For the kingdom of God
is not a matter of eating and drinking but of righteousness and peace and joy
in the Holy Spirit. (Romans 14:17
ESV)
There is a vast difference between the Social Gospel and Christian
compassion. The first is carnal and the
second is spiritual.
The Social Gospel is a Marxist economic analysis and agenda dressed
up wrongly in kingdom of God language.
It depends on cobbling together a coalition of aggrieved classes of
people to create either a revolutionary army, a cadre of political agitators,
or a voting block that functions to re-distribute wealth according to
non-traditional criteria. Usually wealth
is gained by work, craftsmanship, service, worthiness, inventiveness,
managerial ability, artistry, excellence, productivity, or inheritance. But the Social Gospel says people have the
right to an abstract “fair share” (Peter Singer) for the simple fact of
breathing. It is collectivist, statist, coercive,
and does not work, does not achieve the stated goal. But it does empower and enrich those that promise
stuff to one person by using another person’s money.
The Social Gospel fails because it is naïve. It expects selfish people to have compassion on
a grand scale. But common sense tells us
that the circle of compassion is best expressed and experienced in the smaller
social circles of family, friends, and local community. Even on the smaller scale we find that true
compassion requires re-birth in the Spirit, a circumcision and softening of the
heart by the love of Christ.
Christian compassion as Jesus taught does not think in
geo-political or macro-economic terms. There
is no passage of Scripture where Jesus tells government to act with compassion. He once stood right in front of Pilate,
Herod, and then Pilate again … and never said a word about the poor. When the people wanted to make him king by
force Jesus refused and chided them for only wanting bread (see John 6:15 and
25-7). The New Testament simply does not
have a materialistic supposition about human happiness.
Now, some are confused about this. Nearly all the liberal mainline seminaries teach
the Social Gospel and like to quote one passage in the Bible. The Parable of the Sheep and Goats in Matthew
25:3-46 says that “nations” will be judged by what they do to “the least of
these my brothers,” speaking of needy folk.
But “nations” has been a bad translation of the Greek word ETHNOS. It does not mean nation-states but merely
non-Jewish people. Elsewhere ETHNOS is
translated “Gentiles.” Notice, further,
that the analogy says the Judge will “separate people one from another,” referring
to individuals. It’s obvious from these
observations that we each will be judged individually for the compassion we
show or fail to show toward our neighbors.
A lawyer once asked Jesus who was his neighbor. Jesus told about the Good Samaritan. This is found in Luke 10:25-37. Jesus used a method of spiritualization to
re-define for the lawyer who is a “neighbor.”
It is not one that lives next door or down the street. It is anyone we encounter that has a need
that we can meet. The priest and Levite
that walked by the needy man may have rationalized that this man was not their
neighbor in the traditional sense. But the
Samaritan had compassion. Jesus and the
lawyer concluded together that if we see a need we are the neighbor!
That is the spiritual Gospel of Christian compassion. It is roll up your sleeves and help compassion. It is human compassion not some structural,
theoretic, and institutional compassion that requires only that we write a check,
carry a sign, or vote our conscience away, though I would never tell anyone how
to vote or what to do with their time or money.
My point is that true Christian compassion thinks ultimately in terms of
God’s specific calling upon our lives to be aware of the needs of those around
us, those that we personally and directly encounter in real time and space. It is the compassion where human beings see
tears in each other’s eyes.
