Social Inaction?
Christianity today is extremely concerned with what has come to be known as ‘social action’. This broad banner has been applied to pretty much any activity that helps someone else on the planet in practical terms, from buying fair trade coffee to spending a gap year in darkest Africa to spending time working in charity shops or homeless shelters. It is responsible for the involvement of hundreds of people in York every day in a variety of worthwhile projects. And I’m deeply suspicious of it.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m entirely supportive of the concept of Christians becoming socially involved. James wrote that “faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead” (James 2:17) and went on to make a fairly strong claim: “Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by what I do.” (James 2:18b)
Jesus himself was a big fan of helping the poor, the helpless, and that nebulous group nowadays defined as the ‘socially excluded’. And he wasn’t afraid of showing it. The parable of the sheep and the goats (Matthew 25:31–46) shows the importance of practical service of our fellow man, as Jesus says, “whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.” (verse 40) Indeed, the group who did not feed the hungry, give water to the thirsty, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked or tend to the sick or the oppressed are summarily condemned to eternal damnation. With this much biblical evidence that it’s a good thing, how am I going to justify my suspicions of social action?
I’d like, if I may, to relate a small anecdote. I was once sat in a church service where the sermon was being given on the passage in James from which I’ve just quoted. The vicar expounded at length on the importance of living out our faith…and proceeded to inform the congregation that buying fairly traded coffee would suffice quite nicely. Now my faith is in a God who took the punishment I deserved for rebelling against him. It’s in a God who loves me so much that he died for me. It’s in a God whom death could not hold, but who rose from the dead and is alive now. If my chief response to that is to buy a couple of jars of non-exploitative tea, then there’s something wrong.
Ultimately, I think my criticisms of social activists stem from a question of means and ends. I suppose at this point I ought to clarify that in fact social action only troubles me because it is performed by social activists. Social action has become, for a sizeable number of people, and not just Christians, an end unto itself. We help at the homeless shelter because it’s nice to be nice to people. We buy fair trade to get a warm fuzzie about helping some impoverished little farmer in Costa Rica feed his nine starving children.
NO!
Jesus didn’t do nice. He didn’t do cuddly and there is almost no reference in the New Testament to warm fuzzies. We are called by God to act whenever we see social injustice. God should be at the centre of everything we do. And he also called us to “go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:19–20a). Too often that gets ignored because it makes us a bit uncomfortable, because teaching people the right way to live seems somehow presumptuous. Sadly Jesus didn’t come for us to be comfortable. We have been taught the right way to live by Jesus, it is up to us to live it and show other people how to live it too.
Which brings me back round to social action. I would rather people died poor, starving and Christian at forty than rich, comfortable and agnostic at ninety. Christians go to heaven and have eternal life anyway — a few less years on this earth won’t hurt them in that context.
That’s not to say that, given the choice, I wouldn’t rather everyone died rich, well-nourished and Christian, because I think it’s possible for social action and Christian mission to coexist. If we show we are living for God to work through us, then it will be noticed and in purely practical ways we will show everyone we meet how to live a Christian life. Standing up and proclaiming the gospel on a street corner may not be your beef, you can sit down in a charity shop and proclaim it without saying a word.
But that depends on our attitude. It’s just a matter of remembering why we do stuff. Are we doing it because it’s nice to be nice, or are we doing it because we want to serve the perfect all-knowing God who made us? If we keep God in mind in everything we do, both our witness to him and our social desire to help others will be greatly strengthened as a result. Because he’s faithful and he keeps his promises:
“And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (Matthew 28:20b)