Hope for Humanity Resource Primer

Hope for Humanity Resource Primer

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HOPE for HUMANITY

12501 Old Columbia Pike • Silver Spring, MD 20904 1-888-425-7760 • hope4.com

Hope for Humanity/North American Division El Salvador September 28-30, 2009

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Table of Contents Literacy Evangelism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Literacy Evangelism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Tim Garrison Empowering Women in India . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Loren Seibold Hope for Humanity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Stephen Chavez Changing Lives One Word at a Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Sandra Blackmer Articles of Note . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Is Social Service Our Mission? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Jan Paulsen Love in Practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 Bruce Moyer Should the Christian Mission Focus on Salvation or Society? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 Bert B. Beach To Walk Humbly . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 Roy Adams Religion “Pure and Faultless” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 Jan Paulsen There Should Be No Poor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 Zdravko Plantak A Healthy Church . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 Jan Paulsen Christian Brotherhood: The Foundation of the Church . . . . . . . . 72 Kent Seltman Why Should the Poor Concern Us? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 Zdravko Plantak Jesus—Friend of the Poor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86 William G. Johnsson

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Mankind is Your Business . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90 David N. Marshall Humanizing the Church . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94 Warren S. Bansfield Humanitarian Ministry: A Biblical Perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 Susan M. Fenton Willoughby Five Things the World Needs to Know About Us . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 Jan Paulsen The Ministry of Blessing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111 Scriptural Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121 Quotes and Inspiration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133

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S

eventh-day Adven-

tists pride themselves as being “people of God’s Word.” Imag-

ine not being able to

read God’s Word! What more basic evangelistic outreach could there be than to help people develop the ability to read the Bible?

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Literacy Evangelism Christ’s Method Alone…Truth Associated with Acts of Mercy

by Tim Garrison Christ’s method alone will give true success in reaching the people.

The Savior mingled with men as one who desired their good. He showed His sympathy for them, ministered to their needs, and won their confidence. Then He bade them, “Follow Me.”1 This iconic quote from the writings of Prophetess Ellen G. White provides the evangelistic rational for the critical work of Hope for Humanity’s Literacy Learning Circles. In the very next paragraph Mrs. White continues: There is need of coming close to the people by personal effort. If less time were given to sermonizing, and more time spent in personal ministry, greater results would be seen. The poor are to be relieved, the sick cared for, the sorrowing and the bereaved comforted, the ignorant instructed, the inexperienced counseled. We are to weep with those that weep, and rejoice with those that rejoice.2 According to the United Nations, one in five adults is still not literate; two-thirds of them are women, while 75 million children are out of school. Twenty percent of the world’s population cannot read the Bible!

When we provide “intellectual healing,” we prepare the way for greater 1 2

Ministry of Healing, p. 143.

Ibid.

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spiritual understanding.

Learning to read is a stepping stone in one’s life. The ability to read opens doors to knowledge and personal development. It is like a ladder which takes the individual to higher and higher levels. For example, a new reader is able to fill out a job application and apply for a better job. The new reader can gain knowledge about better farming methods to increase the harvest. New readers find the opportunity for better health as they read about an immunization program for their children. Literacy opens doors to help both the newly literate and their families to become the most useful citizens possible.

Literacy Learning Circles are the front line work of evangelism. They are the power of Christ among the people, ministering to a critical human need.

Literacy Evangelism can also help to plant churches. Church plants established after neighborhood Literacy Learning Circles find a more open and accepting community.

Literacy classes can also be a “low-key” approach in places where direct preaching is difficult or in areas where people are not receptive. Literacy meets a felt need and can be the bridge to building relationships. People see that the teacher is concerned about them and cares enough to teach.

This relationship opens the door for Christian witness.

Seventh-day Adventists pride themselves as being “people of God’s Word.” Imagine not being able to read God’s Word! What more basic evangelistic outreach could there be than to help people develop the ability to read the Bible?

The Bible commands: “read, study, meditate upon, memorize, obey.”

One example in the Old Testament is found in Joshua 1:8, “Do not let this Book of the Law depart from your mouth; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful.”

In Matthew 4:4, Jesus counters the temptation of Satan to “turn these stones into bread” by quoting from the Old Testament: “Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.” Jesus is called the “Living Word” whom we learn about in the written 4

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Word. Eight times in the Gospels He posed this question: “Have you never read?” He expected people to read and know the Scripture.

The aged apostle Paul would write to Timothy with these words from II Tim. 3:15-17: “And how from infancy you have known the holy Scriptures which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.”

The ability to read and write is the foundation of Biblical learning, and Hope for Humanity is providing that foundation to thousands of people around the world by using Christ’s method of evangelism.

Ellen White helps us visualize a young Jesus discovering the evangelistic power of unselfish compassion when she writes: Jesus worked to relieve every case of suffering that He saw. He had little money to give, but He often denied Himself of food in order to relieve those who appeared more needy than He. His brothers felt that His influence went far to counteract theirs. He possessed a tact which none of them had, or desired to have. When they spoke harshly to poor, degraded beings, Jesus sought out these very ones, and spoke to them words of encouragement. To those who were in need He would give a cup of cold water, and would quietly place His own meal in their hands. As He relieved their sufferings, the truths He taught were associated with His acts of mercy, and were thus riveted in the memory.3 Literacy Evangelism: Christ’s method alone…truth associated with acts of mercy.

3

Desire of Ages, pp. 86, 87.

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Empowering Women in India Thousands learn to read through literacy program

by Loren Seibold I’m a passenger in a taxi, watching with some uneasiness the frenzy outside: buses, trucks, bullock carts, pedestrians, pedal rickshaws, scooters, three-wheel minicabs—all mixing and dodging, appearing at every instant on the verge of a collision barely avoided. Next to my window, traveling at our same pace, is a small putt-putting motorcycle. Sidesaddle behind the driver sits a young woman. Her shiny black hair is tied back with an interlacing of white tuberose blossoms. A purple sari with gold-thread trimming wraps about her in that flowing, ethereal way that only Indian women can manage. As the cycle swerves and bumps, as black exhaust billows around her, she sits calmly, unalarmed, her hands in her lap. I am astonished at such poise in that maelstrom of vehicles, noise, and pollution.

This snapshot of India helps to explain why, when people ask me what I found most impressive, most memorable about India, I always say, “The Indian women.” They are strong, purposeful, beautiful, and graceful in the midst of poverty, corruption, inequality, and a suffocating crush of humanity.

First Lessons A few days later I was cross-legged (or as close to it as my American legs could manage) on a concrete floor, knee-to-knee with about 30 women in an orange-trimmed room in a small, crowded (always, everywhere in India, crowded) village near the city of Thiruvananthapuram. I’d been invited to watch them learn to read.

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Surprisingly, for a country for two centuries under Great Britain’s educational system, 60 percent of India’s women are illiterate. In the poorer classes, women are barely more than servants. In some parts of rural India a poor family’s second or third female baby may quietly die its first night from an extract of poisonous oleander mixed into its milk. The parents simply say, “She didn’t live,” though neighbors know the truth: the family couldn’t afford another dowry, that heavy payment to a groom’s family that must accompany a girl if she would have any hope of marriage.

Indian people are accustomed to being packed closely together. In a country with a population density nearly a dozen times that of the United States, little choice exists. I, used to my Western comfort zone, found the classroom a bit close. Around me, though, was an exuberance to offset my claustrophobia. With stubs of chalk and handheld slates the women practiced the swirly Tamil alphabet. The instructor wrote short sentences on a large blackboard, as the class repeated chorally after her, again and again.

Then each practiced writing the words on her own slate. Though the students were mostly non-Christian, their Seventh-day Adventist teachers illustrated the lessons with Christian songs and Bible texts. Every face wore a smile.

I sat next to a young woman wearing a deep red sari. The crimson bindi between her eyebrows (a traditional symbol of insight) had been smudged by the squirming little one in her arms.

“This is the best thing that has ever happened to me,” she said with a broad, bright smile. “I am beginning to read newspapers and books. I can help my children with their homework. My husband is proud of me.”

For her graduation from the program, she received the first book she had ever been able to call her own: a copy of the Bible in Tamil.

Hope The human angel behind this ministry is Hepzibah Kore, Women’s Ministries director of the Southern Asia Division, who has dedicated her life to teaching India’s women to read. From the humblest farming villages to prostitutes in the Kolkata (formerly called Calcutta) slums, Kore believes that when women are able to read, their lives will be transformed.

She travels thousands of kilometers every year to visit her more than 200 Resource Primer

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literacy classes at five sites: Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Orissa, West Bengal, and Garo Hills. At each site Kore first trains teachers, provides teaching materials, then helps the classes take shape.

“People can’t read the Bible until they can read,” Kore says. “These classes give them confidence, and they begin to seek new meanings for their lives.”

That’s why the reading classes aren’t the end of the story: the graduates are invited to practice their reading in follow-up Bible study classes.

Literacy for India’s women is one of the new faces of the program many of us used to know as Ingathering. Today the program is called Hope for Humanity (though the new name is not yet familiar, even to many Adventists).

The cornerstone of the old Ingathering was door-to-door solicitation.

But going to people’s doors has become unwelcome in suburbs and unsafe in cities, and since the 1980s the contributions from door-to-door solicitation have shrunk dramatically. It is not a coincidence, insists Hope for Humanity director Maitland DiPinto, that Adventist name recognition in North America followed that same downward track. That’s why Hope for Humanity is trying to open some new doors.

“We’re creating new ways to get our communities involved in the humanitarian work we do,” DiPinto says. “We don’t want just to get contributions. We want to form partnerships.”

All over North America churches and schools, and in some cases entire conferences, have signed up to become partners in one of Hope for Humanity’s several projects. In the Republic of South Africa and the Kingdom of Lesotho—in which half of all the AIDS cases in the world exist—major Hope for Humanity initiatives are tackling the problem of HIV and AIDS. And in both India and Central America, Hope for Humanity is helping Seventh-day Adventist teachers teach women to read.

Changed Lives As we stepped from our air-conditioned coach in the village of Reddipalem in Andhra Pradesh, India, I felt I’d stepped back in time. People here live in traditional palm-thatched huts. Next to the diminutive concrete church, a man wearing only a lungi tucked up for work, relaxed with his 8

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docile, still-dripping water buffalo. This tiny rural village is located only a few kilometers from the Indian Ocean.

“The water from the 2004 tsunami almost reached our village,” the village president told us.

Inside the church I marveled again at Indians’ ability to get comfortable on hard floors in close quarters. Across from me a young woman in an orange sari wrote Telugu letters on her slate. She lined the words with a finger, suggesting I repeat them after her. I’d no idea what I was saying, though general laughter showed my attempts were entertaining.

One in my group was elderly—thin in hair, teeth, and body. Her brow furrowed and her hand trembled as she formed a few letters on the slate.

“What kept you from learning to read when you were young?” I asked her through a translator. “My family was poor,” she said. “I married at 13.

No one thought a girl needed education.”

“How has this class helped you?” I continued. Her face brightened. “It has changed my life,” she said.

Indeed, I thought, learning to read would do that. But her awkwardness with the chalk made me wonder. “What have you learned?” I asked. “To read the sign on the front of the bus!” she said, pleased with herself. “I can go places alone and not get lost!”

Too old to become a fluent reader, she’d learned enough to read the public transport marquee, to sign her own name, and to count her money so she’s not shortchanged in the market. Those few accomplishments transformed her life. So late in her life has come this boost to her self-esteem.

“My husband and children respect me now,” she said. “I am a more valuable wife and mother.”

I noticed what looked like a Bible under her slate. “Do you read this book?” I asked. “It is hard,” she answered, “but I want to learn.”

With God’s help, and ours, I believe she will.

Loren Seibold is the senior pastor of the Worthington, Ohio, Adventist church in the United States. Reprinted with permission from Adventist World.

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Hope for Humanity A creative new ministry builds on the foundation of an Adventist institution

by Stephen Chavez Someone goofed. That’s why Jasper Wayne ended up with 100 copies of a special edition of Signs of the Times, the Adventist missionary magazine, when he had ordered only 50. The year was 1903, and Wayne made his living traveling the territory around Sac City, Iowa (U.S.A.), selling nursery stock.

When Wayne picked up the first 50 copies of Signs at the post office, he handed them out to other post office patrons, promising that any donations they gave him would go to support Christian missions. He received more than US$4 (a significant amount in 1903).

A few days later another shipment of 50 Signs arrived at the post office.

By the time he distributed the papers (with the permission of the publishing house) he had collected US$26 for missions. In the next 12 months Wayne handed out another 400 copies of Signs and collected about US$100. Thus Harvest Ingathering was born. In 1908 the General Conference recommended that every church be involved in the program. By the end of 1992 US$509,380,626 had been collected and donated by Adventists worldwide to be used for evangelistic and humanitarian purposes.

For decades Ingathering served two purposes: (1) to fund evangelistic and humanitarian ministries of the Adventist Church, and (2) to give Adventists an “excuse” to visit homes and businesses in their communities with reports of Adventist service activities— both foreign and domestic.

That Was Then, This Is Now In North America, Ingathering’s high-water mark came in 1982. From then on, membership participation and donations to the program began 10

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to decline. Part of that decline was societal: In some places it became dangerous or impractical to go door-to-door. Some members questioned the results relative to the investment of time and energy. If, after three hours of Christmas caroling, 25 people had collected $110, they could’ve saved themselves three hours (plus the cost of hot chocolate and popcorn) if they had each donated just $4.50.

Then there was the matter of how the funds were used. Half of the funds were kept in the local conference for community service projects, while the rest were passed on to the world divisions of the church for General Conference projects around the world. While the projects funded were most certainly important, there was no sense of ownership by those who were soliciting or donating the funds.

The future of Ingathering in the United States looked doubtful. Then Maitland DiPinto was asked to be director of Ingathering for the North American Division. “The pastor in me [said], ‘We need to witness to the community,’” he says. “The humanitarian in me [said], ‘We need money to do more of these projects.’”

In 2000 the program that began as “Harvest Ingathering,” and later just called Ingathering, got a new name and a new focus: Hope for Humanity.

According to DiPinto, the focus is the same as it has been for nearly 100 years: (1) to raise the church’s profile in the community, and (2) to raise funds for humanitarian and evangelistic projects around the world.

But now the emphasis is more on creative, community-based activities.

DiPinto points to one Adventist congregation in Texas (U.S.A.) that sponsored a chili feed and silent auction. The first year of the event the 40member congregation raised $1,500. The next year that amount increased to $2,500. “[These funds] came from people in the community who came to the church,” DiPinto observes. “Maybe they wouldn’t have come to the church for any other reason. It gave the community an opportunity to interact with the members, get some literature about why we’re raising this money, and have a good time together. It was a strong witness event, and it was just a one-day thing.”

Partners in Mission To increase the sense of ownership in humanitarian projects outside the United States, the leadership of the ministry has begun developing a Resource Primer

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concept known as Partners in Mission. Under the umbrella of Hope for Humanity, Partners in Mission seeks to unite Adventist congregations and conferences in the United States with projects coordinated by conferences and congregations in other parts of the world.

The Florida and Arkansas-Louisiana conferences (U.S.A.) served as pilot conferences in sponsoring a literacy program in Central America, since both conferences have a large segment of their membership with a Latino background. “The projects we fund are designed to help get our members involved in their communities,” says Evan Valencia, Florida Conference executive secretary, “and to hear back from their brothers and sisters who are involved in the countries we’re helping to support. It’s a partnership.”

In Nicaragua, for example, Partners in Mission supports nearly 70 tutors who teach people how to read. “The program is designed for our Adventist members to get involved in their communities,” says Stephen Orian, president of the Arkansas-Louisiana Conference, “but some people from the community are saying, ‘This is a great program, can we join?’” Tutors teach classes of 10 to 15 people two hours a day, four days a week, for eight months at a time. After a brief break, a second, eight-month session begins.

DiPinto tells about a couple in Nicaragua who had a storeroom in their home they turned into a classroom. They invited their neighbors to join a class in learning to read. Two years later someone asked them,“Don’t you get tired of doing this?”

“Absolutely not!” was the reply. “This energizes us; this is our mission for God.” The advantages of this type of partnership are that people in local communities already have relationships with their neighbors, they already know the language, they can be involved in projects that aren’t finished in a week or two, they can develop relationships that last months, even years.

In Nicaragua significant numbers of people who first came to learn to read have now been baptized.

Conferences that participate in Partners in Mission receive a double benefit by their participation in Hope for Humanity. The congregations raise the profile of the Adventist Church in their own communities, and they also shape the projects they fund with partner congregations in other parts of the world.

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Another project receiving funds from Partners in Mission is near Dwarsloop, South Africa. The Chesapeake and Michigan Conferences (U.S.A.), along with the North American Division, have partnered with the Trans-Orange Conference in South Africa in a project called Nhlengelo. The word means “standing together against an enemy.” The project not only provides care for people infected with HIV and AIDS; it supports the children orphaned by the disease, providing them with food, clothing, and tutoring.

“We want to get our members involved in projects that minister to their communities in a wholistic way that includes the spiritual and the social,” says DiPinto. “In Matthew 9, after Jesus had healed people and done several miracles, the end of the chapter says that Jesus went around preaching, teaching, and healing. Other than dying for our sins, that was Jesus’ ministry while He was on earth. It’s also the mission of our church.”

Reprinted with permission from Adventist World.

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Changing Lives One Word at a Time Literacy program imparts ABCs for life and eternity

by Sandra Blackmer The joy in Mana Mali’s heart was so intense she thought she would burst. She could hardly believe her good fortune, and she struggled to restrain her laughter as she visualized the look of delight she knew she would see on her husband’s face when she arrived home that evening. I did it! I actually did it! Mana sang to herself. I’ve finished the course! I’ve learned how to read and write and add and subtract! My family will be so proud of me.

Because Mana and her husband earn their living by catching and selling fish, being able to accurately count the money exchanged is vital to their business. Before Mana attended the literacy classes, however, she had to depend on others to count the money for her. She never knew if what they told her was true, whether she was being cheated or not. But now, things are different. She can read and count for herself.

“I’ve decided to send my children to school, no matter what the cost,” Mana says. “Without education, this world is very dark.”

Mana is one of 144 women living in the West Bengal region of southeastern India who recently completed a yearlong literacy program developed by the Southern Asia Division’s (SUD) Women’s Ministries Department. This was graduation day for those who had faithfully attended the two-hour classes five days a week, and SUD’s director of Women’s Ministries, Hepzibah Kore, presented a certificate of completion as well as a new Bible and carrying case to each graduate, including Mana.

Kore realizes the significance of the occasion, the dramatic difference 14

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that knowing how to read and write will make in the lives of these women.

And most important, they also now know about Jesus—who He is and the love He has for them. The Bibles that the women were clutching tightly in their hands or holding close to their chests will remind them continually of their loving Savior.

“People can’t read the Bible unless they can read,” Kore says. “These classes give them confidence, and they begin to seek new meanings for their lives.”

Starting at Square One According to The World Factbook, only 48 percent of India’s women over the age of 15 can read and write, compared to 73 percent of the men.

This high rate of illiteracy among women plagued the thoughts of Kore, and she felt compelled to do something to change the distressing statistic and the lives of the women it represented.

“The difference that knowing how to read and write makes in the lives of India’s women is dramatic,” Kore explains. “It changes everything for them.”

Using just simple methods such as small slates and pieces of chalk, Kore spearheaded a project in 2001 to teach women in India how to read.

The theme she adopted for the program is “Never Too Late to Learn,” because not only young women but also many older ones are taking advantage of this opportunity. So far more than 10,000 people—mostly women but also some men—have learned to read through this program. Students from other Christian backgrounds as well as Hindus and Muslims have benefited. Hundreds of people have come to know and accept Jesus as their Savior.

How Does It Work?

Currently, the division has established 200 learning centers in six provinces in the southeastern region of India. Most are in remote villages.

About 20 students ages 15 and older attend each literacy center.

The classrooms are often small with no chairs to sit on, no desks, and very little space even to sit cross-legged on the floor—but the women don’t complain. They tell Kore they’re just very happy to have this chance to Resource Primer

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learn.

Before setting up a center, Women’s Ministries directors from the regional church headquarters approach village leaders to ask permission to hold the classes, particularly because the textbooks used are Bible-based.

They are rarely turned down. Kore, with help from Literacy India Trust, a Christian organization based in Madras, then arranges for and trains a teacher, or facilitator, for each center, as well as a supervisor, who oversees five centers. Women’s Ministries pays the facilitators a small monthly stipend of about US$13 for their work, and about US$25 to the supervisors.

The instructors teach basic literacy—reading, writing, and arithmetic—but the changes this learning yields in their lives are remarkable.

Improved Quality of Life When the women learn to read and write they become aware of their social and legal rights, their income-generating skills improve, and they acquire a voice in the affairs of the family and the community. These abilities greatly enhance their status within both the family and the community, and generate a much higher level of respect.

“A common saying in India is ‘If you educate a man, you educate a person; but if you educate a woman, you educate a family,’ because the women are the family caregivers,” Kore says. “Because of literacy, not only the woman’s status is raised but also that of her whole family.”

The family’s health improves because wives and mothers can explore available medical care programs such as immunizations for their children and family planning options. They can fill out the application forms for the old-age pension, and because they can now sign their names, they can receive additional dry food rations, apply for small government loans, and open their own bank accounts. More job opportunities are available to them, which results in a higher standard of living. They learn to manage their personal finances and can help their children with their homework; therefore, they become more valued by their children, their husbands, and others in the community. Just being able to read the bus signs, which allows them to travel freely from one village to another, greatly improves a person’s quality of life.

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According to The Hunger Project Web site, education makes a significant difference for women in India. Every year girls attend school beyond the fourth grade, it cites, family size shrinks 20 percent, the child death rate drops 10 percent, and wages rise 20 percent.

One Woman’s Story A 45-year-old woman who was attending the literacy classes gave her life savings to her husband and asked him to buy a certain piece of land and register it in her name. When she saw the documents, however, she was shocked to find that instead of her name being on the deed, the land was to be registered in her father-in-law’s name.

“She knew this because she was now able to read the documents,” Kore explains. “Her husband was very surprised by her new ability, but instead of being angry, he was very proud of her accomplishments.”

The husband eventually registered the land in his wife’s name.

Practical Lessons Teachers don’t neglect the practical side of life. They provide students with information about personal and environmental hygiene, nutrition, uses of water, prevention and remedies for common health ailments, women’s health issues, and harmful effects of alcohol and tobacco. AIDS awareness and child care are also addressed.

The SUD Women’s Ministries Department, with support from the General Conference Women’s Ministries Department, has created a program to help women learn a trade. Financial donations provide loan money for literacy program graduates for such purchases as sewing machines, with which they learn to make and repair clothing. Others buy looms, so they can craft and sell shawls. These home businesses increase the family income and its standard of living.

“The literacy program in India is one way we can reach the community with the love of God,” says Heather-Dawn Small, director of the General Conference Women’s Ministries Department. “The program meets a need because as the people learn to read, they are empowered to help their families, put food on the table, clothes on their children, and, most important, they are able to read the Bible and bring the joy of Resource Primer

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knowing God to their families.”

World Church Support Hope for Humanity (HFH)—the new name and face of the Adventist Church’s century-old fund-raising program called Ingathering—has been partnering with SUD Women’s Ministries since soon after the literacy program was initiated. HFH provides financial support as well as helps to raise awareness of the program.

“This project is having a tremendous impact on women in India, socially as well as spiritually,” says Maitland DiPinto, director of Hope for Humanity, based at the church’s world headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland. “I hear so many stories of women who now can read the instructions on a fertilizer bag for crops and on medication for their children, or go to a bank and actually sign their name and not just give a thumbprint, which can be embarrassing to them or appear demeaning. The biggest difference this makes is in their sense of self-worth and self-value. It transforms their thinking and gives them confidence.”

He adds, “When mothers learn to read, all life indicators in her family go up—health, standard of living. And, most important, each graduate is given a Bible, which they now can read, and not only the women but also their families are coming to know Jesus and being baptized. We can’t begin to measure the dramatic difference that something that seems very simple to most of us—being able to read—is making in these women’s lives and the lives of their families.

“As Adventists, we need to ask ourselves, ‘Are we really still people of the Book?’ If we are, then there are few projects more important for us to be involved in than equipping people to read God’s Word for themselves.

As Hepzi says, they can’t read the Bible unless they can read.”

Life-Changing Results During a trip to India organized by Hope for Humanity in 2007, Adventist pastor Loren Seibold visited some of the literacy centers. In Seibold’s article, printed in the December 2007 issue of Adventist World, he highlighted a particular experience: “One in my group was elderly—thin in hair, teeth, and body,” he wrote.

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“Her brow furrowed and her hand trembled as she formed a few letters on the slate. “‘What kept you from learning to read when you were young?’ [he] asked her through a translator. ‘My family was poor,’ she said. ‘I married at 13. No one thought a girl needed education.’ “‘How has this class helped you?’ [he] continued. . . . “‘It has changed my life.’ . . . ‘My husband and children respect me now,’ she said. ‘I am a more valuable wife and mother.’”

