Listen to the Cry of the Poor or Face the Wrath of God
Wash and make yourselves clean.
Take your evil deeds out of my sight;
stop doing wrong.
Learn to do right; seek justice.
Defend the oppressed.
Take up the cause of the fatherless;
plead the case of the widow.
Keller clan, circa late 90s or early 00s. I don’t remember the date, but I’ll always remember the feeling.
We decided not to do a normal Thanksgiving. Both of my parents thought it would be good to go the local homeless shelter and serve. This was a very good parenting decision.
I remember the building was smelly. I also remember not understanding exactly what poor meant. To be fair, my family was definitely working class most of my adolescence. We definitely had top ramen for lunch for years. We definitely did not go out to dinner that much. And we definitely didn’t have the video game consoles that all my friends at school had. We didn’t have a lot, but we had enough for me to complain about a lack of video games.
There was another family there, and they weren’t serving. They were there to be served. Five of them, three kids and a mom and dad. Oldest brother, youngest brother, sister in the middle. Just like us. They smiled and joked and cried and looked just like us.
But for whatever reason, they didn’t have the resources to have a family meal for the holiday. So we sanitized our hands, went behind the even smellier kitchen, and gave them food. I was 9, 10, 11? And it was like I looked at a mirror as I gave the 9, 10, 11 year old boy questionable turkey, insta mashed potatoes, and runny gravy from a packet.
This left an impression on me that has never left. It felt good, really good, to benefit other people simply by giving them time, a fast food equivalent of a Thanksgiving dinner, and maybe just a little piece of my broken, sensitive heart. I say this not to hype myself, as I was only a kid and had no real choice in the manner.
I merely want to point out that giving to the poor and needy is one of the most satisfying, life-giving, difficult, and Jesus-y things you can ever do in this life.
It’s weird to write this and think about all the eggshells I’ll step on. To me, it seems pretty clear in the Bible, in the OT, in the Psalms and Proverbs, from Jesus, from Paul, and from all the other apostles that how we treat the poor is very important. It might even be reflective of how Christ like we are.
But growing up, it didn’t seem like it was that important in the American church.
Huge disclaimer here: there are many wholehearted Christians who do serve the poor as a vocation or with their spare time in the U.S. You are absolutely wonderful, and God is very, very pleased with your efforts to bring His kingdom reality to overlooked, marginalized, and persecuted groups. You are apostles, you are His followers, He looks to you when He sees His glory displayed here on earth.
Alright, now time to get real. Giving to the poor was not that important or addressed often up on the pulpit when I was a kid. I didn’t think that much about how I wasn’t giving to my broke best friend, or how the man on the street corner might not have somewhere to stay for the night. Instead, I felt bad because sometimes I said cuss words or started thinking girls looked “hot.” There was a lot of time spent on the right thoughts about God and very little time on the right character and action, according to God. Because grace was not earned, there wasn’t much of a need to do what was right, at least, right by others. If I’m justified by faith, and that faith is merely saying the right words that I mostly believe in my heart, what would compel to do for others? Especially, if I help those who cost me to help?
As is true of all my writing, this is a caricature, a stereotype, but one I have noted is still as prevalent as when I was younger. There are many causes of this, each cause probably worth its own blog. It seems like we don’t care about the poor because we care more about personal and individual freedom, we care more about our own comfort and security, and we don’t trust God will provide for us if we are overwhelmingly generous to others, particularly the poor who can’t repay us. I do think this disregard for the poor is more a cause for the wrath of God to be against us than our wrong thoughts about God or voting for the wrong presidential candidate.
I try to avoid writing about the wrath of God as often as possible. To be honest, it’s also why I tend to not read the Old Testament. Although I understand that much of Yahweh’s wrath had to do with Israel disobeying the covenant with Him and also the unrighteousness and evil of other civilizations of the day, I’m a full-blown hippie pacifist. Based on the teaching of Jesus. And Paul. And a lot of other smart and peaceful people in history, many of whom were Christian or at least spiritually inclined.
But didn’t Yahweh tell Israel to purge nations? Even the women and children? If there’s one thing I can convince any reader about Christianity, it’s that it is often confusing to follow Christ.
But one recurring theme of the wrath of God is His extreme loathing of Israel’s mistreatment of widows, aliens, foreigners, and orphans. Any and all of these fall under the umbrella of the poor. The umbrella of the oppressed. The umbrella of the least of these.
It is becoming more popular for politicians on the left to cite Matthew 25 as a rallying call for an overhaul of legislation regarding debt, income equality, and all manner of things in between. I guess call me liberal too because it is the passage that haunts me more than any other.
And yet, I remember atonement theory being talked about more than what we were giving to needy members of the congregation or to a neighbor. I don’t ever remember being told to care for the alien or immigrant, but I was definitely told to care for the unborn. But precious little about the woman who was caring for the child, especially years afterward. I also remember the implicit messages of shame placed on women who had already made the “choice.” I remember being told politics was more about who or what you voted for than about how to take better care of your local community.
