He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you?
To ACT JUSTLY and to LOVE MERCY and to WALK HUMBLY with your God.(Micah 6:8)
23rd Sept was our annual World Needs Sunday at All Souls. A challenging day, needless to say. Chris Wright in particular was yet again on form – with a masterly exposition of Deuteronomy 15 – download from All Souls site.
It struck me as we watched the latest Micah Challenge video when it was shown in the service (see below) that you need a very good reason NOT to sign up and side with it.
This Post Has 2 Comments
i’m actually ambivalent towards the micah challenge. the idea of christians mobilizing for the sake of social justice is great, but is doing that through governments the best way? i’m not convinced that the MDGs are the best means for christians to effect change. governments have made a lot of promises regarding poverty and have even thrown billions of dollars that way–but with what results? i believe the call for christians is not just to give to the poor, but truly to consider the poor–to study and understand the issues, to give in effective and intelligent ways and, ultimately, to identify with all the people that Christ did. these are just some off the cuff remarks…any thoughts?
Hi David – you know much more about economic things than i do, of course. So i’m nervous of venturing into a discussion. I totally agree that we need to give in effective and intelligent ways – and that very often (?more often than not), bottom up support is the more effective. However, should poverty be a problem that is tackled from every angle. Don’t governments have a (biblical as well as ethical) mandate to bring about justice and righteousness – so that where poverty is caused by unjust acts of governments, it requires governments (presumably as a result of public and therefore political pressure) to work to reverse those things. I may have misunderstood the issues, but Chris Wright in his sermon linked to above talks about the crippling burdens of third world debt caused by injudicious loans in the 70s pre-oil/petrol crises when everything went haywire. Surely it was right for governments to cancel those debts etc? Again, i am horribly aware that i’m venturing into the darkest recesses of my profound ignorance here, but where there ARE things that governments can do, surely it is then we put pressure on them to do what they SHOULD do? The Micah challenge is by no means a panacea, nor does it remove the responsibility for acting at the small/local scale through micro-financing, just trade deals etc etc.
OK you can now tell me that i simply don’t understand if you like… as long as you explain to me why!