Simple lessons—teaching women to read—are producing dramatic results.

The Adventist Review is partnering with the North American Division’s Hope for Humanity and the Southern Asia Division Women’s Ministries Department to provide Bibles for the literacy class graduates. Reprinted with permisison.

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D

id not the Lord say that what you have done to one of the least of these you have done to Me? In

the parable of the sheep and goats the Lord more than hints at the fact that when everything is being wrapped up and eternity is being defined, it matters enormously to Him how we have treated the losers in society. —Jan Paulsen

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Is Social Service Our Mission?

by Jan Paulsen Before answering the question Is social service our mission? One must decide exactly what constitutes the mission of the church. One’s definition of mission can sometimes be so generous as to accommodate an almost unlimited range of activities.

Mission as a Christian biblical concept finds its definition in God. Jesus said, “As the Father sent me, so I send you” ( John 20:21). The church must understand itself as an expression of that movement initiated by God at the center of which stands Jesus, sent to the earth to save humanity. To this end the church represents Jesus Christ. It has nothing of itself to offer; it can only articulate Christ’s offer.

Mission arises out of the nature of God. The rationale for mission is found in His motive for creating us as well as His response to the situation that arose when Adam fell into sin. When God said, “Let us make man in our image,” He wanted a being whom He could relate to and who could relate to Him in ways different from the rest of His creation. Man and woman were made special. As they, the ultimate pieces of God exquisite creation, discovered their Maker, they were to be drawn to Him in wonder and worship as an expression of love and, therefore, free choice.

When disaster struck and humanity embarked on its own way rather than Heaven’s, God set in motion steps aimed at bringing us back into the kind of fellowship with God for which we were created—out of the darkness of our waywardness “into his marvelous light” (1 Peter 2:9). The plan of salvation is a plan for restoring the potential with which we were created.

The church is an instrument for the accomplishment of this mission. God’s will is that all humanity experience this restoration (1 Tim. 2:3, 4; Eph. 1:9; Resource Primer

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Isa. 40:5). This wish is rooted in the unmeasurable love God has for every human being ( John 3:16; Eph. 2:4, 5). The work of mission is to bring “to light how this hidden purpose was to be put into effect” (Eph. 3:9).

The ultimate solution The ultimate solution to the predicament in which God’s creation finds itself is Jesus Christ, the solution that God Himself provided. He who said “I myself will ask after my sheep and go in search of them” (Eze. 34:11) sent His Son “to seek and save what is lost” (Luke 19:10; cf. Matt. 18:11; John 1:9, 29; 4:42). “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners” (1 Tim. 1:15). No other person or means can bring healing and restoration.

Therefore, Jesus Christ must be presented as the only foundation in God’s mission, the chief cornerstone in God’s plan (Matt. 21:42; Mark 12:10; Acts 4:11, 12; 1 Peter 2:6, 7). By accepting or rejecting Him, we accept or reject God’s solution to the problem of sin, because the Father has entrusted His saving and restoring mission to Him. Jesus Christ—His person, message, death, resurrection, ascension, and promise of return—is not peripheral to God’s mission, nor is He simply a model or symbol. He is the heart of the matter; without Him there is no mission. So the church’s task is primarily one of presenting Christ to the world—a world that without Him has no future.

Personal acceptance of Jesus Christ as Saviour and trusting Him to secure the future constitute the primary goal of mission. He who came to “save sinners” (1 Tim. 1:15) gave “to those who… yielded him their allegiance… the right to become children of God” ( John 1:12). The one who acknowledges Jesus Christ as Saviour receives the assurance that “God dwells in him and he dwells in God “(1 John 4:15). The offer of salvation comes with an appeal for decision: “Repent and be baptized… for the forgiveness of your sins” (Acts 2:38; cf. Acts 3:19). The mission communicated by Christ’s envoys must articulate the same message: “We come therefore as Christ’s ambassadors. It is as if God were appealing to you through us: in Christ’s name, we implore you, be reconciled to God!” (2 Cor. 5:20).

This is a personal salvation that affects the whole individual and the total span of time given to us. It means forgiveness of sins and access to the power of the risen Lord. It means power to will and to resist the forces of 24

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evil in one’s own life and in the life of one’s community.

What happens to the individual or community thus apprehended by Jesus Christ? Are they different from the world only in faith and hope?

Clearly not.

New Ways of Relating The presence of Christ in the life of an individual or community will mean that they relate to themselves, to their resources and skills, and to their environment, in ways different from when they “were not his people” (1 Peter 2:10). They become aware of certain responsibilities, sensitive to issues and needs.

Being sensitive to the needs of deprived and exploited people is not a quality reserved for committed Christians only, but the follower of Christ is sensitive because of his or her perception of Christ, of how He views and responds to such people and situations. Other ideologies, social disciplines, politics, economics, or worldviews do not determine our course.

Jesus Christ does that!

Such individual and communities will see themselves as stewards of assets and talents entrusted to them by God. They discover that the most fruitful way of living is to emulate the Master in living for others (Phil.

2:4). Salvation is not an act of withdrawal from the surrounding world.

Rather, it opens a new understanding of our place and role in society, as “salt” and “light.” Christians discover that love to God is preeminently expressed by love to neighbor. Personal salvation finds inevitable expression in social concerns.

Christ came for “the very purpose of undoing the devil’s work” (1 John 3:8). One cannot escape the fact that certain injustices, inequalities, and deprivations in the world are expressions of the devil’s work that the church must expose and discredit. Evil, which is alien to God’s kingdom, stands under God’s judgment. The church must be an instrument to express that judgment.

God’s judgment rests on those who exploit their fellow humans. His message to Israel was: “Cease to do evil and learn to do right, pursue justice and champion the oppressed” (Isa. 1:17). “Shame on you!… depriving the poor of justice, robbing the weakest of my people of their rights” (Isa. 10:1, 2). “Is not this what I require of you…: to loose the fetters of injusResource Primer

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tice, to untie the knots of the yoke, to snap every yoke and set free those who have been crushed? Is it not sharing your food with the hungry…?

Then shall your light break forth like the dawn” (Isa. 58:6-8).

God clearly expects His people “to act justly” (Micah 6:8), and if they are guilty of grinding “the heads of the poor into the earth” (Amos 2:7), He ways He will grant them no reprieve. One’s relationship to the Lord is expressed by one’s willingness to “dispense justice to the lowly and poor” ( Jer. 22:16). Therefore God commands His people, “Seek good and not evil… Hate evil and love good; enthrone justice in the courts” (Amos 5:14, 15). The Lord, who “is gracious and compassionate… constant in his love,” whose “tender care rests upon all his creatures” (Ps. 145:8, 9), is sensitive to the cries of the poor and expects His people to be the same (Ps. 72; 103; 146).

The “alien” presents another category that God singles out as needing to be dealt kindly with. Denial of basic human rights to the “alien” is severely rebuked by God (Eze. 22:7, 9); Deut. 10:17-19; Ex. 23:5, 9; Lev. 19:33, 34). God told Israel: You are to love the alien because I love “the alien…, giving him food and clothing” (Deut. 10:18).

Live Out Holiness Israel belonged to God; therefore, they were holy. But He expected them to live out their holiness. God through them wanted to express His relationship to the alien, the lowly, and the poor. Holiness here means remembering that you are part of an umbilical cord through which God gives life.

The New Testament people of God are similarly a “chosen race… a dedicated nation, and a people claimed by God for his own, to proclaim the triumphs of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light” (1 Peter 2:9). And to this community the command to fidelity to the covenant, to a life of holiness, is restated: “The One who called you is holy; like him, be holy in your behaviors, because Scripture says, ‘You shall be holy, for I am holy’” (1 Peter 1:15, 16). God must be able to express Himself through the church. God’s concerns must also be the church’s.

“As God’s dear children, try to be like him, and live in love as Christ loved you, and gave himself up on your behalf ” (Eph. 5:1, 2). This means that as “he did not come to be served, but to serve” (Matt. 20:28), so you 26

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as Christians are to “be servants to one another in love” (Gal. 5:13).

God’s people are “eager to do good” (Titus 2:14), “for we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to devote ourselves to the good deeds for which God has designed us” (Eph. 2:10). God gives gifts, through the Holy Spirit, designed to “equip others in distress” (Rom. 12:8). As Jesus went from village to village “doing good and healing” (Acts 10:38), so through the church must God’s kingdom find ways of comforting and healing those in need.

On reading the Gospels, one cannot avoid being struck by how compassionately Jesus acted toward the hungry, the sick, the bereaved, the poor, and the outcasts. In addition to the physical sufferings that plagued such individuals, society made them feel rejected and unworthy before God. Christ wants His church, which He has equipped for work in His service, to move with understanding and compassion towards those who suffer, who are victims of circumstances, who are exploited and offered no more than a morsel of life, who are without recourse, with resources virtually nonexistent. They are powerless. Only God can help them.

The church must see herself as God’s instrument. She must be constantly reminded of the words of the Master, “Anything you did for one of my brothers here, however humble, you did for me” (Matt. 25:40).

Ultimately anything that the church does must be God’s mission. If it is not, why should the church become involved in it? To narrow one’s definition of mission to preaching the Word, baptizing, and establishing churches, while placing other activities for which we have a biblical command outside the church’s mission, seems unwarranted.

Expressing Awareness In her mission the church remains constantly aware of what happened once (at the Fall of man as well as at the cross of Christ), what is happening now (in Christ’s ongoing ministry of reconciliation and judgment), and what will happen (at the second coming of Christ) when the first things shall vanish and be replace by “a new heaven and a new earth” (Rev. 21:1ff.). She expresses this by evangelism and by compassionate service.

The latter covers a wide range of activities, including medical and health work, educational programs, feeding the hungry, and other services to lift the quality of life in the local community (1 John 3:17, 18; Rom. Resource Primer

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12:20). These services are partners to evangelism. They are justified, not as “bait on the hook,” but by needs and the injunction that “love must not be a matter of words or talk; it must be genuine, and show itself in action” (1 John 3:18).

Neither must this service allow itself to be intimidated by challenging questions about motives. Christ’s motives in His ministry will guide His envoys, the church.

Mahatma Gandhi observed that for the poor of the world God appears in the form of a piece of bread. The same principle applies to other forms of weakness and deprivation. God appears to unnumbered millions at the point of their transition from misery, want, disease, and illiteracy to decent conditions of life, moments that give birth to hope and faith. Jesus answered John the Baptist’s questions, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to expect some other?” by saying, “Go tell John what you hear and see: the blind recover their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are made clean, the deaf hear, the dead are raised to life, the poor are hearing the good news” (Matt. 11:3-6). Jesus’ message, “I am the one! You don’t have to look for anyone else!” was verified by His compassionate deeds of healing, restoring, and giving hope.

Jesus did not present a choice between satisfying physical hunger and spiritual hunger, between being healed and being eternally saved, between being lifted up from deprivation and alienation and being offered eternal life. Neither must the church in its mission be caught between false choices.

There is no doubt that the supreme and ultimate need of all mankind is the eternal salvation that the saving grace of Jesus Christ offers. Clearly this is where hope and life begin. And yet in His ministry Jesus avoided letting eternal and temporal needs come into competition with each other.

It is not sufficient merely to relieve human needs through works of mercy; the causes of suffering must be found and addressed in order to provide long-term solutions. For the rich simply to give away their wealth in answer to poverty indicates not only bad economy, but a failure to achieve longterm transformation. Nor is a world-denying asceticism a responsible way of life.

Yet even temporal help provides a sign of hope. The church, which is both a serving and confessing community, becomes an instrument that allows Jesus to emerge as the compassionate Light and Saviour.

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Should the church, or one of her arms, become merely a philanthropic service or development aid agency and forget that she is essentially a confessing community, she will have forgotten her distinct mission and Lord.

The church, will then have become one of many humanitarian organizations involved in activities and services that, however laudable, are missing the point by not seeing the whole person and the total span of time available to us. She may be an organization with a mission, but not the mission.

She may have a lot of motion—traveling, negotiation, buying, shipping, building, etc.—but she will have lost sight of that service in which she is an inseparable partner: evangelism.

Individual Versus Organizational Are there services with sociopolitical implications that church members individually could freely engage in as their Christian duty, but that the church as an organization would be best advised not to engage in? There may be such, as in politics and government, in which individuals have the responsibility of voting to achieve certain ends.

However, activities that individuals engage in as an expression of Christian duty cannot be on a different order from those that the church sees as her mission. The situation is intolerable if individual Christians pursue social, ethical, and political matters that the church considers alien to her mission and nature. Rigid differentiation between Christian duty and the church’s mission seems contrived and difficult to sustain.

The apartheid situation in South Africa may serve as one illustration of the point we are trying to make. The church as an organization may well hold that she cannot become engaged in activities to effect changes in the political structures of that country, but may equally hold that her members should use the provisions within the laws of the land to seek to achieve those changes. In this case, however, the church must let her basic view of the situation be clearly known. The system denies human beings their basic God-given rights. That the church must say. She owes her members that kind of spiritual/ethical “umbrella.” Thus they will not be engaging in something of a different order from the legitimate concerns of the church and her mission.

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as “Christian” or in harmony with what he understand as the will of God. Every step toward the goal must be “Christian.” Christian/biblical criteria of right and wrong cannot be suspended for reasons of convenience. The end will never justify the means.

The love of God furnishes a catalyst and stimulus in the church’s mission of preaching, teaching, and serving. It cannot be bottled up within the church community; it breaks out in compassion for the world and the crying needs of the poor and deprived. “If a man has enough to live on, and yet when he sees his brother in need shuts up his heart against him, how can it be said that the divine love dwells in him?” (1 John 3:17). The church’s mission is preeminently one of reconciliation—reconciliation between God and the sinner, and between human beings whom sin has separated by a gulf that seems difficult to bridge.

All texts in this article are quoted from The New English Bible.

Jan Paulsen served as president of the Trans-European Division when he wrote this article.

Reprinted with permission from the Adventist Review, August 31, 1989.

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Love in Practice

by Bruce C. Moyer Two and a half millennia ago, the people of God were forced to settle into an alien culture. It was the destruction of all that they knew and loved, the destruction of their security. As they reflected on their unhappy circumstances, they lamented: “Beside the streams of Babylon we sat and wept at the memory of Zion, Leaving our harps hanging on the poplars there.

For we had been asked to sing to our captors, to entertain those who had carried us off: ‘Sing’ they said ‘some of the hymns of Zion.’

How could we sing one of Yahweh’s hymns in a pagan country?” (Ps. 137:1-4, Jerusalem).

They determine that they would remain unassimilated in Babylon, Zion may be lost, but they would remain faithful to the memories of the city and the temple and the faith.

Seventy years later, however, they were largely indistinguishable from their Babylonian neighbors. They had adopted the values of Babylon. They came to speak the language of Babylon. They looked, sounded, ate, and smelled like Babylon. They even sang the songs of Babylon now—new songs in a different key.

In the midst of this spiritual amnesia God spoke to a remnant who remembered: “Come out from Babylon! Flee from the Chaldeans! Declare this with cries of joy, proclaim it, carry it to the remotest parts of the earth, say, ‘Yahweh had redeemed his servant Jacob’” (Isa. 48:20, New Jerusalem).

Take down those harps. Learn again the songs of Zion. Sing a new song to the Lord. You have been exiles long enough—it is time to go home.

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History Repeats The perception that history repeats itself has not escaped the notice of historians and theologians. The Old Testament concept of a remnant finds fresh expression in the New Testament also. And in words that echo Isaiah’s, the book of Revelation records God’s call to: “Come out, my people, away from her [Babylon], so that you do not share in her crimes and have the same plagues to bear” (Rev. 18:4, Jerusalem).

This is an eschatological call to a unique ministry. It is an invitation to faithfulness in a time of widespread apostasy. And it results in a people who “keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus” (Rev. 12:17).

Looking down toward the climactic conclusion of the plan of redemption, God again calls to a people to remember who they are, to remember why they are, and to respond positively to His purposes.

It is time to learn again the songs of Zion; it is time to sing a new song to the Lord. We have been exiles long enough. It is time to go home.

In each instance the remnant is described as a prophetic people who understand God’s will, who are sensitive to what God is currently doing, and who are extravagantly public about it. The description continues in Revelation 14:1-12, which details their concerns and activities; the fullness of their prophetic message, involving the worship of God as the Creator; the arrival of the hour of judgment; the emptiness of nominal, or casual, Christianity; and the call to speak clearly and forcefully to the world.

A group is not a remnant simply because it calls itself a “remnant.” It is a remnant only when it behaves as a remnant, prophetic people should behave.

Over the years, Seventh-day Adventists have sensed their calling to be a remnant, but in the past few years some confusion has arisen over the role and function of the remnant.

The Biblical Portrait Come walk with me through a few passages of Scripture as we seek to understand, historically, the behavior and message of the remnant. We will come to understand why message and behavior must be interfaced. Orthodoxy (correct theology) is not sufficient. It must be complemented by or32

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thopraxy (correct behavior or lifestyle).

Biblically, remnant people are identified by a concern that extends beyond themselves, specifically for social justice. Theirs is never a “mystical” religion of personal feelings and private devotion, but a sense of responsibility to society, to all of God’s children, to see justice prevail, the hungry fed, the widows and the fatherless defended, and the oppressed set free.

Jesus referred to it as being, salt, light, and yeast, preserving, illuminating, and changing the world around us.

A contemporary of Isaiah, the prophet Amos invited God’s people to “seek good, not evil, that you may live. Then the Lord God almighty with be with you, just as you say he is. Hate evil, love good; maintain justice in the courts. Perhaps the Lord God Almighty will have mercy on the remnant of Joseph” (Amos 5:14, 15, NIV).

Later in the same chapter, Amos states that the issue is not the purity of formal worship, but rather causing justice to roll on like a river, and righteousness like a never-failing stream (verses 21-24, NIV). While righteousness is a common Adventist term describing a vertical relationship between people and God, justice, more appropriately, suggests a horizontal relationship between people.

Again, in Isaiah, in the context of beautiful but futile worship, God begs, “Stop doing wrong, learn to do right! Seek justice, encourage the oppressed. Defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow” (Isa. 1:17, NIV). Their worship was impressive, but meaningless without a corresponding concern for the poor, the oppressed, the hungry and the homeless.

It is futile merely to read and understand the Scriptures. It is meaningless to offer the most exalted worship and the most profound prayers if our love does not extend, in practical ways, to those who live on the economic and political margins of society.

Is Isaiah 58, a passage very familiar to all Seventh-day Adventists, remnant activity is described as rebuilding the broken walls, and restoring ageold foundations. We are called to loose the chains of injustice, to set the oppressed free, to share our food with the hungry, to shelter the homeless, and to clothe the naked.

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at large. Consistently with this has always involved a specific concern for people who are castoffs, socially marginalized and forgotten.

This concern for the poor, the oppressed, the homeless, the victims of unjust systems, is not to be an end in itself—not another opportunity for righteousness by human activity. Rather, it is specifically to demonstrate the loving character of God to the world. That love must always find concrete expression in terms of the needs of both individual people and society.

One writer with a strong eschatological orientation has written: “It is the darkness of misapprehension of God that is enshrouding the world.

Men are losing their knowledge of His character. It has been misunderstood and misinterpreted. At this time a message from God is to be proclaimed, a message illuminating in its influence and saving in its power. His character is to be made known… The last rays of merciful light, the last message of mercy to be given to the world, is a revelation of His character of love” (Christ’s Object Lessons, p. 415; italics supplied).

The revelation of the truth about God must be given on two levels. Invariably this will involve both direct ministry to the poor and oppressed, and indirect ministry, speaking prophetically to the structures of society that cause poverty and oppression.

In his inaugural sermon at Nazareth, Jesus spoke these challenging words: “The spirit of the Lord is on me, for he has anointed me to bring the good news to the afflicted, to heal the broken-hearted. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives, sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free” (Luke 4:18, New Jerusalem).

Learning from History When the remnant Jews returned from their Babylonian exile, they made a great theological and behavioral error. They kept the Sabbath rigorously, they ate healthfully, they tithed to the penny, and faithfully studied their Bibles and Sabbath school lessons. They were determined not to repeat their history and return to idolatry.

In doing this, however, they effectively isolated themselves from a world that desperately needed their ministry. Separate and undefiled, ritually pure and theologically correct, they became distant from all others, untouchable and unreachable, useless to God. They were like a newspaper 34

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not printed, a radio station not broadcasting, or a billboard not painted.

What a shame it would be if Seventh-day Adventist Christians should isolate themselves from the world and become a remnant that speaks only to itself, squandering its prophetic ministry in self-adulation and empty worship!

God is looking for a remnant today. We can be that remnant. We have the opportunity to reveal His character of love in practical demonstrations: in soup kitchens; in community services; reaching out to twentieth-century lepers; and in public advocacy for the poor, the helpless, AIDS victims, and aliens without proper documentation.

God is looking for a remnant today. We can be that remnant. Ours is the opportunity to invite the world to the marriage supper of the Lamb, to welcome back the victorious Jesus, and to meet him in peace and joy.

Bruce C. Moyer was associate pastor of Sligo Seventh-day Adventist Church, in Takoma Park, Maryland when he wrote this article.

Reprinted with permission from Adventist Review, March 29, 1990.

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Should the Christian Mission Focus on Salvation or Society?

by Bert B. Beach, Ph.D. Here we will discuss a basic, though somewhat misleading, question.

Some interpret the question as asking, in essence, whether Christian mission should focus on evangelization and salvation or on dealing with the problems of society here and now. Stating the question in this form, we can give only one answer: The Christian mission must focus on salvation, not society.

However, a scent of fallacy exists in putting the question this way, in putting salvation and society in opposition. They should be placed in juxtaposition, because the Christian mission—what Christ does in the world—must deal with both salvation and society. “The only remedy for the sins and sorrows of men is Christ. The gospel of His grace alone can cure the evils that curse society.”1 So the focus must be on both salvation and society.

There are two popular misconceptions. The first: Morality is limited to private, personal behavioral matters. The second: The development of public policy, purely a secular, political matter, or an economic, technological issue, does not need to seriously concern Christians.

Christians believe in religious moral values, with the dignity and value of each human being created in the image of God as the most important. Doesn’t some kind of social morality and responsibility flow from this basic belief? Thus, do not policy choices in government have at least a link to—some would say a basis in—moral principles? Furthermore, do we not live in a world where its components have become in1

Ellen G. White, Christ’s Object Lessons (Washington, DC: Review and Herald Pub. Assn., 1941), 254.

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creasingly interdependent in their current nature, and doesn’t interdependence involve a moral dynamic?

Christ’s prototypical example Christ’s example is of prototypical importance. On the one hand, He formulated no sociopolitical platform on which His church could stand and conduct its program. The temptations in the wilderness were, to some extent, political in nature. He had at least three opportunities to take over society by acoup d’etat of sorts: 1. the feeding of the multitude in Galilee (Luke 9:13–17),2 2. His triumphant entry into Jerusalem (Luke 19:30– 44), and 3. the experience with Peter’s sword in the Garden of Gethsemane and the available twelve divine legions (Matt. 26:51–53).

Yet Jesus rejected crusaderism and zealot-like kingship. On the other hand, the teachings of Jesus have a significant societal fallout. In what some have called His “inaugural address” (Luke 4:16–21), Jesus, quoting from Isaiah 61, presents the Messianic task as a social one (after all, good news must have a social dimension): good news for the poor; freedom for the captives, sight for the blind, liberty for the oppressed. Christ’s ministry makes it clear that He was not talking exclusively about spiritual poverty, blindness, and oppression.

No wonder, then, that the Adventist pioneers did have a societal agenda, albeit a somewhat limited one. This small scale was almost inevitable due to the size of the church and its limited resources. They opposed slavery, called for health and educational reform, and promoted temperance and anti-alcohol and anti-smoking causes. They were interested also in the needs of children and women.

Today, the church is much larger and the financial and institutional resources much bigger. In some countries Adventists have become a significant segment of the population. Adventists have even been heads of state.

Opting out of social responsibility would be irresponsible. The Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA) has become a major player on the world stage of society.

Poverty and hunger are daily problems with several thousand children dying every day from malnutrition. Every 30 seconds someone dies of malaria in Africa. Global warming and global pollution are problems, along 2

All referenced scripture is from the King James Version unless otherwise noted.

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with the destruction of nonrenewable energy sources. Adventists have long advocated a simple lifestyle to help reduce some of these problems. We must vigorously come to grips with the AIDS pandemic and play a significant role in promoting human rights and the nondiscrimination of various groups, including women and the handicapped.

With peacemaking as another essential cause, Adventist schools have been asked to set aside one week each school year to emphasize, through various programs, peacemaking, respect, conflict resolution, and reconciliation as an Adventist contribution to a culture of social harmony and peace.

You cannot deal effectively with poverty, hunger, and discrimination by simply offering relief and helping those who suffer; it is also necessary to work on changing the causes. ADRA has understood this point. Such a position, however, inevitably brings contact with the political sphere.