Eggshells to step on or not, I just think there’s something wrong with that.
I hate ICE. As often as I can, I try to not let my overt political leanings come out (covertly I do it all the time), but I supremely disliking separating families from each other. It’s evil, it’s fascist, it’s not Christian one iota. To be honest, it seems like the kind of thing our country had learned to stop doing on our own soil in the 1860s. Yet alas, here we are.
Even though I try to not be polarizing with my more extreme leanings, this one feels as cut and dry and black and white as any other. I think I have more of the moral high ground here, and it’s why I’m breaking my tendency to tread lightly and nudge gently.
The Evangelical community supporting the actions of ICE, the ongoing financial hardships of marginalized communities, and the obsession of one political issue at the expense of all others is deeply, deeply disappointing. In fact, the ongoing support of our current president will likely be the line of the sand of why Christianity in America continues to go on the decline. When one people group, particularly middle to old-aged white guys, universally endorse an old white guy, who in turn enacts legislation to benefit only one demographic, at the perpetual expense of all other communities, this is not reflective, even remotely, of the diverse community of Christ followers in this country. It makes people think that to be evangelical is to think one people group, one ideology, and one particular issue mattets more than all others. It is the antithesis of the Gospel in the NT. It is the opposite of good news for the poor.
I still cringe realizing how many brothers and sisters I have that endorse the buffoon currently in the oval office. I cringe because I still love all of them, all of you, and I do so because it is a command for me to do so.
But, can we talk? Wander away from the above political polarizing statements I just made?
I am concerned that the deep divide across the aisle, of which I am definitely firmly planted on the left, has cost us the heart of the gospel. I am worried that social media has caused us to groupthink toward our right theology/ideology at the expense of Godly compromise and deeper unity. I fear, deeply, that more and more people, liberal or conservative, Trump supporter or hater, pro choice or pro life, LGBT affirming or non affirming, will not consider faith in Jesus because of how polarizing it is do so. They shall know us by our love, not because we were right. But right now, many have walked away because we were wrong.
This theme of being loving juxtaposed against being right keeps recurring in my writing. I think it’s because dwelling on being right directly takes energy away from spaces where we could display compassion, mercy, and forgiveness.
I used to obsess over how evil the capital C church was. I used to relish the fall of the latest celebrity pastor. I used to harbor a lot of resentment, sometimes hate, for entire groups of people because of how wrong I thought they were.
However, God wanted something more from me. There wasn’t a whole lot of good I could do for His kingdom if I was focused on how other people were ruining His “reign.” There was a disillusionment underneath the anger, sadness behind the madness, hurt concealed by hate.
In order to do what was right I had to stop focusing on being right. In order to be loving, I had to stop focusing on how others weren’t loving. In order to effect change in my external world, I first had to change my internal world.
Rumi said it well:
Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.
Whether you are more liberal than Karl Marx, or to the right of Genghis Khan, as one of my favorite old white theologian Steve Brown says of himself, your political leanings are no excuse to be unloving toward your “adversaries.” In fact, I’d argue that the very cause you fight for is meaningless if you fight for it in an immoral way.
Martin Luther King Jr., although very accurately scathing of the appalling silence of “good people,” talks about the fight like this:
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
It is the poor for conservatives, ie unborn babies and the forgotten rural America, and it is the poor for liberals, inner city people of color and the LGBT community, that suffer the most when we cling so tightly to the dichotomy of us vs. them.
We aren’t fighting against other people, whether blue or red. We are fighting against institutions, against ideologies, against the perpetuating implicit compliance of otherwise good and well-meaning people of faulty and corrupt systems. There is a spiritual dimension to this ongoing suppression of the poor we never think about.
Paul says to the church in Ephesus that “for our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” The enemy is pleased when Trump supporting and Trump hating Christians don’t talk to each other. He relishes division most of all, particularly in the family of God. He is here to steal, kill, and destroy, and it’s very easy to do that when a family is not unified around their same Father.
We need to love those we disagree with, and see Christ in them. We need to carry our cross of ideological correctness and crucify it so that it can resurrect as a deeper call and desire to stand united with Christ and therefore with the poor.
After all, it’s what we do to the least of these that we do to Him. If I’m to take Him at His word, particularly in how judgment will occur on the last day, we will be judged by how we treated the least of these. Therefore, when we work for peace, particularly with our ideological neighbor who might happen to be our spiritual sibling, all of the least of these are served well.
If we, however, contend to persist in ongoing political polarization and unfair characterization, the poor suffer. And the wrath of God, often seen in Scripture as His lack of presence due to ongoing rebellion and violence, will persist. And both the liberal Christian and the conservative Christian will have weakened the gospel, not strengthened it.