” (On Tolerance).

Similarly, equality might be the best we can do if we ignore the Bible’s pre-eminent commands to love others, even to the extreme of loving our enemies (see Matthew 5:44). When we simplify and sentimentalize love, we ignore the depth and transformative nature of the way in which we are called to live. But the Bible does not allow us this superficial response.

Consider the attitude that Paul urged we should have in our relationships with others:

Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourselves.

Don’t look out only for your own interests, but take an interest in others, too. You must have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had. Though He was God, He did not think of equality with God as something to cling to (Philippians 2:3–6, emphasis added).

Imagine if that earnestly-concerned church member from that Sunday morning at camp meeting was upset because my T-shirted call to equality was insufficient, that equality—even equality with God—was not something we should be clinging to or promoting because it is a lesser good. Ironically, he probably would not have protested nearly so much if my T-shirt had proclaimed love, humility, or kindness. We have tamed and diminished the power of these “church words” to such a degree that we miss the point that these callings are higher and much more politically, economically and culturally disruptive—if only we would take them seriously enough and live them out to their full extent.

Equality is necessary. A passion for the equality of others is something we must insist upon as a foundation for working and speaking up for justice in our world, in turn built on some of our most fundamental beliefs about our world and what it means to be human. But important as it is, equality is a makeshift for systems and institutions that are unable to love. We are called to more. Our equality is not something to cling to. Instead, we are called to love. Everyone equally—as difficult as that will be, in whatever ways we can.

–Nathan Brown is a writer and editor at Signs Publishing in Warburton, Victoria, Australia. Nathan’s newest book is “Advent,” available from your favorite online book retailer. Email him at: [email protected]

*This has come to be termed and often described dismissively as “political correctness” by critics and, while there are obvious excesses in some contexts, using language that is conscientiously kinder and sensitive to how it is heard by others is something we should strive toward.