Doctrine of creation and doctrine of man First of all, social responsibility has, as its basis, the doctrine of creation. God willed to create, ex nihilo, a universe distinct from Himself and established humans as the stewards of this world.

We also find social responsibility inherent in the doctrine of man. The parameters of the church’s social service lie within the nature of humans.

With human beings created in the image of God and marred by sin, the dignity of the child of God becomes restored through the process of salvation. Such an appreciation entails concrete ethical and social responsibility. The Christian concept that humans are not flotsam on the sea of time but people with a potential for a radiant future gives purpose and energy to the Christian mission. Like his Lord, the Christian disciple of Christ must discern in every human being “infinite possibilities.”3 While Christian social responsibility rests on the doctrines of creation and man, the soteriological principle provides its teleology. When the church and its members relate to society, salvation as the ultimate purpose must dominate. Christian social responsibility does not simply result from humanitarian impulses, though of course that is also there, but it springs from a much deeper level, the desire that “they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly” ( John 10:10). This fullness of life 3

Ellen White, Education (Mountain View, CA: Pacific Press Pub. Assn., 1952), 80.

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involves conversion, reconciliation, and faith, or in one word, salvation, but also a healthier and happier life. Christian virtues have social implications, and thus Christianity can be identified as a social religion. Religious beliefs inevitably shape socioeconomic views and political actions. Religious values must be allowed to have, and will have, a societal fallout.

Evangelism and social responsibility In view of the current tendency toward church political involvement, one may ask, What is the relationship between evangelism and social responsibility? One traditional view equates mission with evangelism. Another view puts evangelism on the back burner or gives it the pejorative connotation of proselytism, and it concentrates on the social gospel instead.

The biblical view of mission sees it as service in word and action. In this service concept, a synthesis between evangelism and social activity exists. John Stott has presented three ways of relating evangelism and social outreach:4 1. Social action as “a means to evangelism” (preparatory to evangelism) 2. Social action as a “manifestation,” aspect or part, “of evangelism” 3. Social action as a “partner” or a parallel activity “of evangelism.”

The third view seems the more correct and the one supported by Stott with both evangelism and social service needed. Though supporting each other, they become separate aspects of mission. With evangelism as the overarching responsibility, the immediate priority may differ. Think for example of the wounded man on the Jericho road. What was his priority need that day—medical care or a Bible study about the state of the dead?

A part of either salvation or service is to provide fellow human beings with a sense of meaning and purpose, with an awareness that they are not destined to travel down life’s short or long road toward meaninglessness and therefore nothingness. We need to provide men and women with a raison d’être, what Senator Barack Obama has called “a narrative act to their lives.”5 We must reach beyond evangelism of the individual—though this is central—and apply the transforming power of the gospel to society. The 4 5

See John Stott, Christian Mission in the Modern World (London: Falcon Books, 1975), 26–8.

Garret M. Graff, “The Legend of Barack Obama,” Washingtonian (November 2006), 122, 3.

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metaphors that Jesus uses in Matthew 5 regarding this change brought about by the Christian mission include salt and light. This means that Christians must penetrate and permeate secular, that is, non-Christian, society. After all, if Christians stay in the saltshaker or hide in the security of the church fortress, they are of little good.

Do not the metaphors of salt and light imply that Christians can change the stale, decaying, and dark environment and improve society?

We are not talking of the social gospel, for its weakness and wrongness is that it claims the power to perfect society here and now. We can, however, improve society and its corrupt composition.

Christians and politics With such questions before us, we cannot avoid the thorny issue of the Christian and politics. The danger of politics is that it tends, if we are not careful, to make the world our all. Political domains can rarely, perhaps never, be made truly Christian. To imagine that Christian standards, which are higher than those accepted by society, can be successfully applied to government and society in general is quite unrealistic.

Is it possible to apply the principles of the Sermon on the Mount in the general political arena? Love cannot be legislated or institutionalized, nor can selfishness—the root of probably the most evil in society—be eradicated by bills, laws, and votes, but “only through submission to Christ.”6 Nevertheless, in regard to intemperance, Ellen G. White, a leader in the temperance and prohibition movement in the late nineteenth century, pointed out that “there is a cause for the moral paralysis” afflicting society when laws sustain evils that undermine the very foundation of the country’s legal system. It is thus irresponsible for Christians to simply “deplore the wrongs which they know exist, but consider themselves free from all responsibility in the matter. This cannot be. Every individual exerts an influence in society.”7 Logic allows us to extrapolate Ellen White’s thinking and apply it through parallelism to other corresponding and current situations.

In politics, at least three problems and two dangers exist. Among the problems: (1) compromise, (2) expediency, and (3) Christian standards 6 7

Ellen White, Christ’s Object Lessons (Washington, DC: Review and Herald Pub. Assn., 1941), 254.

Ellen White “Temperance and the License Law,” Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, November 8, 1881.

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seen as unrealistic. The two dangers: (1) the church trying to “churchify” society and the state, and (2) society “politicizing” the church in such a way that Christian faith becomes interpreted in terms of political values.

You have then, secular, socialist right-wing, radical left-wing, or whatever values penetrating the church. Hardly the best witness, to be sure.

Here the separation of church and state enters into the picture. Its purpose is not to exclude the voice of morality—Christianity (if you wish)— from public debate and influence. It provides the context of religious liberty so that moral insights of religion can be freely expressed and tested without discrimination, hindrance, or favoritism.

Christians should participate in the public forum, offering a significant ethical vision. Yes, the church must be separate from the state but not alienated from or indifferent to society. Religious leaders must, though, walk carefully and circumspectly when in the public arena. Politics cannot be identified as gospel, nor the gospel as politics. Politics is often tainted, even corrupt; at best, it is ambivalent. Christians can easily be contaminated, and churches risk losing the respect and aura of virtue when they get too politically involved. The church can be seen as, or become in reality, a faction or handmaiden of secular interests.

At the same time Christians can play a positive, though difficult, role in public affairs. When should they speak out and act in society?

I suggest tentatively seven “when’s,” perhaps erring a little on the conservative side. The temptation will always be there to open the doors wider to intervention.

1. When questions have clear moral answers (not as frequently as it may seem) 2. When questions are incapable of alternative moral characterizations 3. When basic personal rights are at stake 4. When religious liberty is at stake 5. When salvation of individuals is involved 6. When the Christian view reflects a united, well thought-out opinion 7. When there is a reasonable expectation of a positive outcome of the intervention, or at least that some improvement would likely result Resource Primer

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Eschatological hope should increase service Having affirmed the all-importance of the otherworldly, salvific dimension, we need to confess that as Christians we have at times turned a blind service eye to the earthly realities of oppression, exploitation of workers, women, the weak, racism, and other discriminatory practices. On the contrary, the eschatological hope of Adventists should and must increase both service to society and sensitivity to the crying needs of fellow human beings. As Jan Paulsen, president of the General Conference of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, has said, “We are not just creatures of a spiritual environment. We are actively interested in everything that shapes the way we live, and we are concerned about the well-being of our planet.”8 In essence, the church’s responsibility for the world means to prepare men and women to meet their God and soon-coming Lord. This does not mean that Second Advent–oriented Christians dream a utopian vision of millennial pie in the apocalyptic sky. Christians will be active seed planters, not just sin plaintiffs. The followers of Jesus need today, perhaps more than ever, to concentrate upon “doing what is good . . . and profitable for everyone” (Titus 3:8, NIV), and “everyone” means society. Living out such a life of blessing includes dealing with both salvation and society.

Reprinted with permission from Ministry, March 2007.

8

Ray Dabrowski, ed., “A Seventh-day Adventist Call for Peace,” Statements, Guidelines, and other Documents (Nampa, ID: Pacific Press Pub. Assn., April 18, 2002), 78.

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To Walk Humbly

by Roy Adams We all experience a sense of distance as we read the Scriptures—the perception that these documents were not written in our time. Especially is this true of the Old Testament. Even those familiar with its original language struggle to decipher the meaning of the text. Unfamiliar pictures and images, prophetic conundrums, and sociological allusions puzzle and confuse them.

But even so, there are large sections of the Old Testament that seem quite clear in translation to the ordinary reader. Among these are what some Bible students call mountain peaks—statements, pronouncements, and sayings that seem to contract the distance of the centuries and speak directly to our time.

One of these mountain peaks is Micah 6:8: “He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?” (KJV). This passage, a literary masterpiece, has been called the epitome of the prophetic message—the “Magna Carta” of biblical religion. Like a lighthouse, it towers high above the restless sea of 2,700 years of human philosophy and speculation.

Understanding the Text But what does it mean? Could it serve as the answer to the question “What must I do to be saved?” Is it an equivalent to the gospel formula “Repent, and let each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins” (Acts 2:38)? What do we have going on in Micah 6:8, and what is its relevance for us today? Perhaps the context can help us.

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Chapter 1 of Micah (verses 1-5) portrays a judgment scene of cosmic scope. The earth and its people, the hills and mountains, form the jury.

God appears as both prosecutor and judge. And Israel stands arraigned on charges of rebellion and high treason. The verdict issues from God’s holy temple, the heavenly sanctuary (cf. Micah 6:1-3).

As the hearing commences, the Lord addresses Israel with this poignant question: “My people, what have I done to you, and how have I wearied you? Answer Me” (6:3). But there is no answer from the witness box. Israel bows the head in guilt, and tears of repentance flood the courtroom floor. It is high drama. And the mind’s eye needs to see it.

As we watch, the lips of Israel move, at last, and words brimful of tears she speaks: “With what shall I come to the Lord and bow myself before the God on high? Shall I come to Him with burnt offerings, with yearling calves? Does the Lord take delight in thousands of rams, and ten thousand rivers of oil? Shall I present my first-born for my rebellious acts, the fruit of my body for the sins of my soul?” (6:6, 7).

One important thing to note is that at this point in the drama Israel is already pardoned. Her admission of guilt and her submission to Jehovah have already restored a badly severed relationship. So her question now is not “How can I be right with God?” but rather “How shall I live from this day forward? What kind of worship will God find acceptable from a pardoned rebel? How shall I be perfect in the eyes of a holy God?” Against this background, Micah 6:8 becomes the description, par excellence, of the sanctified life. The life we live after we have experienced Him, after the tears of repentance have flowed. This is what the Lord requires of His repentant covenant people in Micah’s days; and this, I suggest, is what He requires of His people in our time.

To Do Justice “And what does the Lord require of you but to do justice?” I like the ring of that word justice. For me it is an exceedingly comforting word.

It would appear from Micah’s report that justice in both Samaria and Jerusalem was in shambles. Notice these excerpts from the divine indictment: “Woe to those who scheme iniquity… They covet fields and then seize them, and houses, and take them away. They rob a man and his house” (Micah 2:1, 2). “Hear now… rulers of the house of Israel,” God 44

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says to them. “It is not for you to know justice? You who hate good and love evil… and who eat the flesh of my people… [You]… build Zion with bloodshed and Jerusalem with violent injustice” (Micah 3:1-10).

Here Micah speaks about scheming and premeditated embezzlement on the part of the rich and powerful in Israel. In their insatiable greed, these ancient bagmen were mopping up real estate property left and right, adding to their already sumptuous holdings, evicting widows whose husbands had died—presumably fighting for the nation, throwing these hapless victims out on the street with their children. Micah’s anger boils, as he marshals all the skills of his rustic poetic imagery to describe these despicable specimens of humanity, bereft of any vestige of decency and compassion.

There has always been a very strong social element in God’s prophetic message to this covenant people. Conservative evangelical Christians, Adventists included, stand in grave danger of forgetting this. It will be fatal to come up to the judgment and discover that the righteousness that we worked so hard to build, far removed from the needs all around us, was really worthless in the eyes of God. When I think of the social callousness of conservative evangelicalism on the one hand and the excesses of the social gospel on the other, I often wonder why it is so difficult to have balance. Why do we find it so difficult to support evangelism on the one hand and social community action on the other? Why can’t we “reach out and touch someone and make his world a better place if we can,” while at the same time pointing people to the scriptural realism that “here have we no continuing city, but we seek one to come”? (Heb. 13:14, KJV). To be faithful to the gospel is to learn how to do both.

To Love Mercy “And what doth the Lord require of thee, but… to love mercy?”

The Hebrew word for mercy is chesed—a very difficult word to translate. Its English equivalents are “favor,” “goodness,” “kindness,” “pity,” and so on. Three of its meanings interest me: kindness, pity, and mercy.

1. Kindness. One little girl prayed, “Lord, make the whole world Christians and make all Christians kind.” I think that’s a good prayer. Everybody needs kindness. Everybody reacts to kindness—even the crudest among us, the most hardened. Kindness is the lubricant that makes the Resource Primer

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machinery of society run smoothly. If we are not kind, then whatever our profession of righteousness, it is useless.

2. Pity. Another dimension of chesed is pity—in the sense of compassion. Pity is an essential characteristic of true religion. It leads to human need wherever that need exists—to respond naturally, willingly, unselfishly, and disinterestedly. James puts it this way: “This is… pure religion in the sight of our God… to visit orphans and widows in their distress” ( James 1:27).

The importance of this dimension of righteousness is captured in this significant statement of Ellen G. White: “In the story of the good Samaritan, Christ illustrates the nature of true religion. He shows that it consists not in systems, creeds, or rites, but in the performance of loving deeds, in bringing the greatest good to others in genuine goodness… Unless there is practical self-sacrifice for the good of others, in the family circle, in the neighborhood, in the church, and wherever we may be, then whatever our profession we are not Christians” (Welfare Ministry, p. 42; italics supplied).

This statement finds support in Jesus’ own portrayal of the judgment, in Matthew 25:31-40. The righteous “sheep” inherit the kingdom because they unselfishly ministered to Jesus in the person of the hungry, the naked, the sick, the disadvantaged.

3. Mercy. It is difficult for a human being to love mercy who has never consciously experienced it. But those in particular who have known the pardoning grace of God can show mercy toward others and be understanding of their weaknesses and foibles. The legalistic, self-righteous person is a stranger to mercy, for he has forgotten what the Lord has done for him and is doing still. He has a hunger for the sinner’s “blood.”

But when we realize how rotten we have been, and that “it is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed” (Lam. 3:22, KJV), then we are more eager to show mercy toward others.

The three elements of chesed discussed here—kindness, pity, and mercy—are molded together by Ellen G. White in a statement that ought to undergird our whole strategy of mission: “If we would humble ourselves before God, and be kind and courteous and tenderhearted and pitiful, there would be one hundred conversions to the truth where now there is only one” (Testimonies, vol. 9, p. 189).

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“And what does the Lord require of you but… to walk humbly with your God?” This is the third and final component of the divine prescription for life within the covenant. It is not an addendum or afterthought, but a vital part of the equation.

To walk humbly implies an openness to the voice of God, a readiness to listen—the attitude of young Samuel in the night: “Speak, Lord, for Thy servant is listening” (1 Sam. 3:9). It means that we remember the pit from which He lifted us, a memory that fills our lives with praise and adoration for His love and kindness.

To walk humbly takes away that holier-than-thou mentality that makes us so insufferable. It gives us the penitent spirit of Daniel. “O Lord,” he prayed, in solidarity with his backslidden compatriots, “we have sinned” (Dan. 9:5).

To walk humbly implies that we do not take the glory to ourselves. We pass it on to God. Surrounded by the glitter and tinsel of a show biz world, we sometimes copy the models we see. We want the spotlight trained on us; we covet the applause.

As leaders within the church, we sometimes feel the tempter’s urge to think we own the outfit. We ride roughshod over others, ignoring all constraints of ethics, as we climb our way to what we consider the higher echelons of the ecclesiastical power structure. So often we forget that apparently competing departments of the church are working for the same cause, in the same task, for the same God. A Common Peril Those among us whom God has blessed with success in one field of endeavor or another should be watchful to maintain a humble walk with God: The successful musician who brings the audience to its feet with his virtuoso performance. The accomplished vocalist after whose singing the congregation, not content with a more vigorous than usual “Amen,” rises to its feet in generous applause. The effective administrator who enjoys the praise and commendation of his colleagues and of the church at large.

The gifted writer who thrills his readers with his literary prowess. The skillful physician whose talents earn him kudos from the medical fraternity and thrust him into the limelight. The eloquent preacher who charms and Resource Primer

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stimulates and sets the people in the pew ablaze with his mastery of the homiletic skills and his command of oratory. The person who senses victory over besetting sins and who thinks he knows a closer walk with God than all his friends. All these need to learn the lesson of this text: “To walk humbly with your God.” How different the picture for the church if a physician by the name of John Harvey Kellogg had learned this lesson! How different if a certain editor-administrator, Alonzo T. Jones, had learned it! How different if a preacher by the name of Dudley Marvin Canright had master it!

Canright was to deliver the message at a certain place in a certain meeting one night. He requested his friend and coworker D. W. Reavis to attend, and to critique his presentation. But as Canright launched into a powerful sermon on the saints’ inheritance, Reavis forgot completely his assignment and listened spellbound to the masterful pulpit oratory of his colleague.

The sermon ended, the two men went into a nearby park. Canright turned to Reavis and said to him, “D.W., how did I do?” Reavis confessed he had become so wrapped up in the masterful presentation that he had forgotten to take notes. Flattered, Canright turned to Reavis: “D.W., I believe I could become a great man were it not for this unpopular message.”

And we know today the outcome of this man who turned his back on that “unpopular message.” Someone said it: “When a small man casts a long shadow, his sun is about to set.”

To walk humbly means we give God all the glory. We take the humble place. We do the menial task. And with Charles Fitch we say at the end of the day: “One precious boon. O Lord, I seek. While tossed upon life’s billowy sea; to hear a voice within me speak. ‘Thy Saviour is well pleased with thee.’”

Practical Righteousness So this, is Micah’s terms, is the lifestyle for God’s covenant people— those who have surrendered to His power and been justified by His grace: church-pew righteousness; committee-room righteousness; main-street righteousness; market-place righteousness; living-room, dining-room, around-the-restaurant-table righteousness; secret-chamber righteousness—in short, practical righteousness.

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That’s what we need now. The Lord says in Amos: “Take away from Me the noise of your songs; I will not even listen to the sound of your harps. But let justice roll down like waters—and righteousness like an overflowing stream” (Amos 5:23, 24).

So what does the Lord require?

Certainly not an exercise in mystical, introspective navel-gazing. Nor a disguised, whitewashed legalism, parading under the guise of righteousness and engendering a perpetual spirit of criticism, judgmentalism, faultfinding, and stale admonitions about corporate confession. Not a gritting of the teeth in reclusive exercises to achieve some puritanical, unbiblical, man-made perfectionist standard of righteousness. But rather a practical, outward-looking, people-centered demonstration of the power of God in terms of justice, mercy, and humility.

Unless otherwise indicated, texts in this article are from the New American Standard Bible.

Reprinted with permission from the Adventist Review, March 9, 1989.

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Religion “Pure and Faultless” That’s what the world needs

by Jan Paulsen The following was a sermon delivered January 18 at the Loma Linda University Adventist Church on the occasion of the church’s annual “celebration of faith and learning.”—Adventist Review Editors.

The thought I would like to share with you spring from a passage in the epistle of James. The epistle itself, as you know, had a somewhat turbulent and challenged entry into the canon of Scripture. Luther, for example, dismissed it as a “straw Epistle,” simply because it failed his primary test of “the gospel” in not giving any prominence to Christ (mentioning Christ by name merely twice and containing no reference to the resurrection).

But I would suggest it’s possible that the message of the Epistle was originally given as a sermon, then later polished up and translated into Greek. If that is so, may it not be true of this, as of so many sermons, that it addresses one particular point, one particular “snippet of life”? This would mean that the assessment made by Luther and others—that the book was not inclusive enough—may have been unduly harsh.

James wants his message to be practical, as all sermons should be.

What he is on to is that religion is not primarily a collection of ideas; it’s a quality of life. He wants the kind of lives we live, the quality of life we aspire to find, to reflect the spiritual values we claim, the doctrines we hold to.

And so he says: Religion cannot adequately be defined as so many words or formulas nicely strung together. Rather, it’s a way of life.

And the text on which I want us to focus is James 1:26, 27—in particular, verse 27. (Verse 26—about keeping a “tight rein”* on your tongue— 50

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I’ll let you work on for yourselves.)

James says: The kind of religion that God accepts as “pure and faultless” is hallmarked by two qualities: (1) looking after the orphans and widows in their distress; and (2) keeping oneself from being polluted by the world. He is not saying, nor am I, that this is all that constitutes “pure and faultless” religion; but he is saying that if these are not there, you’ve not got it.

So let us look at these.

1. Looking after the “orphans and widows in their distress.”

My youngest son has lived in Rwanda for the past year working for the United Nations in their refugee and feeding programs. He tells me about life in the notorious Goma region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He tells me what it is like with a generation where fathers and husbands have disappeared. The war took them. Or have we so soon forgotten the images that came to us from Bosnia in the midnineties—images of the emaciated bodies and faces of young men behind barbed wire?

We live at a time when “wars and rumors of wars” are buzzing around us constantly. The language of leaders and the public media is such as to prepare us for what some have determined is inevitable. But there are other ways, better ways, of resolving issues—ways that are kinder to human lives.

Has not history taught us anything? Have we forgotten the historical debris that wars leave behind?

The brutality of war always culls a nation of its most able-bodied men—men whose primary calling is to be husbands and fathers. Yet they’re not the real victims of war, for they are gone, and the dead “know nothing” (Eccl. 9:5). The real victims are the orphans and the widows who are left behind to be either ignored or abused by society. (Even though widowers might today be included, I will stay close to the text and focus on widows and orphans only.)

According to James, God our Father, who is looking for a religion that is “pure and faultless” in your life and mine, puts this question to us: How are you at looking after the orphans and widows?

Exposed People I come from a country in Europe that has excelled at its social care services. The orphans and widows, as far as their livelihood is concerned, Resource Primer

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are looked after very well. So civilized society meets the first criterion in regard to what constitutes pure and faultless religion, and I am covered.

Or am I? Who are the orphans and the widows in my civilized and developed world? In my society, my city, in the world I will meet when I step out of my sheltered community? They are the exposed ones, the ones who for one reason or another need help to survive with any dignity—literally survive.

In some countries they may actually be children without fathers, wives without husbands. But more often than not they are the poor. Jesus said we’ll always have the poor with us; and as we become richer, the number of poor in our own wealthy nations grows.

Yes, the poor surely make up a large segment of the “exposed ones.”

But they are not the only ones; there are others. The exposed ones in our world include those who are caught in the deadly grip of an addiction and who see no way out—in fact, may not even want to see a way out. They’re the ones who have been laid off from their job at age 55 and who, one year later, are still looking for a new one. They’re the student who has failed his course of study for the second time and who sees only hopelessness ahead.

The exposed ones in some countries and cities are the children and widows who roam the streets and sell themselves in order to find life for a few more days. They are the ones who struggle with illnesses for which there’s no known cure. Or the young woman who is so disfigured through birth or through some accident that no attractive young man wants to ask her out for an evening. Or the young man whose mind was damaged through an accident and who is now pitied by those who knew him as he used to be. These are the exposed ones. Jesus asks: How are you at looking after them?

But actually, before I ponder the questions What should I do? or What can I do? the primary questions I must consider are: Am I touched by them at all? Do they actually bother me? When I physically meet them, do I actually wish that they somehow wouldn’t show up, that they would go away because their presence is embarrassing?

It boils down to a question of what’s happening inside me. What does it do to my heart when people of grave misfortune come into my life— people who for one reason or another are exposed and vulnerable? Is there 52

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a cry that goes up from inside of me because I feel so for them?

An all-too-common sight I meet when I travel through Africa or Asia is that of someone with a disability who sits at a busy intersection and who, as the cars stop at the traffic light, holds out a hand, hoping that someone will show mercy on them. Sometimes it’s just a child. Oblivious of the dangers from fast-moving traffic—or maybe they don’t see it as a danger. Perhaps from their point of view, nothing that is worse than what’s already happened could happen. And it tears you inside. Maybe just a barely audible “Oh, Lord, is there nothing You can do for this child?” that irrepressibly finds its way to your lips. A few coins seem so little!

Did not the Lord say that what you have done to one of the least of these you have done to Me? In the parable of the sheep and goats the Lord more than hints at the fact that when everything is being wrapped up and eternity is being defined, it matters enormously to Him how we have treated the losers in society. Eternal destinies will be determined by what one has done or “neglected to do for Him in the person of the poor and the suffering.”1 “Every deed of kindness done to uplift a fallen soul, every act of mercy, is accepted as done to Him.”2 “All the days of your life I was near you in the person of these afflicted ones, but you did not seek Me. You would not enter into fellowship with Me. I know you not.”3 “The pure religion of Jesus is the fountain from which flows streams of charity, love, self-sacrifice.”4 Just a few weeks ago we came out of a Thanksgiving and Christmas season. And we ate a lot. I should have gone downtown to a certain section of Washington, D.C., just to show that I cared enough to make the effort; but I did not. I think I failed the Lord. The Lord loves the losers more than I understand.

