Category: Engaging Our Culture

All believers agree that Jesus calls us to help the needy and to be a positive influence on our society. However, believers disagree over the ways in which Christians should get involved in society. This post reflects on biblical principles related to our call to influence our society. Some believers mostly withdraw from society and believe that this is the Scriptural approach. They do not pursue the transformation of structural injustice in their society. One reason these people take this approach is that directives for organized political involvement are conspicuous by their absence in the New Testament as compared to the Old Testament. In the Old Testament God constantly challenged Jewish political leaders and the wealthy to form a just society, including laws to relieve human suffering. But there are no clear instructions to Christians in the New Testament to gain political influence and reform unjust systems. Of course, this Continue Reading →

Last week we saw that pursuing social justice is our responsibility because it is part of the kingdom of God that Jesus brought. Will we be able to complete the fulfillment of the kingdom of God? No. We must wait for Jesus to return and execute a final defeat of evil. There is no passage in the New Testament directing believers to fully establish the kingdom of God in this age. Rather, people are invited into the partial kingdom that Jesus has already established. Jesus and his apostles speak of believers finding the kingdom, entering the kingdom and spreading the message of the kingdom so that others may enter. Jesus brought the kingdom so it is here now and people can choose whether to enter or not. But we can not complete it. Yet this lack of full establishment does not discourage us because he is using us to spread Continue Reading →

Anyone who longs to see justice and harmony in society should be ecstatic about Jesus’ teaching on the kingdom of God. Jesus’ goal is a perfectly just society. When we seek social justice in Christ we know that we will bear fruit, whether or not we change an entire society. When we give our lives to provide a better living for humanity our “success” does not depend on outcome. Whatever the results, our efforts to produce change display the light of the kingdom of God for anyone around us to see. The pressure to make sure we achieve our desired results is off of us. God does his part and we do our part and we trust God for the outcome. Ultimately, God will establish complete social justice. As we pursue social justice, what we seek and how we seek it shows others the goodness of God and gives them Continue Reading →

Part of our responsibility as Christians is to work for justice in our society, especially to help the poor. Over the past few years the gap between the rich and the poor in America has been widening. Here are some statistics from Business Insider: ” The average American millennial household today (ages 20 to 35 in 2016) has an average net worth of $100,800, while the average American baby boomer household today (ages 52 to 70 in 2016) has a net worth of $1.2 million, reported Mallika Mitra for CNBC, citing a MagnifyMoney analysis of Federal Reserve data on household assets and liabilities (all values are adjusted for inflation). That means that baby boomer households in 2016 had twelve times the net worth of millennial households. ” In 1998, the average household aged 20 to 35 had a net worth of $103,400, while households aged 52 to 70 had a net worth of Continue Reading →