Last Saturday Adam and I talked at Lifest in Oshkosh.  The talk landed smack in the middle of a terrific rain storm, so between drenched people flowing in to take cover and the pounding cats and dogs on the roof, I’m not sure what came across to the audience, but here’s what we intended to say!

In the talk we posed the question, “What do we do about people we know are suffering around the world?  Do we care?  What should we do?  What’s stopping us from doing something?”  Then we flipped through six excuses to do nothing, each with it’s own title.  I thought I’d split the six into separate blogs, each a little reflection on the ways we excuse ourselves from caring as much as God about the suffering in the world.  See if you recognize yourself in here, and ask what you’re going to do about it…

For today, here’s excuse #1:

1. The Super Spiritual Dude. Convinced that all the world needs is a salvation experience, this person ignores the fact that millions of people (some of them already very Christian) still lack food, education, health care, and other basic needs.

God always works both in our physical day-to-day reality and in a mystery, spiritual level.  Throughout the Bible, prophets like Elisha, Isaiah, and Amos, plus Paul, James and others in the New Testament, declared and put into practice God’s intimate concern about dignity and justice for the poor.  Jesus didn’t separate the physical healing from spiritual, and it drove people crazy.  He healed and forgave sins in the same act.  He gave people bread, and then refused to be just a bread-giver.  He cares, across the world, about whether someone has enough food as well as about whether someone knows who made the food and who is the bread of life.

So how much do you care?  When people ask you, “What does the world need,” do you give the Sunday School answer, “Jesus!” with a goldfish-cracker-filled smile, but never unpack what it means to give Jesus to the world?  What better answer would you rather be prepared to give, in your words and your example?

Stay tuned later this week for excuse number two…