“We are all woven together in the great web of humanity, and whatever we can do to benefit and uplift others will reflect in blessing upon ourselves.”5 So according to the Scripture we read, a primary sign of whether my religion is “pure and faultless” is whether I care for the losers—care enough 1

Ellen G. White, The Desire of Ages, p. 637.

Ibid., p. 638.

3 Ibid., p. 640.

4 The Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary, Ellen G. White Comments, vol. 7, p. 935.

5 White, Patriarchs and Prophets, pp. 534, 535.

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to allow myself somehow to be drawn into their misfortune and offer some help. Surely a Seventh-day Adventist must have a conscience that’s touched by these things. Do you at this university create young minds that are capable of loving people simply because the Lord loved them first? Do they come out of your classes caring for people—people who are not going to make it unless someone cares? Do they? Jesus cared.

And How About the World?

What shall we do with the world? For the text says that there’s another test of the religion God deems “pure and faultless.” It preserves itself so as not to be polluted by the sins of the world.

The sins of the world are a basket too full to count. But if we were to make an effort at defining them broadly, may I suggest that they come in three clusters: (1) decadence, (2) selfishness, and (3) idolatry.

“The world” is a strange place, and followers of Christ have always had an uneasy relationship with it. The world is both where we are and what we try to run away from. It’s loved by the Lord, and it’s at war with Him. James’s view of the world here is very similar to John’s, where the world is presented as vile, full of evil practices and foul smells, a place to be detested.

We have been brought up in an environment that has taught us that to stay close to God you better make sure you do not stay close to the world.

There’s a seemingly irreconcilable tension between God and the world.

Loss of closeness to God and fear of “contamination” seem to be that which drive us away from the world.

The world in this instance is not geography and things, but people and what people do. So don’t define the world, as do politicians, from political/economic/strategic perspectives, with focus on control and dominance. The world is people, loved by God, whom He is on a course to save.

And God invites us to join Him in doing that.

Therefore, we don’t just run away from the world. What we need to do, rather, is to know what the world is, and how God wants us to relate to it. Do the students taught at this much-valued university know that? And can they, as they step out of these hallowed halls, relate to the world in a secure, safe, strong, take-charge manner, with a clear understanding of both the world with its dangers and God’s saving commitment for the people?

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For a Christian the world appears as a hostile culture, an environment that cultivates rebellion against God. The world does not take kindly to the idea that it be told by God what it should be and how it should act.

The world represents a culture of choices opposed to God’s. And James says: Beware, lest you be captured by these choices. As the students step out of your classes, have they been helped to see the differences between the choices they will face? The world is where we are; it is where we are asked to function for God; it is where we build our homes and practice our careers. We cannot step out of it. We just have to know how we live in it, for a religion that is “pure and faultless” is a matter of living, not just of knowing.

James says: Don’t become polluted by the world. And by this he takes so huge a sweep it’s almost impossible to define. The world has gone astray and is full of pollution. It contains so much—how do you catalog it? I suggested that at least we should recognize three elements (mentioned above) that we keep running into all the time: decadence, selfishness, and idolatry.

1. Decadence. Without going into all the gory details, decadence is the container that holds the “deeds of the flesh,” or what Paul calls the “fruitless deeds of darkness” (Eph. 5:11). These are the activities and the mind-set that make one sink to the lowest levels of self-gratification and in the process exploit others. We slip into this mire from time to time—it’s all too common, and we hope it is not too apparent. It is something that just seems to come of itself; it just happens.

This is not a statement of judgment against anyone, for we share a common humanity. There are moments of passion; a flash of anger; a flawed judgment. And there it is! But it’s the sad reality that these deeds will do damage. They will stain you badly, and you probably know it. And it takes time to heal and repair, even with the help of the One who never tires of healing broken lives. Such is the pool of “decadence.”

2. Selfishness. This, possibly, is the most basic of all human drives.

Making sure that when all is said and done, I got what I wanted.

I talked to my mother on the phone right after Christmas. She said: “Do you ever think of childhood Christmases at home?” I said, “I do.” And I told her what we used to eat Christmas Eve, and the cookies she made.

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And she asked me: “Do you remember one Christmas as we were giving out the gifts there was one marked ‘From Jan to Jan’?”

It all came back to me. I had seen something in the shop that I wanted to make sure that I got for Christmas; and since I felt I couldn’t count on the others in matters such as that, I used my Christmas money to buy it for myself! We laughed as she reminded me. Maybe just the innocence of childhood. Or maybe a sign of something basic one has to deal with.

Christ taught us that giving is of much higher value than receiving, and that the most wonderful way to live life is to live it in the interest of somebody else. And that is a perspective that this university exists to teach.

3. Idolatry. The theme “what God is and what the Almighty can do” is the one to which Isaiah returns throughout his book; and he does so with exquisite, breathtaking beauty. Idolatry is a major concern of his, and he wants the attractiveness of God to be seen by his people.

Isaiah says that God is the One and Only—the Incomparable One. He writes: “Before me no god was formed, nor will there be one after me. . . . Apart from me there is no Saviour” (Isa. 43:10, 11). And this God says to His people: This is what I am like, and this is the commitment I make to you: “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you. . . . When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned” (verse 2). I do this, says the Lord, for “you are precious and honored in my sight, and because I love you” (verse 4).

Why would you want something else? We serve a God who cares for the exposed, the vulnerable ones. But this God will accept no competitors and no substitutes. Should anyone or anything in your life or mine become greater or more important than He, that is idolatry. And idolatry is constantly threatening to invade our lives. So don’t allow any person, personality, personage, or whatever to become the object of veneration, and as such become to you a reality larger than life. Worship only the living God! And you who teach, beware of the danger of gathering disciples unto yourselves, thereby making young men and women more dependent on you than is good for them and the lives they need to live.

The lives that you and I live are the stage on which the religion that is “pure and faultless” is on display, a religion that (1) looks after the exposed ones in their distress; and (2) watches out so as not to be polluted 56

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by the world.

This is where mission is accomplished. This is where you meet the living God. So open yourselves to Him and let Him touch people through your time, energies, talents, and resources; and you will discover in the process that He has also profoundly touched you.

*Texts in this article are from the New International Version.

Jan Paulsen is president of the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists with headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland. Reprinted with permission.

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There Should Be No Poor

by Zdravko Plantak The soon-to-occur second coming of Jesus is a touchstone for Seventh-day Adventists. We meticulously study prophetic passages and earnestly urge people to prepare for the Judgment Day. With a touch of smugness, we review the account of God’s Judgment in Matthew 24 and 25 and shake our heads about the “goats” that God turns away from the Promised Land. With confidence we conclude, “I won’t be among the rejected.” But will you?

Unfortunately, many will. And it will be those who fail to see Christ in the hungry and poor. As Edward J. Brady concludes, such Christians are “theologically underdeveloped and ethically insensitive.”1 They are as ignorant as those who ask: “When, Lord, did we ever see you hungry and did not feed you? Lord, when did we see you thirsty and did not offer you a drink?” And their failure to see the needs of the less fortunate affects their relationship with a God who does. “The people of God grow weak as they fail to hear the cry of the poor,” rightly suggests Jim Smith in his book, A Heart for the Poor. “For if we fail to hear that cry, we are failing to understand the nature of God, and consequently we are unable to live in his power.”2 “When I touch the body of the poor, I touch the body of Christ,” said Mother Teresa. This was more than a theological statement founded on Christ’s final story in Matthew 24 and 25 as he responded to questions about the timeline for his second coming. These words, suggested Brady, “. . .point to the faith experience of countless Christians across the denom1

Edward J. Brady, “Theological Underdevelopment and Ethical Insensitivity,” in William Byron, The Causes of World Hunger. (Ramsey, NJ: Paulist Press, 1982), p. 38.

2 Jim Smith, A Heart for the Poor, (Eastbourne: Kingsway, 1988), pp. 31-32.

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inational spectrum who are active in combating hunger. For the Christian, hunger is about the person of Christ, who suffers in the hungry.”3 For those of us who truly believe in the cost of Christian discipleship as opposed to the nominalism of faith that is only written on paper, the fear (and accusation) of becoming ‘underdeveloped theologically and insensitive ethically’ is serious and deems a thorough look at God’s attitudes to the poor. Many different passages of the Bible address the issue of the responsibility (“response ability” or “ability to respond”) to the poor and the disadvantaged in the world.

Deuteronomy 15 contains important references to the poor. First in verse 11, we find the passage that Jesus quoted, “There will always be poor in the land.” But in verse 4, we read that because of the resources that God has provided to the world, “there should be no poor among you!”

There is only one way to reconcile these verses: poverty is not God’s will, but there will always be poor people because of human injustice. The continuing existence of poverty is not an excuse for inactivity, rather it is an argument for generosity.

Those of us who desire to be theologically developed and ethically sensitive will notice that the God of Israel emphatically wanted no poor on earth. Jesus addressed this issue in the same breath he described the signs of his second coming and outlined the way his followers would prepare for his return in glory. The true followers of Christ were theologically developed and knew that in the smallest of the small and the poorest of the poor they served Jesus Himself. They were ethically sensitive and humble enough to attempt to share love in practical ways on a one to one basis with the prisoner, the stranger, the disadvantaged and the marginalized.

The challenge of being a true follower of Jesus can be found in St. John Chrysostom’s remark, “What is the use of loading Christ’s table with cups of gold, if he himself is perishing from hunger?”4 The bread of life that we partake in the Lord’s Supper must have an effect on whether we recognize Christ among those of our worldwide neighbors who are starving to death.

In another place, Chrysostom imagines Jesus relating His crucifixion to Matthew 25, “I fasted for you then, and I suffer hunger for you now; I was 3

Brady, (1982), p. 47.

Hom. In Matt. 88, 3 (PG 58:778) as cited also in William Byron, ed., The Causes of World Hunger. (Ramsey, NJ: Paulist Press, 1982), p. 52.

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thirsty when I hung on the cross, and I thirst still in the poor, in both ways to draw you to myself and make you humane for your own salvation.”5 Consider the divine moral outrage described in Deuteronomy 15, and then imagine its magnitude today when 800 million are living in abject poverty and millions of children are dying of starvation. God gives us theological provisions to underpin that divine ethical indignation.

God’s desire for the poor and the oppressed to be liberated is the prime concern of the true Sabbatical Principle described in Exodus 23:11 and Leviticus 25:10. The extension of weekly Sabbaths to the sabbatical year and the year of jubilee almost exclusively emphasized humanitarian issues.

The idea of the land resting (lying “unploughed and unused”) on the seventh year correlated to concern for the poor, the slave, the underdog, as well as rights which go beyond mere human rights.

If one truly observes the Sabbath, one cannot remain satisfied only with one’s own redemption, restoration, and liberation. One must show concern for one’s neighbor and our common earth physically as well as spiritually.

The Sabbath doctrine does not involve only the Sabbath day; it concerns the other six days of the week as well. The atmosphere and the principles of the Sabbath will not only “extend beyond the worship service to the dinner table and the living room”6 on the seventh day, but they would also become a part of the Sabbath attitude which ought to be practiced throughout the week. The Sabbatical concern, which extends from the weekly Sabbaths to Sabbatical years also, taught the Jews about the needs of the less fortunate, the poor, the widows, and the orphans.7 In a similar way, Christians should develop a greater ‘Sabbatical’ conscience for the poor, the unfortunate, the unemployed, and the powerless whose basic human rights are denied.

5

Hom. In Matt. 15, 6 (PG 60:547-8) as cited also in William Byron, ed., The Causes of World Hunger. (Ramsey, NJ: Paulist Press, 1982), p. 52.

6 Sakae Kubo, God Meets Man: A Theology of the Sabbath and Second Coming, (Nashville, Tennessee: Southern Publishing Association, 1978), p. 27.

7 Ex 35:12-33. Gerald Winslow’s footnote 1 in his article “Moment of Eternity” states that “the Sabbath symbolism in the Bible extends far beyond weekly Sabbath. … every seventh year was specified as a sabbatical year (Lev. 25:1-7). After seven sabbatical years, every fiftieth year, a special Year of the Jubilee was celebrated (Lev. 25:8-12).” Winslow concludes that, “the more extensive symbolism of holy time as represented in these other “sabbaths” should also be kept in mind.” In Festival of the Sabbath, ed., Roy Branson, (Takoma Park, Maryland: Association of Adventist Forums, 1985), p. 94.

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As Richard Rice suggests, “The Sabbath speaks against every practice that deprives human beings of their sense of worth and dignity. Oppressive economic and social structures, which make it impossible for people to provide for themselves, contradict the message of the Sabbath. Those who appreciate the meaning of the Sabbath will seek to eliminate such things.”8 Sabbath keeping Christians should be among the first to advance the ideas of justice, equality, and freedom among all people. If they fail to do that, the letter of the law is observed but the spirit of the Sabbath-commandment is totally lost. ‘The sheep on his right’ in Matthew 25 observed the Sabbatical principle of care and concern and they were rewarded accordingly.

The God of the Poor and the Friend of the Weak calls us to embody the Sabbatical attitude. While “there will always be poor people in the land” is an anthropological statement of fact due to the human injustice and inequality, “there should be no poor among you” is an ethical statement that suggests God’s intent and desire.

God has provided the means to embody this ethical desire of the ages and the theological reasons have been supplied. The question is whether we will choose to be Sabbath-keeping Christians who care as seriously as God does about the world’s poor. If we engage fully in this responsibility, we shall be counted as righteous.9

8 9

Richard Rice, Reign of God, (Michigan: Andrews University Press, 1985), p. 370.

Proverbs 29:7: “The righteous care about justice for the poor, but the wicked have no such concern.”

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A Healthy Church

by Jan Paulsen The life of the Seventh-day Adventist Church is in the local congregation: in the give-and-take of community experiences; in shared worship and shared joys; in facing difficult times; in working together toward common goals and participating in a common mission. It is in the local church—“God’s household” (1 Tim. 3:15, NIV)—that faith finds its most compelling expression; where the values and beliefs that define us are most clearly demonstrated.

For every report I receive of a congregation that is thriving and growing, I hear of another that is struggling. And as I talk with church members—especially those of the younger generation—I hear a range of concerns and frustrations, as well as hopes and plans, centered around their local church. So often I am asked, most frequently by those from the secular, post-modern West: “What can be done to breathe new life into my church?”

If we’re looking for a perfect faith community—one that exactly models God’s ideal—then we have a long search ahead of us. A local church family is made up of less-than-perfect people representing many different backgrounds, and embracing those of vastly different levels of spiritual maturity and experience.

But God has clearly set before us an ideal, a standard, for how His children should function together within a community of believers. In the coming months, I would like to look more closely at the characteristics of healthy churches. What does a robust, productive local church look like?

What characteristics define it? How are spiritually healthy communities nurtured and grown?

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There are three litmus tests of healthy churches that come immediately to mind: the spiritual condition of individual believers; how these individuals relate to each other within their faith community; and how the congregation relates to the world beyond its doors—to those who are not believers.

Each of these aspects is intertwined. When there is dysfunction in one facet of church life, the whole body is compromised and its ability to fulfill its mission undermined. In this article, I would like to explore the first of these litmus tests: personal spiritual health.

Ellen White writes: “A healthy church is composed of healthy members, of men and women who have a personal experience in true godliness.”1 What are the characteristics of a healthy believer? How do we pursue an experience in godliness?

1. Be a “serious Christian” Being a serious Christian does not mean being somber or humorless.

A serious Christian can be—perhaps should be—also a laughing person.

But if you are a serious Christian, you have made informed choices about how you want to live your life. Your direction is determined by the decisions, both big and small, that you make every day; decisions that keep you moving forward on a path governed by faith. You have weighed the consequences and are clear about the values you want to live by. It is a very deliberate and ongoing process.

Being a serious Christian is not necessarily something that comes only with age; it can come to you very early on. But regardless of age or background, all believers who are growing spiritually are serious about God, serious about themselves, and serious about the choices they make.

2. Move past defeat In spite of what you may have heard, the Christian life is not one steady, uninterrupted upward journey. Each one of us experiences our fair share of defeats, as well as victories. And this is life. Spiritual growth is not about keeping score of defeats and victories, and God is not to be viewed as a referee—He is our friend.

1

Mind, Character, and Personality, vol. 2, p. 710.

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I was wonderfully blessed to grow up in a home where Christian values were very uncomplicated. When you felt you had disappointed yourself, disappointed your parents, and disappointed God you didn’t get stuck on it. You were loved and embraced and forgiven. You moved on.

Yes, spiritual victories are markers—indicators—of growth. As I take stock of my Christian walk, I am hopefully able to say: “There was a time when I struggled with certain things—I messed up, I failed. But I’m done with that. That particular struggle is not there anymore.”

But the inevitable defeats are also part of the same growing process.

They can be difficult and painful, but they are not the end of the story.

When I fail, God reminds me of my value in His sight. He gives me strength by telling me that I’m loved and that, if I stay with Him, He will see me through.

3. Take responsibility You cannot nurture spiritual health if you don’t communicate with God—regularly, frequently, openly, and joyously. There is no alternative, no substitute, no shortcut. Healthy Christians are those who take responsibility for their own spiritual lives. They have discovered God for themselves—their faith is not dependent on the opinions or experiences of someone else, whether it is a parent, a spouse, a particular author, or a church leader.

Spiritual dependency on another person is a dangerous enterprise— it produces a skewed perspective that lacks the balance and depth that can come only through direct contact with God through Scripture, prayer, and other spiritual disciplines.

Read God’s Word for yourself; it is amazing what you will find. When I reread passages of Scripture I often say: “Why didn’t I see that earlier?”

The words are the same, but things have happened in my life that bring new meaning, a new perspective.

Take also the writings of Ellen White. People are too often accustomed to making judgments based on excerpts, or paraphrases, or others’ interpretations. They do not bother to read her books for themselves—to see the breadth and balance and depth of her comments on a given subject.

And they miss the wonderful wholeness and warmth that can be discov64

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ered only through personal inquiry.

It is vitally important that we teach our children from a very early age not to become dependent on their parents, their teachers, or anyone else for the development of their faith; that they know: “I have a primary responsibility to go to the Lord myself.” And to Bible teachers, pastors, and church leaders I say: “Do not succumb to the temptation of making personal spiritual disciples—it is a risky business.”

More than anything, I want to see Seventh-day Adventist Church members who are mentally and spiritually strong; church members who can say: “God is my friend.” And friendship with God is developed primarily through communication with Him in prayer.

How should we pray? There is no one “correct” way, or formula, for communicating with God. Approach Him with both awe and confidence.

Allow the Holy Spirit to lead you. But don’t expect Him to speak to you in mystical ways, although He can. God usually speaks to us most clearly through our rational mind, through patterns of thinking that have been shaped by disciplined study of His Word.

Safe in Christ What is the outcome of personal spiritual growth? When you are growing spiritually, you have an unshakable sense of safety, a knowledge that you are loved and wholly accepted by God, that your salvation is secure—a gift of the One whose primary concern is to heal and to save.

It is time for us to revive the spiritual disciplines in our churches and homes. Lives that are grounded in regular communication with our Lord produce strong, secure, and compassionate men and women of God. And it is upon this bedrock that healthy churches are built.

A person close to me, a young man still finding his feet in the world, came to church one Sabbath morning wearing clothes that were somewhat out of the ordinary for that particular congregation. He was clean and quite presentable, but not as formally dressed as others. He was met at the door by one of the elders who looked him up and down and said, “Why don’t Resource Primer

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you go home and change your clothes?” The young man did go home. And in the 20 years since he has not returned to church.

How is it that the body of Christ sometimes fails to demonstrate the most basic aspects of Christ’s example? The apostle Paul describes in two well-known passages the by-products of authentic Christianity. The fruit of the Spirit, he says, is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Gal. 5:22, 23). Writing to the church in Corinth, he describes true love as that which “does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs” (1 Cor. 13:4, 5).

What is striking in these passages is that they find their meaning only within relationships—within community. When do I exercise patience?

When the limits of my tolerance are tested by those around me who express themselves differently, or who behave in ways I do not fully understand. When do I exercise self-control? When I swallow words of criticism; when I refuse to say “I told you so” in the face of someone else’s mistake.

When do I show kindness? When I speak a word of encouragement; when I look beyond differences of culture or background and embrace a brother or sister in Christ.

How do we nurture healthy relationships?

1. And the truth shall make you… loving A former teacher of mine, a theologian, once engaged in a long debate with a colleague—an individual well known for his hard-line views. Back and forth they went for many hours, until finally my professor said in exasperation, “OK, you are right! But do you need to be so hostile about it?”

Truth and hostility need not go hand in hand. And truth coupled with a sense of superiority, a strident manner, or an attitude of exclusivity does not contribute much to the health of a faith community.

We should know what we believe; we should take joy in it, safeguard it, and know how to articulate it attractively. But if our spiritual walk does not make us more gracious, if it does not make us more anxious for the feelings of others, if it does not better fit us to be members of the body of Christ, then something is wrong. We can be exacting in our devotions, unerring in our religious observances, and yet fail in the “weightier” matters 66

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of our faith (Matt. 23:23, 24). Let us be careful that we don’t become so busy cultivating an inward-looking spirituality that we neglect to cultivate relationships. For spirituality without relationships has no life, no compassion, no warmth, and no attraction.

2. Separating the gnats and the camels Often young people will ask me, “Can I listen to this, go here, do this, or believe that, and still be a Seventh-day Adventist?” And I remind them, “The church is not a community designed to provide maximum accommodation to the point that it loses its identity. We have values and beliefs that bond us together; that spell out our essential sameness, and tell us we belong to each other. And if we find ourselves in significant disagreement with a significant number of these values, then it is unlikely that we will find community within the Adventist Church.”

But the greatest threats to the health of a congregation are usually not theological disputes, or disagreements about basic values. The real challenges are more mundane. They are differences of taste, different ways of doing things, different expectations, even differences in the way we articulate the same values.

Accepting differences—differences that do not compromise our essential identity—is fundamental to building a strong, effective community of believers. Can I vote for you to become head elder, even though your background and approach are different from mine? even though you are young? I have to be able to say, “I will trust you. And in this assignment I will help you grow. I will not torpedo you when you make a mistake. I will forgive and support you.”

3. A builder or a destroyer?

Ellen White knew that the underlying attitude with which we approach others can make all the difference to the health and effectiveness of a community of believers. In a letter to church members in Victoria, Australia, she wrote: “There is no hope for the success of any religious organization where criticism is cherished as a fine art, and called spiritual discernment. Men might far better be blind to others’ faults than to be inspired by that keen, detective spirit that will watch for defects in those Resource Primer

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whom the Lord loves, and through whom He works.”2 Do I look at others to find fault or to find common ground? Am I concerned primarily with my own comfort and needs, or for the comfort of others? Is my default attitude one of negativity or of understanding?

Through my words and actions, do I build up and strengthen God’s family, or do I tear down and destroy?

It is more than a set of theoretical concepts that will draw people into the church and keep them there. These are important. We must know and understand truth. But it is the dynamics of community—the relationships that I form with others, which make me feel loved and wanted—that will keep me anchored within God’s family. If I feel rejected by people, or if I am made to feel that God has rejected me, then I am gone.

But when God’s spirit is at work in the lives and relationships of church members, there will be an irrepressible warmth and attractiveness. And it is congregations such as these, congregations that take seriously the call to Christian community, that will be most effectively equipped for mission.

I have an acquaintance of long-standing, someone who invites me to visit with him and his family when I travel in his part of the world. He is a religious man, but we do not share the same faith. In fact, my friend is a high-level official in another church.

Is this a good friendship for me to pursue? The answer will seem obvious to some, yet the question may give others pause.

How should individuals—how should a congregation—relate to the world of difference, of “otherness,” that exists beyond the church doors?

What principles should mark our relationships with those who are not believers as we are? How far, and in what ways, should we be drawn into the life of our communities?

God’s Purpose for His Church In this series of articles we have looked at the dynamics of healthy churches; at the importance of taking seriously our personal spiritual life; at the ways we can build strong, grace-filled congregations. Yet the question remains: To what purpose do we do these things? Are these 2

The Upward Look, p. 28.

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ends in themselves?

No, they are not. It is only through witness—through reaching out to others—that a congregation fulfills its ultimate purpose. A church that is not witnessing or reaching a community beyond itself is a dying church. It has ceased to be what God wants, and the local congregation has in fact become just a social organization. An active and effective congregation is focused on mission; it is God’s voice and God’s hands within its community.

Every congregation has its own set of challenges; those ministering in a secular, postmodern environment face unique difficulties, as do those who live in societies where the church is viewed with suspicion or fear. But regardless of the cultural setting, the relationship between a healthy church and its neighbors will be marked by: 1. Confidence. A church that is in constant retreat from society cannot be useful to God. Witnessing at arm’s length is a losing proposition. A healthy congregation does not see itself as an island or safe haven from the world, but rather as a part of the community in which it is located.

Isolating ourselves for fear of “contamination” is a sure way to check growth and begin to die. God calls us to engage in mission, not on some ethereal spiritual plane, but here, in this world, within the reality of our own neighborhoods and towns.

