Giving What's Deserved

Dear Knower,

The point of this blog is to communicate life lessons learned (largely against my will), as well as principles that have proved to be of value across tens of thousands of hours attempting to help people grow as individuals, and as family and business leaders.  Mainly it is about the one thing I know for sure.

I call you Knowers because you know that Jesus loves you.  As the recipients of these posts you have also been kind enough to indulge me as I practice the craft of writing in hopes that I will improve; at it that is.  This note is to tender my excuse as to why I have gone silent for a few weeks.  Travel and intense work projects are a factor, but I must blame another obsession for the gap.

For some time I’ve been taken with the life-changing notion of justice as it is explained by Timothy Keller in Generous Justice.  The work can be summarized as a treatise on the believer’s obligation to rescue and restore the disadvantaged among us.  He builds a scriptural case that the fruit of following Christ will be borne in our care for the orphan, the widow, the immigrant, and the poor. He admonishes us to accept God’s perspective rather than mine.  I think you should get what you deserve and I should get mercy.  God thinks you should get what you deserve when he sees you through the grace made possible by Christ’s sacrifice. He invites us to see others as deserving that same grace.

Don’t worry that I’ve gone gospeless social gospel, or forsaken personal responsibility.  I have just found it difficult to return this truth to the lesser priority it has held in my life.  My current quest is to learn how God would have this higher priority demonstrated.  My friend Derk reminded me of Bill Yeager’s counsel to “do what’s in front of you” by responding to the needs encountered.  This has raised my awareness of opportunities to offer incidental and transient relief to some.  But the number and severity of the needs around us are daunting and I am praying about the needs that the Spirit will draw me into.  At least I am hoping it goes this way because I don’t think any of us can make much of a difference fighting the battle on many fronts.  I am hoping that God will draw me to a station along the battle line and point me, with others who are similarly burdened, at a particular objective. 

We do not live in the theocracy outlined in Deuteronomy, but God’s heart may still be “that there would be no poor among you”.  When Jesus told the disciples that the poor would always be with us he was making the point that they should focus on him. He was far from indifferent to the disadvantaged, yet the endurance of poverty is a cold fact and a consequence of our cussedness.

I agree with the gospel that we are to practice intentional acts of kindness that reveal the source of grace.  This can also lead to working in concert to alleviate the cause behind a person or group being disadvantaged. This is about freeing poor orphans, widows, & refugees with grace that leads them out of deprivation, and into blessing.  We are talking about the dispossessed, but also the well to do.  But for the grace of Jesus we are all fatherless bankrupt wanderers.

That’s the reason I went silent for a time on the blog, and why I have engaged many of you in intense conversation on this topic.  I believe that the conversation, and a pragmatic response to it, will help me begin to see people through Jesus’ perspective of grace.  I hope my explanation will provoke you to join this compelling conversation. 

Anyone who has not trusted Christ with this life and the one to come is disadvantaged in a profound way.  He wants them to know his love and grace; the bible tells me so.