In some places, especially within secular, relatively wealthy cultures, I sense among our congregations a certain level of intimidation, a tendency to withdraw from contact with a society that seems to have largely rejected our spiritual values and has, in fact, become cynical and dismissive of them.

In other places I have sometimes sensed a preoccupation with “spiritual purity”—congregations that work so hard to ensure they are not “of the world” that they forget at times they are “in the world.”

But to engage with the world does not mean embracing its values. It does not mean allowing our principles or beliefs to be somehow diminished. Engaging with the world means going into our communities with a sense of confidence in who we are, in what we believe, and in the God we serve.

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among the faculty and other students, and from the outset I was viewed with a measure of wariness. But as we attended classes and seminars together, their feelings toward me began to thaw. We began to share meals together, to spend time in one another’s homes with one another’s families, and barriers were broken down. Kari and I were no longer seen primarily as alien; we were seen through eyes of friendship. One evening a visiting theologian attended one of our social occasions. On finding that I was a Seventh-day Adventist, he immediately began a line of hostile questioning—much to the embarrassment of the others present. My classmates, who just a little before had viewed me and my beliefs with such suspicion, were now my allies. They were not willing that my faith be disparaged.

There is something powerful in simply being a friend, in eating together and laughing together, in sharing time together. It disarms suspicions and cuts through prejudices. A simple gauge for whether a congregation is truly “salt” and “light” in its community is to look at the social calendars of individual members. Are our friendships, even our business associations, largely with those who share our faith?

3. Service. A healthy congregation serves its local community. It offers service that is practical; that is attuned to local needs; that “scratches where there is an itch”; that encompasses physical as well as spiritual needs. It is service that flows from a genuine feeling for other people—an interest in the welfare of others that is warm and personal.

Ellen White called the church “the theater of [God’s] grace,” the agency through which His compassion and love for humanity are most vividly displayed.3 She frequently reminded the fledging Adventists of her day that “the good works of the children of God are the most effectual preaching the unbeliever has.”4 4. Mission. As I visit and worship with church members in different countries, I am constantly reminded that there is one common force that animates every growing, effective Adventist congregation. It is a deliberate, all-encompassing emphasis on witness and outreach—both within the local community and beyond—through support of the church’s mission work around the world. The focus of members in these churches is not inward, on their own needs or comforts. They have become “Christ’s am3

The Acts of the Apostles, p. 12.

Spiritual Gifts, vol. 2, p. 235.

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bassadors” (2 Cor. 5:20), and the task of reconciling others to a loving Savior has become their life’s work.

It is impossible to spend time with these congregations without catching a sense of the sheer effervescence, the enthusiasm of church members for sharing Christ with others; their conviction that mission is not a heavy burden, but a joy. And this passion dictates how they use their energy and resources. What does a healthy church look like? A healthy church is made up of individual believers who are spiritually robust—who have taken responsibility for their daily walk with God. A healthy church is warm, loving, and inviting—it takes seriously God’s plan for Christian fellowship.

And a healthy church has opened its doors to its community—it has embraced witness and outreach as its first priorities.

My hope and prayer for Adventist congregations around the world— whether they meet in inner-city churches or college chapels, in homes or outdoors, in sanctuaries large or small—is that they will be faithful to God’s call, that they will be instruments in His hand to fulfill His purpose in the world.

Reprinted with permission from Adventist World, 2007

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Christian Brotherhood: The Foundation of the Church

by Kent Seltman Lynn called me late one night. The dormitory curfew had long passed.

From the sound of swiftly moving cars, I knew that she was not calling from her room. Her message was calmly desperate — “You asked me to call before I did anything drastic, and that’s why I’m calling.” I asked for more details. She had her car, she said, and was intending to ram the bridge at a hundred miles an hour before the night was over. Later, finally trying to fall asleep that night, I couldn’t forget Lynn’s desperate claim of a few days before, when she had said, “Jesus is my only friend.” Her phone call that evening had proved the obvious —Jesus was not enough.

The sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross is, of course, enough to save us from our sins. But by itself — apart from friendship with the concrete flesh and blood members of His earthly body — it is only abstract soteriology and not enough to make life worth living. The earthly church must cultivate a sense of community, a sense of Christian brotherhood among its members. To neglect this duty is to deny the foundational act of the Christian church, that of Christ’s death on the cross. Christ died, after all, that we might live, and life without a network of friends — bonds of love between parents and children, neighbors and citizens, husbands and wives is not life at all. As Aristotle put it, “Without friends no one would choose to live though he had all other goods.”

Even though we will all agree that friendship, like motherhood and apple pie, is good, it, like so much that is vital in our lives, is widely neglected or distorted. The treatments of friendship that we find in the secular world today are largely commercial. Hallmark Cards probably prints more 72

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words on friendship than any other publisher. Relationships between people are typically not treated in the traditional terms of brotherhood, but in terms of manipulation. On the one hand, we have the manipulation for practical gain in such works as How to Win Friends and Influence People, and on the other, the manipulation for personal pleasure in the tradition of Playboy and Playgirl magazines.

Ironically, the Adventist Christian community self-consciously uses the terms “brother” and “sister,” but actually talks about friendship and brotherhood very little. In all the Adventist hymnals—Hymns and Tunes, Christ in Song, and The Adventist Hymnal—one can find only one hymn on the topic of brotherhood. In my 39 years in Adventist congregations, I do not ever recall singing this single hymn, “In Christ There Is No East and West.” Perhaps our religious terminology of “brother” and “sister” serves primarily as a social leveler, not as a sign of our sense of community.

Or worse, it may be a means of actually condescending to others when we reprove or evangelize them.

In the church, friendship is used as an evangelistic tool. In other words, we use friendship for practical gain. Thus, the “friendship issues” of the Adventist Review are designed for giving to our unbelieving friends. If I recall correctly from my childhood, on the designated Friendship Sabbath each year we were expected to bring a non-Adventist to church.

Uncle Arthur Maxwell’s 1950 book, Your Friends the Adventists, is prefaced with these words, “We have tried to tell you the story of your friends the Adventists — to help you understand something of their faith and their message and, above all, to let you know that they are indeed a friendly people who want to be friends with you.”1 However, he subtly reveals the conditions of these evangelistic friendships in the last paragraph of his book, “You need not travel alone; for this is the hope of your friends, the Adventists. This is the land of their dreams. They are going to the self-same place.

Why not go with them? They would love to have your company.”2 Notice that it is the neighbor who is expected to come along with the Adventist, and the Adventist friend will not realize any change in the experience of friendship. Thus, the invitation is not for a full, reciprocal friendship. It is 1

Maxwell, Arthur, Your Friends the Adventists (Mountain View, California: Pacific Press Publishing Association), p.4.

2 Maxwell, p. 96.

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a condescending friendship. The invitation is from the superior Adventist to the inferior, unbelieving neighbor.

I trust that we agree that conversion is not the culmination of the religious experience. After the conversion comes fellowship with Christian brothers. Being a Christian is the process of a lifetime, whereas conversion is that of only a moment. And yet, the theology of brotherhood is mightily neglected in our communion.

If the evangelistic thrust of Adventism were the primary cause of this neglect, the problem would not be too serious. Unfortunately, that is not the case. The greatest impediment is our passion for doctrinal purity. We are guilty of overly minute examination of structural pillars, but never stepping back to view the temple built on the foundation of Christian love.

Consequently, in recent times, some of us seem aligned with the tradition of militant Christianity, where being right is more important than being kind. We are told that we may have to die for our faith. Traditionally, this has meant that the believers would also kill. True, we do that today in a somewhat more civilized fashion than was done during the Reformation.

Since burnt human flesh is out of fashion in religious circles, we avoid harming physical bodies, but wage war on reputations and careers. Rather than torches and stakes, our weapons are labels and innuendo. The camaraderie of soldiers standing as watchmen on the walls of Zion is substituted for fellowship with Christian defenders of the traditional faith. Both those intent upon changing the faith and traditionalists seem to share the passionate need of being proved right.

Readers of Spectrum should not feel smug. They may neglect Christian brotherhood even more than the general membership of the church. The Adventist Forum and its publications are marked by intellectually critical examinations of issues significant to the church. We deny ourselves fellowship in the body of Christ to the extent that we feel bitterness about the objects or the results of this critical study. Interaction among individuals is necessary for friendship and brotherhood. Thus, the man with whom I maintain a bitter quarrel is not my friend or spiritual brother. If we only quarrel with our church, we will never experience Christian brotherhood in it. We may find temporary refuge in the fellowship of those similarly embittered, but that avoids confrontation with the philosophical and 74

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theological basis of brotherhood.

I do believe, however, there are solutions to the present problems I have identified in the Seventh-day Adventist community. While the hierarchy of friendship mentioned earlier puts friendship for personal pleasure and practical gain below full friendship, the legitimacy of the lower levels of exchange should not be denied. In fact, full friendships always begin as friendships for personal pleasure or practical gain. My first relationship with my wife, for instance, was purely for personal pleasure. I dated her as I did several other young women in order to share a basketball game, a concert, a meal, or a day’s skiing. A full friendship grew from there. The church also needs to nurture relationships based upon pleasure or utility so the relationships can expand into full brotherhood within the community of Christ. Our apocalyptic emphasis on the shortness of time blinds us to the need for planting or cultivating the seeds of brotherhood. Our Millerite focus on an impending crisis makes such activity seem meaningless or unnecessary.

The problem is really theological. In an attempt to emphasize the peculiar, sectarian nature of Seventh-day Adventism, important though that is, we forget that the most important doctrine in Scripture is the doctrine of Christian love. Christ did not die on the cross for doctrinal purity but for human beings. He expected his friends and followers to be willing to do the same: “Love one another, as I have loved you. There is no greater love than this, that a man should lay down his life for his friends.

You are my friends, if you do what I command you. I call you servants no longer; a servant does not know what his master is about.

I have called you friends, because I have disclosed to you everything that I have heard from my Father. You did not choose me: I chose you. I appointed you to go on and bear fruit, fruit that shall last; so that the Father may give you all that you ask in my name.

This is my commandment to you: love one another.� ( John 15:1217, NEB).

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ingness to die for a friend. Certainly, nothing is said here about killing or destroying. Rather, we are invited to become full friends with Christ.

The tragedy of Christ’s death was heightened by the separation He experienced shortly after demonstrating the height of brotherhood in the upper room. In Gethsemane, His dearest friends failed to reciprocate in His moment of agony. They slept rather than sympathized. Later, one friend betrayed Him, and another denied Him. The ultimate separation occurred on the cross when Christ, in a moment of utter despair, cried, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” In that moment of total loss of hope and meaning, He experienced the worst that any human being can. He died alone.

Those of us who know anger and bitterness in our experience with the brothers and sisters of our community can come together in the spirit of brotherhood. The formula is suggested by the Quaker scholar, Paul Lacey, who suggests self-knowledge is the first step. We must recognize that when we are indignant with others—even righteously indignant at their errors —we are cultivating a monster in ourselves with which we attack the monster of errors in others. When we recognize both behaviors as monstrous, we are ready to see a brother where before we saw an enemy. For most of us, this self-knowledge is not enough. We have to see more than the monster within us. This deeper insight, Professor Lacey testifies, is Christian love. “For what is needed to break free of the bond of hatred is to be able to see one’s self as a monster and a child of God, as both in need of forgiveness and having received forgiveness. This deep Christian experience permits us to discard the them and us mentality. Instead of adversaries and monsters, it permits us to see brothers like us needing and receiving the accepting love of Christ.”3 Human friendship tends to be exclusive. We cannot have a very large circle of intimate friends. The demands of time as well as psychological protection do not permit us to share our intimate gift of friendship too widely. However, Christian brotherhood is not merely an extension of intimacy but an extension of the other traits of full friendship: feeling concern and acting for the good of another. Thus Christian brotherhood is inclusive rather than exclusive. Christ’s love extended beyond the circle of His close friends to those He had not met—those centuries of humans 3

Lacey, Paul, “Hating the Sinner”, unpublished document, p. 8.

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who had already died and others not yet born. None of us would betray a dear full-friend, but until we can extend that same ethic to those we do not know and will not meet, we do not know the meaning of Christian brotherhood.

Christ died to save us from our sins, but that fact alone does not make human life bearable. My own moments of deepest pain have come when I have lost my friends. The manipulation, militancy, and bitterness that divide us from our brothers in Christ also divide us from Him. But happily, we have Christian brothers who can personify, and hence make real, the love that Christ has for us. And even more happily, we have our Brother Christ, who persuades us by His life that Christian love is the foundation which supports the pillars of our faith and life.

Published in Spectrum, September 1981, Volume 12, Number 1 Resource Primer

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Why Should the Poor Concern Us? A look at what the book of Proverbs has to say to rich Christians

by Zdravko Plantak The following was originally presented as a sermon. We’ve left intact some elements of oral delivery.—Adventist Review Editors.

What does the Bible have to say about poverty? And what is to be our response as Christians? I have to tell you that I’m very troubled by the standard reactions of many Adventists and other Bible-believing Christians in the Western world when faced with poverty statistics such as those listed in the sidebar (p. 104). Yet as Seventh-day Adventists, shouldn’t we be leading the way in the opposite direction?

Two Excuses Let’s consider two objections some Christians raise against concerning themselves with the poor, objections they use to pacify their conscience and evade their responsibilities.

The first is that “the poor are lazy.” Their plight, these Christians say, “is mainly their own fault. Help them, and you’ll only increase their dependence. Let them give up scrounging and stand up on their own two feet.”

I hear this from Adventists, and it makes me angry. And I hope it makes you angry too—with Christian anger. I correct many papers in ethics, both in the traditional program at Columbia Union College and that by correspondence through Griggs University (Home Study International), in which students express themselves in very negative ways about the poor.

They call them thugs, and suggest it’s their fault they’re in such a predica78

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The Face of Poverty • More than 1 billion people in the world, approximately one fifth of the world’s population, live in absolute or abject poverty (meaning that they lack basic necessities for survival).

• One fifth of the world goes to bed hungry every night.

• One third of all the children in the developing would are undernourished.

• One fifth of the human population owns four fifths of the world’s wealth.

• Less than 50 percent of the population of the developing world are literate.

• More than 80 percent in the industrialized nations are literate.

• Only 50 percent of the developing world’s people have access to clean, safe water.

ment. When I ask the question in class as to whether we in the West are in any way responsible for the poverty in the world—or whether we have any responsibility to the starving people in the developing world—students stare at me in disbelief. They don’t understand what I mean. Why would I even ask such a question? Of course we have nothing to do with the starving millions on the other side of the world, their stares suggest.

“Are we our brothers’ keepers?”

The Bible, realistic book that it is, concedes that there is a small minority of people who are lazy. The book of Proverbs talks about “sluggards.”

Sleeping when they ought to be working, they’re told to go learn wisdom and industry from the ants (Prov. 6:6). The Bible also teaches that constant dependence is usually a mark of immaturity.

But the same Bible goes on to insist that the great majority of the poor are not scroungers on other people’s charity but victims of other people’s injustice. Our responsibility, then, is not to condemn the poor (except perhaps for the small minority who are scroungers), but to support them.

The second excuse Christians make for noninvolvement with the poor is to say that the poor are a perennial and insoluble problem. And since the problem can’t be solved, why try? Didn’t Jesus teach that the poor will be always with us (Mark 14:7)?

It’s very easy to twist and manipulate Scripture by quoting passages out of context. When Jesus said the poor will always be with us, He was quoting from Deuteronomy 15, the only context in which to understand Resource Primer

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what He said.

Two important references to the poor appear in that chapter. One comes in verse 11: “There will always be poor people in the land”—the verse Jesus quoted. But seven verses earlier, in verse 4, we read: “There should be no poor among you!” And why? Because God has given sufficient resources to feed the poor and hungry.

So how to reconcile these two verses? One says, “There will always be poor people”; the other says, “There should be no poor among you.” How do you bring together the will-be and the should-not-be?

There’s only one way to reconcile them: There should not be poor, because poverty is not God’s will; there will continue to be poor, because of the continuance of human injustice. The will of God says there should not be any poor. Human injustice ensures there’ll continue to be poor.

Thus the continuing existence of poverty in the world mentioned in Deuteronomy 15 is not as an excuse for inaction, but as an argument for generosity.

Three Verses Packed With Power I want to bring to you three little-known verses from the book of Proverbs. Together they give us what I’d like to call “the biblical profile of the poor.” They tell us how we ought to think of the poor.

1. Proverbs 14:31: “Those who oppress the poor insult their Maker, but those who are kind to the needy honor him” (NRSV).

Striking, isn’t it? We must never think about the poor without thinking about God, their maker. Our attitude toward God is reflected in our attitude to the poor. If we think of the poor in the light of their relationship to God, it will revolutionize our understanding and attitude toward them.

We have to learn to look behind the poor—beyond the poor—to the God who created them.

That does not mean, of course, that God created their poverty, nor that He is responsible for it. No. It simply means that the poor, because they were created as human beings by God, have an intrinsic value and an intrinsic dignity that is our responsibility to recognize. They have this dignity because God made them in His image and likeness. “To oppress the poor is to despise God!” “To honor the poor is to honor God!” That 80

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should be enough to change our attitude toward them.

There is another implication from Proverbs 14:31. The same God who made the poor made those who are well-to-do. That is to say, we who have more share the same Creator with those who have less. We’re equal bearers of the divine image. Some Adventist Christians echo Cain’s question “Am I my brother’s keeper?” expecting the answer “No, you’re not!” But the correct answer is “Yes, you are!”

“Ah, but the poor are not my brothers and sisters in Christ,” someone says. Not correct. On the contrary, large numbers of the poor are Christian men and women, our sisters and brothers in the family of Christ. And though the rest may not be our brothers and sisters in redemption terms, they’re our brothers and sisters in creation terms. That’s what Paul meant when, talking to the philosophers in Athens, he described us all as God’s children, God’s offspring (Acts 17:28). Paul used a special word here, a word that points to God as Creator rather than as intimate Father of all.

We’re brothers and sisters, all related to one another. On that account we have a responsibility to the poor. And in expressing our solidarity with them, we honor their Maker.

2. Proverbs 29:7: “The righteous care about justice for the poor, but the wicked have no such concern.”

This text provides an addition to the biblical profile of the poor: they are human beings, with human rights. And justice is about human rights.

It isn’t just sympathy that the poor need; it’s justice.

So how are we to understand justice for the poor? In 2 Corinthians 8:13, toward the end of his statement encouraging the Corinthians in generosity, Paul says: “Our desire is not that others might be relieved while you are hard pressed, but that there might be equality.” Then he goes on: “At the present time your plenty will supply what they need, so that in turn their plenty will supply what you need. Then there will be equality” (verse 14).

The Greek word isoteis (used there for equality) can also mean justice or fairness. Justice demands a certain degree of equality.

But what is this equality that justice demands? Here we should think very carefully. Our goal in seeking justice for the poor is not what’s commonly called egalitarianism. Egalitarianism suggests a drab, colorless uniformity.

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Take the following example: Last November I had opportunity with 35 American philosophers to spend almost two weeks in the People’s Republic of China. We visited the nine largest and most important universities in four cities and met with our counterparts—professors and academics—in the field of philosophy. The most striking displays at some of these institutions were statues of Chairman Mao Tsetung. And we were reminded of Chairman Mao’s “cultural revolution,” through which he attempted a Communist version of egalitarianism. All people were to look the same, to dress in the same clothes, live in the exact same type of housing, equipped with the same furniture. Most important, they were to all think the same. (Incidentally, modern China proves that Chairman Mao failed to a large extent.)

But that’s egalitarianism, a drab, colorless uniformity. It wasn’t what Paul had in mind when he spoke about equality. We know that is so because God the Creator is not egalitarian. To be sure, God made us equal in dignity, equal in value. But God did not make us equal in gifts. Some people He made more intelligent than others; some more handsome than others; some more healthy than others; some are tall, others are not; some are thin, and others are not. He has made us all different. Our doctrine of creation is about an equality of value with a diversity of gifts.

So what, then, is the equality that biblical justice demands? The answer is: an equality in opportunity. Christian men and women should be at the forefront of those who are calling for equality of opportunity for everybody throughout the world. That should mean, first of all, the equal chance to hear the gospel. Isn’t that a form of justice? We want everybody to hear the good news, to have a chance to respond to the gospel.

We want everyone to have equal access to the good earth. God created the planet for all its inhabitants, not just for a few. And the resources of the earth, of which He made us stewards, are meant for everybody. Then there should be an equal chance to enjoy access to health-care and food and water and education. That last item, education, is most important. Education helps the young to develop their human potential. It draws out what God has placed in them, enabling them to become fully what He has made them to be. Adventist Christians should be in the very forefront of promoting education. More than 50 percent of people in the developing world 82

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are illiterate. Millions have never had an opportunity to learn to read and write, let alone develop their full potential as human beings.

The text before us in this segment (Prov. 29:7) says that “the righteous care.” They’re a caring people, but “the wicked have no such concern.” Did you notice the words care and concern? These words belong to the vocabulary of love. Love cares. Love is concerned. And that teaches me that love and justice, which are very often put in antithesis to one another, actually belong to one another. Love and justice are not alternatives. Love seeks justice for the oppressed. We need to care, to be concerned.

One more thing before I leave Proverbs 29:7, and that is its reference to the righteous and to the wicked. The Old Testament wisdom literature (Psalms, Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Solomon) all have a lot to say about the righteous and the wicked. They set the righteous and the wicked in contrast to one another: The righteous set God always before them; the wicked neglect God and don’t think about Him at all. The righteous meditate on the Word of the Lord; the wicked neglect it. The righteous obey the law; the wicked disobey.

Here in Proverbs 29:7 is a mark of the righteous we often forget—and a mark of the wicked as well. The righteous care about justice for the poor.

The wicked have no such concern. Not to care about the poor is to be numbered among the wicked. I just wonder how many of us who come to worship here might be numbered among the wicked on the basis of our attitude to the poor? You and I may need to revise our understanding of the categories of righteous and wicked, and reevaluate where we belong.

3. Proverbs 31:8,9: “Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute. Speak up and judge fairly; defend the rights of the poor and needy.”

The third feature in the biblical portrait of the poor is that they are powerless . . . and voiceless. In the biblical understanding right through the Old Testament particularly, poverty and powerlessness are closely related to each other. The worst plight of the poor is not so much their inability to survive, but that they lack the ability by themselves to change their situation. Consequently it’s the duty of those who are neither poor nor powerless to speak up for them.

God describes Himself again and again in Scripture as the God of the Resource Primer

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poor, the friend of the weak, the Father of the fatherless, the defender of the widows, the judge of the oppressed, the protector of aliens. Listen to this in Psalm 146: “[The Lord] upholds the cause of the oppressed and gives food to the hungry. The Lord sets prisoners free. . . . The Lord lifts up those who are bowed down. . . . The Lord watches over the alien and sustains the fatherless and the widow” (verses 7-9).

This is the kind of God He is. And since this is the kind of God He is, this is the kind of people we should be. We have got to imitate Him in His care for the poor and the powerless. The biblical character Job was like this. He was righteous, truly righteous. “I rescued the poor who cried for help,” he said, “and the fatherless who had none to assist him. . . . I put on righteousness as my clothing; justice was my robe and my turban. . . . I was a father to the needy; I took up the case of the stranger” ( Job 29:12-16).

What About Today?

One of the most lamentable examples of the church’s failure to be the voice of the voiceless and the power of the powerless was that of the socalled German Christians at the heart of the Nazi regime. According to Richard Gutteridge, they compromised with Adolf Hitler, attempting a theological defense of the dictator’s myth of racial purity, and turning a blind eye to the Holocaust.† Gutteridge traces the complicity of the Christian church in Germany back to the middle of the nineteenth century. He points out that there were only a few brave leaders who protested against the growing anti-Semitism of the National Socialist Party. (Karl Barth was one exception. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was another.)

“Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute” (Prov. 31:8, 9). Christians should have done that in Germany (and in Yugoslavia and Rwanda). The Second World War possibly would never have taken place if they had. Those Christian churches were guilty of silence when they should have spoken.

To recapitulate, the biblical profile of the poor is that they are human beings created by God in His own image, deserving our respect and service. The poor are human beings with human rights; therefore we must seek † All this is carefully documented by historical scholar Richard Gutteridge in his book Open Thy Mouth for the Dumb! (Oxford: Blackwell, 1976), the title of which is a quotation from Proverbs 31.

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justice for them—especially in regard to equal opportunity. The poor are powerless and voiceless, so we should speak up for them and defend them.

Recently I took on photography as one of the hobbies I’d loved as a youngster. And when I took my daughter Natasha to the airport a while back, I snapped a number of pictures. But when the film window started showing numbers 37, 38, and 39, I felt that something was seriously wrong with the camera. Finally gathering enough courage, I opened the film compartment, only to find that I’d forgotten to put any film in! I’d actually taken 39 blank shots over a period of weeks, and now all those memories remained unrecorded.

I could have gone into depression over the lost opportunities and become angry with myself. And that’s how we could feel after seeing hundreds of lost opportunities and moments when we could have made a difference. But there’s no point in thinking about the could-have-beens.

I finally put another roll of film in my camera and started clicking while Natasha was still around. I took advantage of new opportunities. And if I missed some before, I surely was not going to miss them from now on.

And that, friends, is what we need to do. Let’s load our cameras and go out to make a difference.

God of the poor, friend of the weak, give us compassion, we pray. Melt our cold hearts. Let tears fall like rain. Come, change our love from a spark to a flame. Amen.

*All scripture passages are taken from the New International Version unless otherwise indicated.

Zdravko Plantak chairs the Religion Department at Columbia Union College in Takoma Park, Maryland, and is an associate professor of religion.

Reprinted with permission from Adventist Review.

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Jesus—Friend of the Poor He ate with them, dressed like them, and helped them

by William G. Johnsson Jesus of Nazareth was a poor man who identified with the poor and spent most of His ministry helping the poor. He was a friend of the poor, and though He had some wealthy friends and disciples, the poor rather than the rich accepted His message and became His friends.

This picture of the Founder of Christianity stands in radical contrast to the course taken by His followers over the centuries. Basilicas, cathedrals, palaces for prelates, gold and silver, vast land holdings (the church of the Middle Ages owned a third of Europe!), luxury, pomp and circumstance—what happened to the Peasant from Galilee?

Nor has Hollywood helped in our day. Jesus walks in immaculate white robe; handsome, blow-dried, manicured, He looks every inch presidential.

Read the Gospels, and you find a starkly different portrait.

Jesus was a poor man. Of course, He was born in a manger, but that manger was a far cry from our Christmas pageants. Picture it as dirty, smelly, and flea-ridden, and you’re closer to the reality.

Jesus grew up in Nazareth, a small town in the Galilean hills. He never went to school; as a boy and young man He helped His father, Joseph, who worked as a carpenter. Later when Jesus forsook Nazareth for the life of itinerant preacher-healer, people said of Him, “Isn’t this the carpenter?”

(Mark 6:3).

One day when a scribe came up to Him and said, “Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go,” Jesus cut him short with: “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head” 86

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(Matt. 8:19,20).

Mohandas Gandhi at his death left a rice bowl, a pair of spectacles, a pair of sandals—the residue of a life. But Ghandi left India free.

Jesus at His death left only a few items of clothing. Roman soldiers divided them among themselves and gambled over His chiton, the long, seamless undergarment. But Jesus left the world free.

Paul the apostle sums up the human career of Jesus: “Though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich” (2 Cor. 8:9).

Further, Jesus, this poor man from the north, this provincial, identified with the poor. Most of the 12 that He chose as leaders of His movement were poor, and His closest associates—Peter, James, and John— were fishermen and poor.

Although some from the Jerusalem establishment were attracted to Him and eventually threw in their lot with Him, His following came from the poor. “The common people [literally, “the people of the land”] heard him gladly” (Mark 12:37, KJV) and at one point tried to crown Him as Israel’s Messiah.

Israel’s religious leaders considered these people of the land, whose lives were a daily grind to provide food for their families, cursed by God ( John 7:49). They had no time for the scrupulosity the Pharisees’ religion demanded, and the very fact that they were poor “proved” that they did not enjoy Yahweh’s favor.

But Jesus spent most of His time among these men and women, despised by the spiritual authorities. He dressed like them, wearing the chiton and the himation, the outer garment. He ate their simple food, and when He miraculously fed the multitudes, He satisfied their hunger with the staples of their diet, bread and fish.

“He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him,” predicted the prophet Isaiah (Isa. 53:2). Messiah came without ostentation, without show. Jesus mingled with the poor of Galilee as one of them.

Third, Jesus devoted most of His ministry to working for the poor. At the outset of His public life He selected the passage from Isaiah 61:1, 2 as Resource Primer

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the keynote for His work: “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:18, 19).

And they came to Him. They came to hear and to be healed. The blind, the deaf, the dumb, the maimed, the crippled, and the lame. Even lepers.

Even beggars. No one was outside the pale, too socially unacceptable.

Turning the Tables Once in a calculated thrust at Jesus’ reputation His enemies said, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them” (Luke 15:2). And He did.

Rather than being a matter of shame, however, it was the mark of Jesus’ ministry, the essence of His concentration on helping the poor.

Finally, Jesus blessed the poor, but rebuked the rich.

Jesus’ blessings, or beatitudes, that commence the Sermon on the Mount are rightly famous. “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” He said, “for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. . . . Blessed are those who mourn. . . .

Blessed are the meek. . . . Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. . . . Blessed are the merciful...” (Matt. 5:3-11).

What most people, Christians included, don’t seem to realize is that Luke gives an alternative reading of the Beatitudes, one that brings courage to the poor (not just the “poor in spirit”). And these blessings close with a set of corresponding woes—on the rich!

“Looking at his disciples, he said: ‘Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who hunger now, for you will be satisfied… But woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your comfort” (Luke 6:20-24).

The gospel that Jesus preached turned the tables on the religious and popular thinking of the day. Instead of wealth being evidence of God’s blessing, Jesus said: “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God! Indeed, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God” (Luke 18:24).

He told stories that illustrated this divine turning of the tables, of the rich man and Lazarus the beggar, who, covered with sores, was laid at the gate of the rich man’s mansion. But after death the angels carried Lazarus 88

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to the bosom of Abraham, while the tycoon went to hell (Luke 16:19-31).

Jesus told also of the wealthy fool who, in a year of bountiful harvest, began to count his gains and plan for the future. But that night he died, and all his wealth went to someone else (Luke 12:16-21).

These stories shocked the disciples and must have offended the rich.

To be fair to the total picture, however, we should include those incidents from the Gospel accounts that present the other side—Jesus the popular dinner guest, frequently invited home by Pharisees and the rich; wealthy people who became disciples—Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea; society women who gave from their wealth to support His itinerant ministry (Luke 8:1-3); miraculous healings of the nobleman’s son ( John 4:43-53), the centurion’s servant (Matt. 8:5-13), and Jairus’ daughter (Mark 5:22-43).

But with these exceptions, Jesus’ ministry did not appeal to the wellheeled. He showed no reluctance toward them—He flung open the door of the kingdom to all. But they, unlike the poor, were so content with their lot in life that they felt little need of Jesus’ good news.

The biblical data, then, come down overwhelmingly on the side of the poor. Jesus, friend of the poor, devoted most of His time to the poor and found most response from among the poor. Before His birth, Mary had sung of Yahweh: “He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty” (Luke 1:53), and this became a prophecy of the work of her Son. The implications for life in our times come to each of us heavy with personal challenge. The man or the woman who today would take seriously Jesus’ call “Follow Me!” must also be a friend of the poor and seek to bring them help and hope.

Unless otherwise noted, Bible texts in this article are from the New International Version.

William G. Johnsson was editor of the Adventist Review, where this articled appeared in 1993. Used with permission.

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Mankind Is Your Business

by David N. Marshall Rarely has a man taken his marriage vows as lightly as Albert Edward, Prince of Wales. When his mother, Queen Victoria, was in extreme old age, one of his friends made a serious attempt to focus his mind on something other than the carnal. He took the prince to “the worst and poorest” slums in Clerkenwell and St. Pancras.

The prince was astonished by what he found in the slums. Going from alley to alley, his unescorted party of friends discovered entire families, each living in a single unfurnished room. A gaunt, shivering woman lay on a heap of rags with three nearly naked children too dazed by cold and hunger to make any response to the prince and his friends.1 The prince returned to his palace enraged. Four days later he was still angry enough to make a speech in the House of Lords. He was amazed and alarmed. He had read no Dickens. For decades Charles Dickens had described the conditions of the poor in books that were read in the homes of the rich. In A Christmas Carol he had caricatured a hard, selfish man of business who needed to be told “Mankind is your business!”

The prince of Wales lost interest within a month or two and returned to the arms of the amazing number of women who populated his life.

When he discovered that he, among others, owned the freehold of some of the slum districts he had visited, he discovered that he had never been interested at all. . . . So much for all the righteous anger he had worked up.

1

Stanley Weintraub, The Importance of Being Edward (London: John Murray, 2000), pp. 285-289, 377.

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What About Our Righteous Anger?

“Mankind is your business” is quite a mission statement. How do we relate to it? You take in the images on television and become seriously concerned. But what do you do with your concern? At heart we know that mankind is our business, but the images fade, the comfort zone beckons, and our vested interests conflict. We desperately search for some wriggle room—just in case we might have to spend some of our money, our time, or ourselves on mankind’s business.

“I saw the Ethiopian famine images on television,” said a man, “and I decided on the DIY approach: Don’t Involve Yourself. Get it?” I got it, but I didn’t want it. Thankfully, millions of others who saw the same images on television did involve themselves. People as diverse as the very wealthy and the attendees of the Live Aid pop concert, they all decided that mankind was their business, and everyone was astonished by their selfsacrifice.

Dickens did not originate the concept “Mankind is your business.”

It is a foundation stone of Christianity. Do these words ring any bells?

“I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me. . . . I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me” (Matt. 25:35-40, NIV).

The words of Jesus are chilling when they are expressed in the negative.

“Depart from me. . . . For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat. . .

Whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me” (Matt. 25:41-45, NIV). Up close and personal, aren’t they? Do you remember the context of these words of Jesus? He had been talking about the signs of His coming in Matthew 24 (Adventists like that part). Then in Matthew 25 Jesus tells three stories that illustrate what constitutes readiness for His coming.2 Jesus’ final call for readiness is in the story of the sheep and the goats.

His second coming is at the beginning of the story, and the setting is the last judgment. The point of the story, in part, is to demonstrate that “the 2

R. T. France, New Testament Commentaries: Matthew (Tyndale), p. 354.

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union between Christ and his people is the most tender and endearing of all connections. . . . He considers favours shown to his people as shown to himself.”3 The point of the story is in part that the criterion of judgment is how we relate to these little ones, the least of these, the brothers and sisters of Jesus: the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the sick, and the imprisoned.

And that is the point over which some people get alarmed. They are at home with theology and prophetic scenarios, but pained by the idea that to make theology real, you have to translate it into life.

There is something slightly indecent about the glee with which we rub our hands over the signs of the Second Coming. Why? Because many of the signs of the end concern the frequency and scale of disasters that impact negatively upon the lives of millions. Could that be the reason Jesus called upon His people to demonstrate their readiness for His return by serving these little ones, the least of these, His brothers and sisters—victims of disaster and displacement?

God-talk and God-acts “Dear friends, do you think you’ll get anywhere in this if you learn all the right words but never do anything?” asks the apostle James. “Does merely talking about faith indicate that a person really has it? . . . Isn’t it obvious that God-talk without God-acts is outrageous nonsense?” ( James 2:14-17, Message).

When Jesus said, “Then the righteous will answer [the Judge upon His throne], ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you?’” (Matt. 25:37, NIV), the word translated “righteous” denotes both character (behavior) and the fact that the person has been acquitted, has received a favorable verdict from the judge.4 In short, “the righteous”—those who serve the person of Jesus in the least of these, His brothers and sisters—are those who have been saved by grace through faith and who have demonstrated that faith through service.

The best way to delight a parent’s heart is to help his or her child. That’s how it is with Jesus and “the least of these.”

Francis was highborn, high-spirited, and rich. But he was not happy.

3

Albert Barnes, A Popular Family Commentary on the New Testament: Matthew and Mark (Gresham, 1832), vol.

1, p. 271.

4 France, p. 357.

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His life was incomplete. Then one day he met a lame and loathsome leper.

Something moved Francis to dismount and fling his arms around the sufferer. As he did so, the face of the leper changed into the face of Christ.

One and the Same The statements “Jesus is my business” and “Mankind is my business” are not two; they are one and the same. When we grasp that, the impetus to serve will not weaken as the images of suffering fade from our memories.

It will fade only if the image of Jesus fades from our hearts.

David N. Marshall is the editor of Stanborough Press in Grantham, Lincolnshire, England.

Reprinted with permission from the Adventist Review.

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Humanizing the Church

by Warren S. Bansfield “Some time later, as the number of disciples kept growing, there was a quarrel between the Greek-speaking Jews and the native Jews. The Greek-speaking Jews claimed that their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution of funds. So the twelve apostles called the whole group of believers together and said, ‘It is not right for us to neglect the preaching of God’s word in order to handle finances. So then, brothers, choose seven men among you who are known to be full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom, and we will put them in charge of this matter. We ourselves, then, will give our full time to prayer and the work of preaching.’

“The whole group was pleased with the apostles’ proposal, so they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and the Holy Spirit, and Philip, Prochorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicolaus, a Gentile from Antioch who had earlier been converted to Judaism. The group presented them to the apostles, who prayed and placed their hands on them.

“And so the word of God continued to spread. The number of disciples in Jerusalem grew larger and larger, and a great number of priests accepted the faith” (Acts 6:1-7, TEV).

These verses indicate that the structure of the Christian church evolved from human experience and was pragmatic in nature. The disciples received no divine organizational blueprint. Furthermore, this experience resulted in the humanization of the early church.

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church has exhibited a strange naïveté regarding structures, policies, and procedures for doing business. It gave almost blind acceptance, with little questioning as to whether current polity enabled a congregation to achieve its goals. At times it has even demonstrated a tendency to defend existing polity against even minor alterations.

The British Civil Service is said to have created a job in 1803 that called for a man to stand on the cliffs of Dover with a spyglass to sound an alarm if he saw Napoleon’s navy approaching. Napoleon died May 5, 1821.

This position, however, was not abolished until 1945.

How often structures, policies, and procedures for doing business continue long after the reasons for them have ceased. Many ideals, rules, policies, and procedures held by one generation may not be valid in another.

The Rightness of a given course may change with changing times.

No such thing as an exclusively Christian structure exists. Each church has developed its own particular organizational characteristics. In each historical period churches have adopted styles of organization that predominated in the surrounding culture.

Structures create a definition of membership and of the nature and purpose of the church. They express its values and speak of its leadership.

Church structures, policies, and procedures should not be taken for granted, for they affect the behavior of individuals and groups as well as the involvement of members, clergy, and other professionals in the church’s mission.

Structures Shape Us The institutions we form return to shape us. We choose what we will be as we shape our communities, for our morality is largely determined by the communities of which we form a part. We must ask the fundamental questions What are we to be as persons? and What are we to be as communities? The two are inseparable, since communities become the matrix in which persons are formed. Because of this, all structures require positive, attentive governance.

The church should provide a context in which all persons can develop fully and freely. Sin, unfortunately, distorts all aspects of our lives. Saints are capable of barbaric acts, and not all the actions of the most well-meanResource Primer

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ing are free of taint. Institutions may give order to our existence or may impose upon us intolerable fetters. The institutions we design can become a force for human fulfillment or a force for dehumanization. Many times institutions formed to serve human needs end up victimizing people for the sake of the institution. Even though societies and communities can be made better, in this world we never fully become saints, never build Utopias. Since the Fall of man, there never has been—and prior to the second coming of Christ there never will be —a perfect church.

Rules provide guidelines for our social development. The norms of the church should be compatible with our vision of the kingdom. Institutional rules should contribute not only to the efficiency of the organization but to the enhancement of our lives.

The function of structures, policies, and procedures has been to facilitate the work of the church. These aspects of organization are human inventions that enable the church to achieve its goals. Structures, policies, and procedures, however, do not come directly from God; they are the creation of persons. Polity influences the participation of persons and groups and the effectiveness of the congregation in achieving its goals. But church structures, policies, and procedures need to be continually examined and modified in order to enable the congregation to fulfill its Christian understanding of life.

Is our church polity designed to mobilize the congregation, or is it designed primarily to enable a minority to maintain control? When the latter happens, it often results in apathy and discontent, in an ignoring of church policies, and in the rejection of leadership. Our society exhibits a growing reaction against big impersonal organizations; it demands that more power be returned to local levels. People need to feel part of a community that respects their needs regardless of age, sex, race, or economic status.

Goals Without Support Clergy and laity alike find it difficult to accomplish much in the church when rules and procedures are no longer acceptable, when standards seem no longer to reflect a concern for people or meet their expectations. Structures, policies, and procedures function only as long as clergy and laity permit them to. Administrators find their illusions of power shattered when 96

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they attempt to achieve goals that do not have wide support in the congregation. Therefore, power lodges ultimately in every member.

Anarchy develops when significant numbers of a congregation or the clergy no longer support traditional rules and procedures. Anarchy, however, is not a satisfactory solution. Doing one’s own thing runs counter to the central features of the Christian faith. When structures, policies, and procedures do not help congregations achieve goals important to them, either indifference or an effort to change the system and replace those in power tends to develop.

Unresolved conflict feeds upon itself and grows stronger. Conflict can increase tensions and lead to rebellion, litigation, or violence. Are we doing what we can to develop methods of managing conflict in ways that will prevent tensions from escalating to unmanageable levels? Peace will not be secured by merely putting out brushfires as they occur. We need a better understanding of keeping the peace so we can manage conflict more constructively and creatively.

Keeping Pace Usually only when organizations experience turbulence do they make any attempt to alter their structure. Changes taking place in many organizations today include increased opportunities for laity to make responsible decisions, greater cooperation and interdependence between various parts of the organization, extensive review and evaluation processes, and increased emphasis on communication, giving contemporary organizations much greater flexibility.

We are inescapably tied to our communities. The very shape and quality of our lives is linked to them. We cannot make profound changes in our lives without making profound changes in our institutions and their structures.

But church organizations especially seem to resist change. To produce the smallest change requires a tremendous amount of time and effort.

Today we live in a state of flux. Each moment offers both new possibilities and new challenges for developing ourselves and our Christian institutions. As Christians, our concerns should include a recognition of the worth of all people and an endeavor to keep life humane.

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Changes in rules, procedure, and institutional structures must go hand in hand with human progress. As our minds become more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths unearthed, and perceptions and opinions change, the church must advance in order to keep pace with the times and fulfill its mission.

Until his retirement in April of 1989, Warren S. Bansfield served as director of the Office of Human Relations at the General Conference.

Reprinted with permission from the Adventist Review, Aug. 1989.

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Humanitarian Ministry: A Biblical Perspective Fulfilling the gospel commission is as much about actions as it is about words.

by Susan M. Fenton Willoughby Jesus’ mandate, “Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation” (Mark 16:15), reflects the biblical concept of humanitarianism in its broadest and most inclusive sense. Yet when we think of preaching the good news, we tend to think most often in terms of a message, fundamental beliefs that people embrace before we consider them evangelized.

But the way we live as Christians, and reflect God’s concern to every level of society, is the true measure of our understanding and appreciation of the gospel commission.

Humanitarian ministry is part of the broad mission of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, so “that every person might come to know Jesus and claim victory over sin and evil.”1 This concept is part of the growing discussion intended to lead to an expanded Seventh-day Adventist Statement of Fundamental Beliefs for individual Christian growth.

While we may agree that the church is built on Christ’s teachings, the humanitarian paradigm must stretch beyond a linear concept that describes outreach efforts as either evangelistic or humanitarian. True outreach is wholistic, inclusive, personal, and universal. A mission-driven perspective must encompass the physical, social, emotional, economic, and spiritual needs of those we hope to reach with the gospel.

Jesus’ command to “go into all the world and preach” represented a departure from the Jewish traditions intended only for local consumption.

From henceforth the message and ministry of Christianity were to be 1 Mark A. Kellner, quoting Michael A. Ryan in an Adventist Network News Report, “Growing in Christ . . . ,” Silver Spring, Maryland, April 2004.

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heard and felt by everyone—Jew and Gentile. Humanitarianism’s all-inclusive scope stretches from A to Z, from the “givers” to the “receivers.”

Being socially involved in our communities is as important for our spiritual development as it is for those we serve.

A Biblical Imperative Our humanitarian ministry has to reflect Christ’s earthly ministry, which didn’t recognize any human distinctions of economics, education, ethnicity, caste, or class. Ellen G. White referred to humanitarianism as a divine prescription2 and quoted Isaiah 58:5-11 extensively. In the religious and economic setting of Isaiah 58, the Jews fasted and prayed, but withheld food from the poor. How can a society pretend to fast or worship when the ills of society go unchallenged?

The purpose of fasting is practical as well as spiritual. The food not eaten during a fast could, quite logically, be given to the poor. The one who shares food with the hungry, houses the homeless and dispossessed, and clothes the naked makes a difference in changing society and in reflecting God’s values.3 God’s message to Isaiah embodied the very essence of biblical humanitarianism: “Your fasting ends in quarreling and strife. . . . You cannot fast as you do. . . . Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter . . . ? If you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday” (Isa. 58:4-10).

The divine prescription of Isaiah 58 was supported in 1 Peter 4:8-11, which admonished believers to offer hospitality, serve each other, and administer God’s grace in various forms. James made practical just what it means to offer hospitality: “Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, ‘Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed,’ but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it?” ( James 2:15, 16). This passage forges a link between the faith of the be2

Ellen G. White, Welfare Ministry, p. 29.

James Burton Coffman, “Commentary on Isaiah 58,” Coffman Commentaries on the Old and New Testament (Abilene, Tex.: Abilene Christian University Press, 1983-1999).

3

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liever and the fruits of that faith—living works of humanitarianism motivated and driven by a mandate to “go into all the world.”

Modern Implications On Tuesday morning, September 11, 2001, Carol Parkman, an Atlantic Union College alumna on her way to work, appeared at my classroom door. In a terror-stricken voice, she exclaimed, “Dr. Willoughby, turn on the television—the United States is under attack.” Immediately, one of our students jumped from his seat and turned on the television. The September 11 event expanded the meaning of humanitarianism.

The September 11 tragedy highlighted biblical humanitarianism in an unexpected way. As news of the event seeped into our collective consciousness, the thought that the victims directly and indirectly involved are our neighbors gave us all pause. Then, as the dust from those terrible events settled, we were forced to admit that those who live in the countries that harbored those terrorists are our neighbors also. Our “neighbor” is the entire human family, and our humanitarian lifestyle has to reflect love, kindness, caring, and thoughtfulness to the needs of those with equal rights but unequal resources.

The parable of the good Samaritan reports the story of a lawyer who challenged Jesus, wondering what he had to do to gain eternal life. Jesus responded with the story of a man beaten by robbers and left to die. A priest, a Levite, and a Samaritan recognized the man’s plight, but only the hated Samaritan gave assistance.

At the conclusion of the story Jesus asked, “Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?”

The expert replied, “The one who had mercy on him.”

Jesus said, “Go and do likewise” (Luke 10:36, 37).

Our neighbor is anyone who needs our help without consideration of class, caste, color, or creed. The Samaritan, although reviled by the Jews of Jesus’ time, stands as an ageless example of humanitarian service in spite of the risks to our personal safety.

On the other hand, when Cain killed Abel, “the Lord said to Cain, ‘Where is your brother Abel?’ “‘I don’t know,’ he replied. ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’” (Gen. 4:9).

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From that moment Cain’s sin of murder expanded to include impiety, anger, jealousy, and falsehood, resulting in his alienation from God. We cannot justify ignoring the needs of those less fortunate than ourselves, whether they live in our communities or anywhere else in the world.

More of “The Least of These” There are other groups worthy of our ministry, and we don’t have to travel far to serve them. God warned Moses and the children of Israel, “Do not mistreat an alien or oppress him, for you were aliens in Egypt. Do not take advantage of a widow or an orphan. If you do and they cry out to me, I will certainly hear their cry” (Ex. 22:21-23). All defenseless people are objects of God’s special concern and providential care. How are they perceived in light of our spiritual priorities?

One Bible scholar suggests that violation of this biblical precept may have led to the retribution visited upon the Jews when Nebuchadnezzar captured Jerusalem.4 God’s care suggests a humanitarian service that reveals itself through hospitality, care for the brokenhearted, and active, unselfish love. By entertaining strangers, Abraham and Sarah entertained angels (see Genesis 18).

Another instance of hospitality, documented in 3 John 5, supports the act of being hospitable to strangers when John admonished Gaius to do whatever he had to do to serve faithfully the believers as well as strangers.

Such a concept suggests a helping hand to those with whom we may not be personally acquainted, as well as to those we know well.

There are those in the church who are brokenhearted and need someone to say an appropriate word of encouragement at the right time. Delicate situations might be involved, but assistance must be given. When King David was pursued by his enemies, he wrote: “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit. A righteous man may have many troubles, but the Lord delivers him from them all” (Ps. 34:18, 19). God has given gifts to His children. Some have been given clusters of gifts, and when we are sensitive to His leading, the Lord will direct how those gifts should be used.

4

George Rawlinson, The Pulpit Commentary, Exodus II (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1950), vol. 1, p. 191.

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Not all of us are counselors, ministers, social workers, professionals with training in negotiation and conflict resolution, but we should all display a kind and caring disposition to those in need. After all, Christ’s command to “go and preach” applies to us all.

I once read about a single mother who told her church family that one of her greatest needs was not food or clothing for herself and her two boys; instead, it was that someone would take her sons fishing—just once in a while.

Another group to whom the church should pay special attention is the divorced. It takes a strong person to survive a divorce and remain active in the church. Singles are divided into at least three categories: (1) those who are single by choice, (2) those who have lost a spouse through death, and (3) those who have been divorced. Surviving spouses appear to receive excellent attention, but divorced persons seem to be regarded by many as “untouchables.” In discussing assistance for this group, the following sentiments are often expressed: “We don’t know what to say; we’re afraid of taking sides.” Couples don’t invite the divorced singles to social events, and divorced singles don’t invite themselves because they don’t want to be seen as a fifth or seventh wheel. The church should include this group in its humanitarian ministries.

The Power of Example The word “love” is overused and underexpressed. Our expressions of love are often culture-bound, yet we Adventists continue to find appropriate ways of expressing love as a means of demonstrating inclusiveness.

Some expressions of love are simple and universal—a smile instead of a frown. But other expressions need someone brave enough to take the initiative to make a difference.

Several years ago I traveled in a distant land, where part of my journey was made by bus. When I boarded the bus, seats were still available. Later, when all the seats were occupied, men remained seated as women entered and remained standing, holding on to the handrails for safety. Later a woman in an advanced state of pregnancy boarded the bus. When I noticed her struggling to remain steady, I stood up and gave her my seat. Immediately two men arose and offered me a seat.

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Apparently, women in that society receive scant preferential treatment—even when they’re carrying a baby. Whereas I, a stranger to that culture, received special treatment, perhaps because I was from another country. Jesus said, “Do to others what you would have them do to you” (Matt. 7:12). This love knows no boundaries; Paul wrote: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:28).

Identifying the joys and sorrows of others is a Christian’s privilege and responsibility. The apostle Paul wrote: “Do not repay anyone evil for evil.

Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. . . . ‘If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink’” (Rom. 12:17-20). By so doing, our humanitarianism will be wholistic, inclusive, and motivated by the gospel imperative.

Welcome to the biblical perspective of humanitarianism.

All scriptural references in this article are from the New International Version.

Susan M. Fenton Willoughby is chair of the Department of Sociology and Social Work at Atlantic Union College in South Lancaster, Massachusetts. Reprinted with permission from the Adventist Review.

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Five Things the World Needs to Know About Us

by Jan Paulsen There are moments when you’re forced to step back and consider how your faith looks through another person’s eyes. Sitting before the glare of television lights, speaking with a journalist who has perhaps never had a conversation with a Seventh-day Adventist, is one of those moments. How do you encompass, in just a few sentences—a few sound bites—the depth and breadth of your faith, the tremendous meaning it has for you personally, the richness of its history, the power of its message, and the promise it holds for both individuals and for society?

Who Are You? Over the past decade I’ve encountered the public media in many countries and in many different settings. And in each encounter I sense one basic, underlying question. It comes to me whether I’m speaking to a journalist in New York City or occupying the so-called “hot seat” on Malawi national television. It’s a question that is asked with an intensity that sometimes takes me by surprise: “Tell us, who are Seventh-day Adventists really?”

And when I tell them that we have a presence in almost every country, that we’re a rapidly growing Christian community of—children and adults—some 25 million people, it surprises them. They ask, with a puzzled look: “Why do we know so little about you? Where have you been hiding? So tell us, really, who are you?” They are intrigued by the rapid pace of our growth when so many other churches within historic Christianity are losing ground.

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gesting we stray from our core task—teaching and preaching biblical truths. Evangelism is our mission. This must never be compromised. It’s at the heart of our identity, our spiritual anchorage. But from this secure base, let’s also talk about how our spiritual foundations shape us as a people; let’s talk about the values that flow from these truths, and the practical difference they make not only in our own lives, but in the neighborhoods and cities where there is an Adventist presence.

And so, against this background, I’d like to suggest five points I believe we would do well to profile more prominently through the public media.

1. A “culture-less” faith In a recent television interview the host asked: “How can modern life be instructed by a book written 2,000 years ago? They had such different values then!”

As a Seventh-day Adventist, I want the public to know that the values the Bible teaches are not imprisoned within any one culture or any particular period of history. They are timeless and “culture-less”; they speak to us no matter where we live or what our background. And so we must show how the values we advocate relate to life as we live it now. Compassion, selfless service, love of freedom, tolerance and respect for each other, willingness to give rather than take—these eternal biblical values have immense significance in today’s world.

2. A living faith Not only are our values timeless, they are alive. Ours is not a faith of theory but of practice. The faith we hold is not confined in an archive or textbook; it’s not a faith that’s best explained by the academic or even the theologian. It’s a faith that finds its most compelling expression in the everyday actions of the man or woman whose life has been transformed by Christ.

So let’s demonstrate in the public sphere how the truths we hold impact our lives. Let’s talk about our advocacy for religious liberty; for we are freedom fighters in the truest sense, working not only for those who share our point of view, but for everyone regardless of their beliefs.

Let’s talk about our commitment to the cause of temperance, our historic struggle against those destructive elements of society—tobacco, al106

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cohol, drug abuse and misuse—which cause such suffering to the family and community.

Let’s explain why we are so focused on health care, development aid, and combating some of the scourges of humanity such as HIV/AIDS. For just as Christ stepped into the world of His time and offered healing and hope, so we feel a deep responsibility to each of God’s children who experiences injustice or hurt.

I want the world to know we will do more than simply talk about the Scriptures; we will live its principles. And because of this we will inevitably be drawn into positive, constructive engagement with our communities.

3. Shaping people for eternity Journalists are often amazed by the sheer size of our church’s education system. The interest is natural—we have a worldwide network of more than 7,000 schools and almost one and a half million students. But it seems to me that in presenting this picture we need to talk not just about statistics, but the reason for this tremendous investment in education. We need to say, without falling too far into religious jargon, that our commitment is grounded in our belief that eternity begins now. This is the time when we want to start shaping people for a never-ending potential. We live and plan for an infinite future, and our concern for the development of individuals— spiritually, mentally, physically—is driven by this perspective.

4. Peacemakers In Rwanda, during the horror of the 1994 genocide, the churches failed. The disastrous events of that time went largely unchecked by a community that had for many years considered itself thoroughly Christian.

Let us never forget that when it comes to fulfilling Christ’s command to be “peacemakers,” silence can be as much a failure as speaking the wrong words. Silence in the face of evil is complicity in what is wrong; it can be a killing weapon when hatred is having a field day.

I want Seventh-day Adventists to be known as people who lift high their commitment to hope and peace. Let us speak from the pulpit and show through our actions that we oppose anything that instills hatred or inflames violence.

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As individual Christians we may have limited tools for intervening in some of the larger issues of our society. But we can speak out consistently for peace. We can demonstrate in our congregations and in our relationships within the community that Christ has the power to heal divisions of all kinds: personal, political, or ethnic.

This means taking risks at times, stepping outside what is comfortable.

And it means acting carefully to avoid tainting the church with even the “aroma” of partisan politics. But difficulty does not excuse us from this fundamental Christian responsibility to teach and model peace.

5. A people of integrity In an era when corruption of all kinds dominates the headlines, Seventh-day Adventists have something to say about morality, ethics, and integrity. We’re not happy to confine our spirituality to the church pew. We don’t subscribe to a theology that says actions don’t matter. But rather, we know that our conduct is either a constant confirmation or denial of our faith.

I want Seventh-day Adventists to be known as honest people who teach and practice morality; people with the highest ethical standards; people who speak out against greed and against the self-serving attitudes that corrupt society.

In some places we are already recognized for these values. The president of an African nation recently said to me: “Adventists can teach our country so much about integrity and ethical behavior.” And this is wonderful. These are areas where we have so much to offer—both corporately and as individuals—within the public sphere.

In these conversations with the public media I find an openness, even an eagerness, to hear more about us, to discover what we value highly, to understand those issues we are prepared to engage with. And every now and then I hear a quiet, “That’s amazing!” It’s as though they had not expected a dimension to our faith that steps so decisively into the everyday world.

“Who are you, really?” Let’s answer the question plainly and boldly.

And in the picture we present, I pray the world will clearly see an image of the One we serve.

Reprinted with permission from the Adventist Review.

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❖ Blessing pulls our attention to what comes next. Blessing is focused on the future. ❖ Blessing is honest. It realigns the relationships we have with each other with our common relationship with God. ❖ Blessing clears the way for hope. Even in the face of adversity, blessing brings the prospect of renewal into clearer focus. ❖ Blessing contains words of love. Love is the energy source for growing relationships. ❖ Blessing contains welcome and inclusion. It can create the environment where we can sit down and know each other better. ❖ Blessing goes with people where they go. ❖ Blessing begats the need for blessing. It suggests a response, an ongoing dialogue. ❖ Blessing exercises discernment, not control.

It lets go. It recognizes rather than shapes. It is content to let differences exist, and even flourish.

—Gary Gunderson

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The Concept of Blessing Be the light of the world, he says. Where there are dark places, be the light especially there. Be the salt of the earth. Bring out the true flavor of what it is to be alive truly. Be truly alive. Be life-givers to others. That is what Jesus tells the disciples to be. That is what Jesus tells his Church, tells us, to be and do. Love each other. Heal the sick, he says. Raise the dead. Cleanse lepers. Cast out demons.

That is what loving each other means. If the Church is doing things like that, then it is being what Jesus told it to be. If it is not doing things like that–no matter how many other good and useful things it may be doing instead–then it is not being what Jesus told it to be. It is as simple as that.

—Frederick Buechner Introduction In former times, the concept of blessing was very significant. Today, when words are cheap, we can forget how important it is to bless others.

We miss the opportunities, even as we say “goodbye,” not realizing that the very word we use is an old blessing “God be with you.” In our society it seems we have forgotten to truly bless, and share blessings with those around us.

This ministry is corrective, recognizing how each of us needs to bless and be blessed. It seeks to share God’s blessing with those around us, especially those in our community who would not otherwise have contact with us.

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Biblical basis A quick search of Scripture reveals that the idea of blessing is mentioned over 500 times! From the earliest times, people have asked for God’s blessing, for others and for themselves. The Old Testament is full of stories about blessing, and Jesus continued this theme in the New Testament when he identified who was truly blessed in the Beatitudes (Matthew 5).

At creation God blessed—in his actions, and in his words. He blesses three times. Every day of creation God called good, but when he made living creatures he blessed them (Gen. 1:22). Then when he made the first human beings he blessed them (Gen. 1:28). The third blessing is the one he gives to his special day—the seventh-day Sabbath (Gen. 2:3).

In God’s call to Abraham, the central message is one of blessing: “I will bless you, you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you…. All peoples on earth will be blessed through you” (Gen 12:2-3 NIV). God’s intent is to spread the blessing to the world.

The blessing also comes through human agency: Abraham is blessed

by Melchizedek: “Blessed be Abram by God Most High, Creator of heaven and earth, and blessed be God Most High” (Gen 14:19-20 NIV). Here we see a clear example of our mission of asking God’s blessing for others.

In Genesis we also see blessings on Sarah, Isaac, Rebekah—even Ishmael, in response to Abraham’s request. Jacob fights God, and at the very end, refuses to let his assailant go until he blesses him: “I will not let you go unless you bless me” (Gen. 32:26). Blessing is seen as very valuable— which is what leads Jacob to try to steal his elder brother’s blessing in the first place.

And so the concept continues. Balak tries to get Balaam to curse Israel, but all he can do is bless. He says that God has told him to bless, not curse, and he can’t do otherwise: “I have received a command to bless; he has blessed, and I cannot change it” (Num. 23:20 NIV).

Before they go into the Promised Land, Moses tells the Israelites what God promises: “The LORD will send a blessing on your barns and on everything you put your hand to. The LORD your God will bless you in the land he is giving you” (Deut. 28:8 NIV).

Aaron blesses the people (Lev. 9:22); Moses blesses the Israelites (Deut. 28); Joshua blesses Caleb ( Josh. 14:13); Eli blesses Elkanah and 114

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Hannah, Samuel’s mother (1 Sam. 2:20); Naomi blesses Boaz (Ruth 2:20); Saul blesses David (1 Sam. 6:25); David blesses his household (2 Sam. 6:20); Solomon blesses the whole assembly at the dedication of the temple (1 Kings 8:55); God blesses Job ( Job 42:12). Throughout the Psalms and Proverbs blessings are asked. Even Israel’s enemies are seen as being blessed

by God in Isaiah (Is. 19:25). The concept of blessing runs right through to the last book of the Old Testament where God says that all nations will call Israel blessed (Mal.3:12).

As Jesus lays out the foundations of his ministry in the Sermon on the Mount, the central perspective is on those who are truly blessed (Matt. 5, see also Luke 6). Salvation is for those who are blessed by the Father (Matt.

25:34). We are blessed by knowing and following what Jesus says ( John 13:17). The call is to “bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse” (Rom. 12:14 NIV). Paul does what he does because of the blessings: “I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings” (1 Cor.9:23 NIV). Our praise to God is based on the fact that he “has blessed us with every spiritual blessing” (Eph. 1:3 NLT). Peter tells us to pay people back with a blessing: “Don’t repay evil for evil. Don’t retaliate with insults when people insult you. Instead, pay them back with a blessing. That is what God has called you to do, and he will bless you for it” (1 Pet. 3:9 NLT). The concept of blessings continue right up till the very last book of the Bible (Rev. 22:7, 14). From beginning to end the Scriptures point to blessing, the author of blessing, and our part in blessing others.

Our part in blessing So it’s clear that we have been missing a significant role in our society.

How would it be if the church was seen as a true blessing in the community? Not in a self-serving way, but truly helping and blessing others!

Famous English preacher Charles Spurgeon said it right. Though the language is old, listen what God says through him: There is also another way of blessing God which, I trust, we shall all endeavor to practice; and that is by the doing good to his children. When they are sick, visit them. When they are downcast, comfort them. When they are poor, relieve them. When they are Resource Primer

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hard pressed by outward adversaries, stand at their side, and help them. You cannot bless the Head, but you can bless the feet; and when you have refreshed the feet, you have refreshed the Head.

He will say, ‘Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.’ If they be naked, and you clothe them; if they be sick, and you visit them; if they be hungry, and you feed them; you do in this respect bless God. David not only said, ‘Thou art my Lord: my goodness extendeth not to thee;’ but added, ‘but to the saints that are in the earth, and to the excellent in whom is all my delight.’ You can be good to them, and in that respect you may be blessing God. What an idea—that through all of this done to others we are really blessing God! This clearly doesn’t come from a sense of obligation, but because we want to share God’s blessings that we have received with others. If we think of blessing others as some kind of “duty,” then we miss the whole concept.

It’s because we truly want to, we delight to share with others, and help them gain blessings in their lives.

Ultimately: The heart that is generous and kind most resembles God. —Robert Burns Think about that for a while. Not forcing ourselves to do so, but simply expressing such Godlike qualities in our own lives, knowing what God has done for us, and how he has transformed us.

Note this from Denise Baxley: Many Christians, including myself, have been looking for their blessings. We’ve read about the blessings. We’ve been believing for the blessings, but we can’t miss the reason for the blessing which is so we can be a blessing….

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money that were told ‘well done’. The one who dug a hole and buried it because he was afraid of losing it was himself cast out. It seems clear to me that He expects us to gain some sort of return on the things He’s blessed us with…. We must learn to use our blessings to be a blessing.

Or as John Calvin said it so memorably: All the blessings we enjoy are Divine deposits, committed to our trust on this condition, that they should be dispensed for the benefit of our neighbors.

We’re told to count our blessings, but how do we make our blessings count? In truth, only by sharing. By expanding the impact of the blessings, inviting others into the circle of blessing, helping others to bless as they have been blessed. God wants to bless his children. For “God is more anxious to bestow his blessings on us than we are to receive them” (Augustine).

Jesus and blessings As Jesus made clear, God is far more generous in his blessings than we ever will be: You parents—if your children ask for a loaf of bread, do you give them a stone instead? Or if they ask for a fish, do you give them a snake? Of course not! So if you sinful people know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good gifts to those who ask him.

—Matt. 7:9-11 NIV Jesus laid out the fundamental principles of his kingdom, and those who he considered truly blessed, in his nine blessings: God blesses those who are poor and realize their need for him, for the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs.

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God blesses those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

God blesses those who are humble, for they will inherit the whole earth.

God blesses those who hunger and thirst for justice, for they will be satisfied.

God blesses those who are merciful, for they will be shown mercy.

God blesses those whose hearts are pure, for they will see God. God blesses those who work for peace, for they will be called the children of God. God blesses those who are persecuted for doing right, for the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs.

God blesses you when people mock you and persecute you and lie about you and say all sorts of evil things against you because you are my followers.

—Matthew 5:3-11 NLT Our response To give someone a blessing is the most significant affirmation we can offer. It is more than a word of praise or appreciation; it is more than pointing out someone’s talents or good deeds... To give a blessing is to affirm, to say ‘yes’ to a person’s belovedness.

—Henri Nouwen To bless someone is the best way of affirming them! As representatives of our loving Lord, what better way to show the kind of God we believe in?

Here we see the way of sharing with others so they are also encouraged to share. But it must begin with us, and our attitude of gracious generosity to them.

Those who are humble in heart the Lord will use to reach souls whom the ordained ministers cannot approach. They will be moved to speak words which reveal the saving grace of Christ.

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creased grace. Hope and faith will strengthen as the agent for God works with the talents and facilities that God has provided. He will have a divine agency to work with him.

—JT2, 382, 383. Emphasis added.

You’re blessed as you bless. That’s the foundational principle of blessing. In fact blessings die as they are not shared. The very recognition of the fact that you’re blessed leads you to bless others. It’s just the way it is!

“A sincere Christian is not unappreciative of the mercies and blessings daily given him; and he longs to work in blessing others. He is constantly seeking for ways to be of service to the Master, to make his Saviour’s name a praise in all the earth.” (The Home Missionary, July 1, 1891). “Our work in this world is to live for others’ good, to bless others…” (Christian Service, 191). “He [God] blesses you that it may be in your power to bless others” (5T, 150).

And who can get involved? “We may all do a good work in blessing others…” (Lift Him Up, 176). Everyone. Recognize how God has blessed you, and go out to be a blessing to others, actively blessing them as God has encouraged us.

Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is.

Touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis all moments are sacred moments and life itself is grace.

—Frederick Buechner

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hen the righteous will answer him, “Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?” The King will reply, “I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.”

—Matthew 25:37-40

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1Corinthians 2:9,10 However, as it is written: “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him”—but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God.

Matthew 20:26-28 Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave—just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.

Deuteronomy 20:1 When you go to war against your enemies and see horses and chariots and an army greater than yours, do not be afraid of them, because the Lord your God, who brought you up out of Egypt, will be with you.

Matthew 25:37-40 Then the righteous will answer him, “Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?” The King will reply, “I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.”

Genesis 15:1 After this, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision: “Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your very great reward.”

Genesis 28:15 I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.

Luke 22:27 For who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one who is at the table? But I am among you as one who serves.

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John 17:18-21 As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified. My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.

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Psalms 24:1-4 The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it; for he founded it upon the seas and established it upon the waters.

Who may ascend the hill of the Lord?

Who may stand in his holy place?

He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to an idol or swear by what is false.

Luke 6:38 Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap.

For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.

thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the words of the Lord.”

Luke 6:45 The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For out of the overflow of his heart his mouth speaks.

Psalms 85:6 Will you not revive us again, that your people may rejoice in you?

1Corinthians 15:58 Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.

Mark 8:34, 35 Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it.”

Mark 10:16 And he took the children in his arms, put his hands on them and blessed them.

Amos 8:11 “The days are coming,” declares the Sovereign Lord, “when I will send a famine through the land—not a famine of food or a

John 15:9 As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love.

Romans 12:1, 2 Therefore, I urge

Job 26:10 He marks out the horizon on the face of the waters for a boundary between light and darkness.

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you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

Isaiah 43:18, 19 Remember ye not the former things, neither consider the things of old. Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert.

1Samuel 3:11 And the Lord said to Samuel: “See, I am about to do something in Israel that will make the ears of everyone who hears of it tingle.”

Luke 24:32 Did not our heart burn within us?

Gal. 5:22, 23 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.

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woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman.

How can you ask me for a drink?”

(For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.” “Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep.

Where can you get this living water?

Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his flocks and herds?”

Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”

Luke 10:25-33 On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

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“What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?” He answered: “`Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’ ; and, `Love your neighbor as yourself.’ “ “You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.”

But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” In reply Jesus said: “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him.”

Mark 7:24-30 Jesus left that place and went to the vicinity of Tyre. He entered a house and did not want anyone to know it; yet he could not keep his presence secret. In fact, as soon as she heard about him, a woman whose little daughter was possessed by an evil spirit came and

fell at his feet. The woman was a Greek, born in Syrian Phoenicia.

She begged Jesus to drive the demon out of her daughter. “First let the children eat all they want,” he told her, “for it is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to their dogs.” “Yes, Lord,” she replied, “but even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” Then he told her, “For such a reply, you may go; the demon has left your daughter.” She went home and found her child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.

Matthew 24:14 And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.

Isaiah 6:6-9 Then one of the seraphs flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. With it he touched my mouth and said, “See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.” Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I. Send me!” He said, “Go and tell.”

Isaiah 58: 6-9 Is not this the kind

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of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke?

Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—when you see the naked, to clothe him, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood? Then your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will quickly appear; then your righteousness will go before you, and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard. Then you will call, and the Lord will answer; you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I. Colossians 4:2, 3 And pray for us, too, that God may open a door for our message, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ, for which I am in chains.

2 Thessalonians 3:1 Finally, brothers, pray for us that the message of the Lord may spread rapidly and be honored, just as it was with you.

James 5:13-16 Is any one of you in trouble? He should pray. Is anyone happy? Let him sing songs of praise.

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over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise him up. If he has sinned, he will be forgiven. Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.

The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.

Matthew 19:21 Jesus answered, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.”

Psalm 90 Lord, you have been our dwelling place throughout all generations.

Before the mountains were born or you brought forth the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God. You turn men back to dust, saying, “Return to dust, O sons of men.”

For a thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by, or like a watch in the night.

You sweep men away in the sleep of death; they are like the new grass of the

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morning— though in the morning it springs up new, by evening it is dry and withered.

We are consumed by your anger and terrified by your indignation.

You have set our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your presence.

All our days pass away under your wrath; we finish our years with a moan.

The length of our days is seventy years— or eighty, if we have the strength; yet their span is but trouble and sorrow, for they quickly pass, and we fly away.

Who knows the power of your anger?

For your wrath is as great as the fear that is due you.

Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.

Relent, O Lord! How long will it be?

Have compassion on your servants.

Satisfy us in the morning with your unfailing love, that we may sing for joy and be glad all our days.

Make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us,

for as many years as we have seen trouble.

May your deeds be shown to your servants, your splendor to their children.

May the favor of the Lord our God rest upon us; establish the work of our hands for us— yes, establish the work of our hands.

Ecclesiastes 9:14, 15 There was once a small city with only a few people in it. And a powerful king came against it, surrounded it and built huge siegeworks against it.

Now there lived in that city a man poor but wise, and he saved the city by his wisdom. But nobody remembered that poor man.

Deuteronomy 33:25 Thy shoes shall be of iron and brass: and as thy days, so shall thy strength be.

Ephesians 6:13 Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.

Psalm 84:5, 7, 10, 12 How blessed are those whose strength is in You, In whose heart are the highways to

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Zion, And whose lives are the roads you travel; They go from strength to strength, And with each day they grow stronger, Until one day they will appear before God in Zion.

For a day in Your courts is better than a thousand anywhere else, Where the Lord blesses us His favor and honor.

O Lord Almighty, happy are those who trust in you.

Isaiah 40:31 They that wait upon the Lord, shall renew their strength; they shall mount up their wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.

1 Peter 4:10 Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others—faithfully administering God’s grace in its various forms.

Proverbs 27:17 As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

above the heavens.

From the lips of children and infants you have ordained praise because of your enemies, to silence the foe and the avenger.

When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?

You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor.

You made him ruler over the works of your hands; you put everything under his feet: all flocks and herds, and the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas.

O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!

Psalm 33:1-11 Psalm 8 Sing joyfully to the Lord, you rightO Lord, our Lord, eous; how majestic is your name in all the it is fitting for the upright to praise earth! him.

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make music to him on the tenstringed lyre.

Sing to him a new song; play skillfully, and shout for joy.

For the word of the Lord is right and true; he is faithful in all he does.

The Lord loves righteousness and justice; the earth is full of his unfailing love.

By the word of the Lord were the heavens made, their starry host by the breath of his mouth.

He gathers the waters of the sea into jars; he puts the deep into storehouses.

Let all the earth fear the Lord; let all the people of the world revere him.

For he spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood firm.

The Lord foils the plans of the nations; he thwarts the purposes of the peoples.

But the plans of the Lord stand firm forever, the purposes of his heart through all generations.

Matthew 9:35-38 And Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the king-

dom, and healing every sickness and every disease among the people.

But when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion on them, because they fainted, and were scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd. Then saith he unto his disciples, The harvest truly is plenteous, but the labourers are few; Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth labourers into his harvest.

Isaiah 61:1 The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners.

Luke 4:16-20 And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up: and, as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and stood up for to read. And there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet Isaiah.

And when he had opened the book, he found the place where it was written, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the broken-

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hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, To preach the acceptable year of the Lord. And he closed the book, and he gave it again to the minister, and sat down. And the eyes of all them that were in the synagogue were fastened on him.

Luke 6:21 Blessed are you who hunger now, for you will be satisfied. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.

Galatians 3:28Â There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ John 16:33 In this world you will Jesus. have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.

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hrist’s method alone will give true success in reaching the people. The Savior mingled with men as one who desired their good. He showed His sympathy for them, ministered to their needs, and won their confidence. Then He bade them, “Follow Me.” —Ellen White The Ministry of Healing, p. 143

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To show great love for God and our neighbor, we need not do great things. It is how much love we put in the doing that makes our offering something beautiful for God. Mother Teresa A Gift for God

Every time you make a choice, you are turning the central part of you, the part that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before.

C. S. Lewis Mere Christianity

But if good works are not the cause of salvation, they are nonetheless the mark and effect of it. If the forgiven man does not become forgiving, the loved man loving, then he is only deceiving himself. “You shall know them by their fruits,” Jesus says, and here Gentle Jesus Meek and Mild becomes Christ the Tiger, becomes both at once, this stern and loving man. “Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire,” he says, and Saint Paul is only echoing him when he writes to the Galatians, “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such there is no law.”

Frederick Buechner The Faces of Jesus

There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.

Edith Wharton God is able to make a way out of no way and transform dark yesterdays into bright tomorrows. This is our hope for becoming better men and women. This is our mandate for seeking to make a better world.

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It has been said that agapao refers to “the love of God” and phileo is only “the love of men.” But this distinction is only a very small part of the difference, and as such is in itself incorrect. Both of these words may convey intense emotion or may be relatively weak in their meanings. These words do not indicate degree of love, but kinds of love. Agapao refers to love which arises from a keen sense of the value and worth in the object of our love, and phileo describes the emotional attachment which results from intimate and prolonged association. That is why in the Scriptures we are never commanded to “love” with the word phileo. Even when husbands and wives are instructed to love one another, the word agapao is used, for it is impossible to command that kind of love which can arise only from intimate association. On the other hand, the saints are admonished to appreciate profoundly the worth and value in others, and agapao is used to convey this meaning. All Christians are not necessarily to have sentimental attachments for one another (phileo). This would be impossible, for our circle of intimate friends is limited by the nature of our lives. But we can all be commanded to appreciate intensely the worth of others.

Eugene A. Nida God’s Word in Man’s Language

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

The good neighbor looks beyond the external accidents and discerns those inner qualities that make all men human and, therefore, brothers.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

The church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society.

Martin Luther King, Jr. Resource Primer

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Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.

Martin Luther King, Jr. Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.

Martin Luther King, Jr. Every time you venture out in your life of faith, you will find something in your circumstances that, from a commonsense standpoint, will flatly contradict your faith. But common sense is not faith, and faith is not common sense. In fact, they are as different as the natural life and the spiritual.

Can you trust Jesus Christ where your common sense cannot trust Him? Can you venture out with courage on the words of Jesus Christ, while the realities of your commonsense life continue to shout, “It’s all a lie“?

When you are on the mountaintop, it’s easy to say, “Oh yes, I believe God can do it,” but you have to come down from the mountain to the demon-possessed valley and face the realities that scoff at your Mount-ofTransfiguration belief (see Luke 9:28-42). Every time my theology becomes clear to my own mind, I encounter something that contradicts it.

As soon as I say, “I believe ‘God shall supply all [my] need,’ “ the testing of my faith begins (Philippians 4:19). When my strength runs dry and my vision is blinded, will I endure this trial of my faith victoriously or will I turn back in defeat?

Faith must be tested, because it can only become your intimate possession through conflict. What is challenging your faith right now? The test will either prove your faith right, or it will kill it. Jesus said, “Blessed is he who is not offended because of Me” (Matthew 11:6). The ultimate thing is confidence in Jesus. “We have become partakers of Christ if we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast to the end . . .” (Hebrews 136

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3:14).

Believe steadfastly on Him and everything that challenges you will strengthen your faith. There is continual testing in the life of faith up to the point of our physical death, which is the last great test. Faith is absolute trust in God—trust that could never imagine that He would forsake us (see Hebrews 13:5-6).

Oswald Chambers

Set yourself earnestly to discover what you are made to do, and then give yourself passionately to the doing of it.

Martin Luther King, Jr. Jesus healed on three levels: the physical, the psychological, and the spiritual. The physical: He commanded the paralytic to take up his mat and walk, cured the dying slave of Capernaum’s royal official, raised from the dead the only son of Nain’s widow. The psychological: He restored dignity to an adulteress, showed a proud Pharisee at table how a sinful woman could love more than he, persuaded a cured demoniac not to follow him but to return to his dear ones a new man. The spiritual: Above and beyond all healing, in his own person he brought to the world, all the world, God’s favor, God’s grace, God’s love. For when he died, it was not crucifixion that redeemed us, sheer shedding of his blood; only love redeemed us, the love that led him to his baptism in blood. Having loved his own who were in the world, he showed his love for them to the very end ( John 13:1), loved us utterly, completely, without reserve.

Walter Burghardt

The biblical story abounds with instances of people being torn loose from their moorings, from a settled existence, and discovering that God is present in the situation... It is interesting to note the witness of these pilgrims is that these crises are times of judgment. In fact, the word crisis in the Greek means precisely that. In other words, transition times are times Resource Primer

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in which God calls our old ways of living and looking at things into question, calls us to move beyond them. These pilgrim foremothers and fathers of ours also tell us that these very same times can be times of blessing.

Those who do press on, who are willing to leave the old behind, experience God’s healing, redeeming, resurrecting power.

John and Adrienne Carr The Pilgrimage Project

When a person doesn’t have gratitude, something is missing in his or her humanity. A person can almost be defined by his or her attitude toward gratitude.”

Elie Wiesel No longer forward nor behind I look in hope or fear; But, grateful, take the good I find, The best of now and here.

John Greenleaf Whittier

Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.

Melody Beattie

The gloom of the world is but a shadow. Beyond it, yet within easy reach, is joy. There is radiance and glory in the darkness, could we but see, and to see, we have only to look. I beseech you to look. Life is so generous a giver, but we, judging its gifts by their covering, cast them away as ugly, or heavy, or hard. Remove the covering, and you will find beneath it a living splendor, woven of love, by wisdom, with power...

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and the wonder of an overshadowing presence. Our joys too: be not content with them as joys. They, too, conceal diviner gifts.

Fra Giovanni, 1513 A.D.

Until women and men come to discover the truth of God’s presence in their lives, and discover it not merely as some statement they affirm or deny but as a living reality, they will never recognize the fulfillment of the “not yet,” the fulfillment of God’s total gift.

Ernest Boyer, Jr. A Way in the World

Giver of Life and all good gifts, Grant us also wisdom to use only what we need, Courage to trust our bounty, Imagination to preserve our resources, Determination to deny frivolous excess, And inspiration to sustain through temptation.

Patricia Winters

Dear Lord, be good to me. The sea is so wide and my boat is so small.

Children’s Sabbath Motto

“Once upon a time” is not time and every time. It is the standard phrase that introduces us to other worlds and to our very own world. It is a time that connects humanity to a common story, and story always begins with the words “in the beginning.” It marks our very own beginning... our very own time.

William J. Bausch

To love another person is to help them love God. Soren Kierkegaard Resource Primer

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An act of love that fails is just as much a part of the divine life as an act of love that succeeds, for love is measured by fullness, not by reception.

Harold Loukes

Empower me to be a bold participant, rather than a timid saint in waiting; to exercise authority of honesty, rather than to defer to power or deceive to get it; to influence someone for justice, rather than impress anyone for gain; and by grace, to find treasures of joy, of friendship, of peace hidden in the fields you give me daily to plow.

Ted Loder Life Prayers When I was hungry, you gave me food to eat.

When I was thirsty, you gave me your cup to drink.

Whatsoever you do to the least of these of my children, that you do unto me.

Now enter the house of my Father.

When I was homeless, you opened your doors.

When I was naked, you gave me your coat.

When I was weary, you helped me find rest.

When I was anxious, you calmed my fears.

When I was little, you taught me to read.

When I was lonely, you gave me your love.

When I was in prison, you came to my cell.

When on a sick bed, you cared for my needs.

In a strange country, you made me at home.

Seeking employment, you found me a job.

Hurt in a battle, you bound up my wounds.

Searching for kindness, you held out your hand.

When I was a Negro or Chinese or White, Mocked and insulted you carried my cross.

When I was aged, you bothered to smile.

When I was restless, you listened and cared.

You saw me covered with spittle and blood, You knew my features, though grimy with sweat.

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When I was laughed at, you stood by my side.

When I was happy, you shared in my joy.

Mother Teresa

To love another person is to see the face of God. Lyric from Les Miserables (the musical)

Hope is believing in spite of the evidence and watching the evidence change.

Jim Wallis

If you need to feel hope, you’re courting despair, and if you court despair, you’ll stop working. So try to wean yourself from this need to have hope. Try to have faith instead, to do what you can and stop worrying about whether or not you’re effective. Worry about what is possible for you to do, which is always greater than you imagine.

Archbishop Oscar Romero

Let us preach you, Dear Jesus, without preaching... not by words but by our example... by the casting force, the sympathetic influence of what we do, the evident fullness of the love our hearts bear to you. Amen.

Mother Teresa

Your life and my life flow into each other as wave flows into wave, and unless there is peace and joy and freedom for you, there can be no real peace or joy or freedom for me. To see reality—not as we expect it to be but as it is—is to see that unless we live for each other and in and through each other, we do not really live very satisfactorily; that there can really be life only where there really is, in just this sense, love.

Frederick Buechner The Magnificent Defeat Resource Primer

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Caring can be learned by all human beings, can be worked into the design of every life, meeting an individual need as well as a pervasive need in society.

Mary Catherine Bateson Composing a Life

Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged with Mankind.

Rabindranath Tagore

Taking up our cross also means the acceptance of what is, often quite against our wills, inflicted upon us. But we take it with an openness to the possibility that out of that affliction a blessing can be extricated by God’s grace and with a little imagination.

Robert T. Standhardt

Our affluent culture expects that there is a way to fix almost anything that is broken—broken bodies, broken hearts, broken possessions. It is difficult for many of us to see brokenness as a part of life.

Within the tradition of the Native American Medicine Wheel, life is seen as a circle, as a whole, incorporating birth and death, the peaceful dawn and the thundering storms, wholeness and brokenness. From the northern direction of the Medicine Wheel come the storms of life. It is the storms that bring us courage and wisdom and compassion. Our lives would not be whole without the storms.

Richard Bohr says, The place of the wound is the place of healing. The place of the break is the place of greatest strength. Our faith affirms this— the Christ’s wounds are the place where God’s healing touches each of us.

Beth A. Richardson

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groundless, and creative. It is not set in motion by any quality or function of its object. It is the love of God operating in the human heart.

Martin Luther King, Jr. A little courage helps more than much knowledge, a little human sympathy more than much courage, and the least tincture of the love of God more than all.

C. S. Lewis

We never outlive or outgrow the day when we need to recall with thanksgiving God’s self giving to us in baptism and to see it continuing daily in our lives . . . Our baptism is permanent, but renewal of it is a lifelong process.

James F. White Sacraments as God’s Self Giving

I don’t know Who—or what—put the question, I don’t know when it was put. I don’t even remember answering. But at some moment I did answer Yes to Someone—or Something—and from that hour, I was certain that existence is meaningful and that, therefore, my life, in self-surrender, had a goal.

Dag Hammarskjold Markings Discovery consists of looking at the same thing as everyone else does and thinking something different.

Albert Szent-Gyorgyi 1937 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine

A church is as large as the lives that are touched through the congregation, by the love of God. Caring is the ultimate measure of a congregation’s size.

Carl S. Dudley Resource Primer

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The only possible way out of the present chaos is for us to adopt a worldview which will bring us once more control of the ideals of true civilization which are contained in it.

Albert Schweiter Out of My Life and Thoughts

The responsible person seeks to make his or her whole life a response to the question and call of God. Dietrich Bonnhoeffer Letters and Papers from Prison

Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.

James Baldwin The more faithfully you listen to the voices within you, the better you will hear what is sounding outside.

Dag Hammarskjold

The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.

Eleanor Roosevelt

I know not always how God comes, but God comes, this I know: in an obscure stable, in splashing waters, in the breaking of bread, and often, my friend, incarnate in you; for God, I believe, still comes in the flesh, in people. Now and always, may the Christ in you keep you a sign of living love, and love living among us.

B. Belasic

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ter as I turned to embrace something worse, I have seen God and felt God’s presence winging near.

Howard Thurman

Holy Spirit, The Life That Gives Life, You are the cause of all movement; You are the breath of all creatures; You are the salve that purifies our souls; You are the ointment that heals our wounds; You are the fire that warms our hearts; You are the light that guides our feet.

Let all the world praise you.

Hildegard of Bingen Life in the Spirit can never be private because that Spirit is uncontainable. It is an opening energy that circulates freely through creation, bringing one hand into another, the flower from the seed, the living from the dead.

Tilden H. Edward

Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.

Lao Tzu

It is often when a community is on the verge of breaking up that people agree to talk to each other and look each other in the eye. This is because they realize that it is a question of life or death, that everything will collapse if they do not do something decisive and radically different.

Often we have to come to the edge of the precipice before we reach that moment of truth and recognize our own poverty and need for each other and cry to God for Help.

Jean Vanier Community and Growth Resource Primer

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We have a sense of calling, a God-given ability to do a job linked with a God-given enjoyment in doing it. We have a sense of responsibility to do something in our own time that has value. We have a sense of freedom from the burden of the workaholic, for we are not asked to do more than we can. We have a sense of creativity that enables us to place the autograph of our souls on the work of our hands. We have a sense of dignity, for we value people over efficiency. We have a sense of community, for we know that our life together is more important than the end product. We have a sense of solidarity with the poor to empower them to do what they cannot do by themselves. And we have a sense of meaning and purpose, for we know that we are working in cooperation with God to bring the world one step closer to completion.

Richard Foster

There is no human being who does not carry a treasure in his soul, a moment of insight, a memory of life, a dream of excellence, a call to worship.

Abraham Heschel

God does not work in all hearts alike, but according to the preparation and sensitivity the Creator finds in each.

Meister Eckhart

Man is unity, a marvelously interpenetrating, interacting unity of one dimension with another. . . . This is why the health of the body is also a moral issue. What happens to a man’s body is important to his entire personality and character, and thus may have eternal implications.

Jack Provonsha God is With Us (1974) 146

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Christ came to this earth with a message of mercy and forgiveness..

He laid the foundation for a religion by which Jew and Gentile, black and white, free and bond, are linked together in one common brotherhood, recognized as equal in the sight of God. The Savior has a boundless love for every human being.

Ellen White 7T, p. 225 The longer the delay in the fulfillment of the advent hope, the greater is the emphasis on occupation rather than preparation. The longer the occupation, the greater is the tendency towards concerns of this world and diversification of interests. The increasing demand among rising generations of Adventists that their church address itself to issues of a socio-political and ethical nature is part of a pursuit of relevance in face of an advent which appears reluctant to materialize.

Michael Pearson Millennial Dreams and Moral Dilemmas (1990) Adventism needs to do its homework. If it does not, its actions and statements will be incoherent, irrelevant, and frivolously modish at best; at worst, they will be dangerous or actively harmful to the Church, its members and the general society. Even less than in earlier ages, the world is unforgiving of the ignorant.

George Colvin “Social Conscience at the General Conference,” Adventist Currents, Sept. 1986

We are not the only people through whom God is working out His will, for instance. We are not to be exclusive, ignoring or patronizing other Christians. We are not necessarily better people than others; only God knows the heart.

Editorial, “A Distinctive World View” The Adventist Review, June 24, 1982 Resource Primer

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There are certain vestiges of injustice, inequality, and deprivation in the world, expressions of the devil’s work, which the church as community must expose and take part in discrediting. The evil which is alien to God’s Kingdom is under God’s judgment. . . . God must be able to express himself through the church. Concerns which are God’s must by definition be the church’s.

Jan Paulsen Adventist Missions Face the 21st Century (1988)

Christ’s method alone will give true success in reaching the people.

The Savior mingled with men as one who desired their good. He showed His sympathy for them, ministered to their needs, and won their confidence. Then He bade them, “Follow Me.” Ellen White The Ministry of Healing, p. 143

The Lord will work for those who put their trust in Him. Precious victories will be gained by the faithful. Precious lessons will be learned. Precious experiences will be realized that will be of the greatest advantage in times of trial and temptation. Those who will give all the glory to God, not taking credit to themselves, will be trusted with more and more of the blessing of God. The Lord will be magnified by those who honor Him in the midst of the people. The trial that has been borne with patience, the test that has been met with faithfulness, will prove them worthy of responsibility, and God will make them agents to carry out His will.

Ellen White Our High Calling, p. 316

Our confession of His faithfulness is Heaven’s chosen agency for revealing Christ to the world. We are to acknowledge His grace as made known through the holy men of old; but that which will be most effectual is the testimony of our own experience. We are witnesses for God as we 148

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reveal in ourselves the working of a power that is divine. Every individual has a life distinct from all others, and an experience differing essentially from theirs. God desires that our praise shall ascend to Him, marked by our own individuality. These precious acknowledgements to the praise of the glory of His grace, when supported by a Christ-like life, have an irresistible power that works for the salvation of souls.

Ellen White Desire of Ages, p. 347

As the sunbeams penetrate to the remotest corners of the earth, so does the light of the Sun of Righteousness shine upon every soul.

Ellen White Desire of Ages, p 464

The Lord is in active communication with every part of His vast dominions. He is represented as bending toward the earth and its inhabitants.

He is listening to every word that is uttered. He hears every groan; He listens to every prayer; He observes the movements of every one.

Ellen White My Life Today

From Christ’s methods of labor we may learn many valuable lessons.

He did not follow merely one method; in various ways He sought to gain the attention of the multitude; and then He proclaimed to them the truths of the gospel. . . . His messages of mercy were varied to suit His audience.

He knew “how to speak a word in season to him that is weary”; for grace was poured upon His lips, that He might convey to men in the most attractive way the treasures of truth. He had tact to meet the prejudiced minds, and surprise them with illustrations that won their attention.

Through the imagination He reached the heart.

Ellen White Evangelism, p. 123 Resource Primer

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There is a certain craziness at the heart of the universe that is captured in the symbols of reversal, the upside-down-ness of faith. All faith traditions look upon the urgent anxiety of our time with a slightly ironic smile knowing that all that counts is not counted in the modern calculus of probabilities. So we find time to accompany the lonely, to convene a meeting of neighbors, to connect someone in need with an organization that can help them. We expect God’s work to go on, so we go on, too, patiently telling our stories as best as we can and welcoming the hopeful and hurting into our safe space. We think we are witnessing the work of a loving God who has not given up, so we continue to offer up a touch, a word of blessing and hope. Because we are broken ourselves, we pray and sometimes seeing our faith, weak as it is, others find their way toward God, too. This all sounds to somber, dutiful, and full of heavy purpose. That is not at all what it feels like. It feels like life, surprising life.

I have heard it said more than once that you can tell if anything lively and new is happening in a research laboratory by the laughter. Humor and discovery are closely linked because both thrive on surprise. So does a living congregation. It turns out that God has hardwired a joke into the universe that you only get once you have been to the breaking ground and been flipped upside down. Like all humor, this cosmic joke rests on unexpected reversal, and it is a good one: Humility endures while pride dies in the dirt; sacrifice endures while acquisitiveness ends with death; knowledge remains incomplete while love fulfills and is never wasted. A laughing God nudges us in the ribs: “Do you get it?�

Congregations who get it accompany, convene, and connect. They give context and sanctuary. They bless and pray. They endure and build healthy communities that endure too.

Gary Gunderson Deeply Woven Roots, pp. 125-126

By Their Works Who cleaned up the Last Supper?

These would be my people.

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standing with rags in hand as the window beckons with hills of yellow grass. In Da Vinci, the blue robed apostle gesturing at Christ is saying, give Him the check.

What a mess they’ve made of their faith. My God would put a busboy on earth to roam among the waiters and remind them to share their tips. The woman who finished one half eaten olive and scooped the rest into her pockets, walked her tiny pride home to children who looked at her smile and saw the salvation of a meal.

All that week at work she ignored customers who talked of Rome and silk and crucifixions, though she couldn’t stop thinking of this man who said thank you each time she filled His glass.

Bob Hicok Jesus knew that the purpose of communication is to bring about change. He did not indulge in the luxury of focusing on the irrelevant or Resource Primer

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superficial. The very heart of the gospel is change.

Engel/Norton, What’s Gone Wrong With The Harvest

Our earth is but a small star in a great universe. Yet of it we can make, if we choose, a planet unvexed by war, untroubled by hunger or fear, undivided by senseless distinctions of race, color or theory.

Stephen Vincent Benét

At the heart of each culture is a very special way that is sees the world, a way that it thinks the human experience. Western civilization, for example, has as it core ideas generated by Descartes, Spinoza, Kant, Hume, Hegel, Nietzsche, Darwin, Freud, Picasso, Stravinsky, Kafka, and of course many others.

Now inside Western civilization are a number of other ways of seeing the world that are not secular readings of the human experience. You might have various kinds of Jewish ways of thinking the world, ethnic ways and so on. All of us grow up in particular realities—a home, family, a clan, a small town, a neighborhood. Depending upon how we’re brought up, we are either deeply aware of the particular reading of reality into which we are born, or we are peripherally aware of it.

Two hundred or more years ago most people on the planet were never aware of any reality other than the one into which they were brought up.

But today we become aware of other readings of the human experience very quickly because of the media and the speed with which people travel the planet. And what ends up occurring today is that very early on ideas begin to clash inside people. You will turn on the television set and an idea that is very strange to you floats in toward you from the tube. That’s a culture confrontation.

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world encounters ideas from the very heart of the secular umbrella civilization in which all of us live today.

Chaim Potok Interview in College People Magazine, Oct. 1983

No generation has exactly the same mentality as the generation that went before. Christians have continually to appropriate Christian truth afresh, not change but rethink their beliefs and gain a new understanding of God in Christ. That revelation is a reality always present.

Charles Davis

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will be certainly wrung and possible be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one. Not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket—safe, dark, motionless, airless—it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The only place outside heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers of love . . . is hell.

C.S. Lewis

There is no denying that not all of the darkness has been dispelled even by his coming. But the real question is whether we will choose to walk in the light that he has brought or continue to sit in the darkness. Will we live as his people and live for the future that he is working to completion, and which we have a part in shaping. Or will we simply sit in the darkness longing for something better? Such a choice to live in the reality of God’s future is not fantasy. It is simply how we choose to live as God’s people. Will we sit in the darkness, or will walk in the light?

Dennis Bratcher Resource Primer

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When a man does not see others or want to see them, there is darkness in the world.

Ketav Sofer

In one respect if in no other this metaphor of Isaiah’s is a very relevant one for us and our age because we are also, God knows, a people who walk in darkness. There seems little reason to explain. If darkness is meant to suggest a world where nobody can see very well—either themselves, or each other, or where they are heading, or even where they are standing at the moment; if darkness is meant to convey a sense of uncertainty, of being lost, of being afraid; if darkness suggests conflict, conflict between the races, between nations, between individuals each pretty much out for himself when you come right down to it; then we live a world that knows much about darkness. Darkness is what our newspapers are about. Darkness is what most of our best contemporary literature is about. Darkness fills the skies over our own cities no less than over the cities of our enemies. And in our single lives, we know much about darkness too. If we are people who pray, darkness is apt to be a lot of what we pray about. If we are people who do not pray, it is apt to be darkness in one form or another that has stopped our mouths.

Frederick Buechner

Our situation on this earth seems strange. Every one of us appears here involuntary and uninvited for a short stay, without knowing the whys and the wherefore. In our daily lives we only feel that man is here for the sake of others, for those whom we love and for many other beings whose fate is connected with our own.

Albert Einstein

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views on some subjects; yet, thank Heaven, the Sabbath is a mighty platform on which we can all stand united. And while stand here, with the aid of no other creed than the Word of God, and bound together by the bonds of love—love for the truth, love for each other, and love for a perishing world—’which is stronger than death,’ all party feelings are lost. We are united in these great subjects: Christ’s immediate, personal second Advent, and the observance of all the commandments of God, and the faith of his Son Jesus Christ, as necessary to a readiness for his Advent.

James White Review and Herald, August 11, 1853

Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace.

Where there is hatred, let me sow love.

Where there is injury, pardon.

Where there is doubt, faith.

Where there is despair,hope.

Where there is darkness, light.

Where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood, as to understand; to be loved, as to love; for it is in giving that we receive, it is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

St. Francis of Assisi

Hold fast to dreams For when dreams die Life is a broken-winged bird That cannot fly.

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Hold fast to dreams For when dreams go Life is a barren field Frozen with snow.

Langston Hughes Comparing information and knowledge is like asking whether the fatness of a pig is more or less green than the designated hitter rule.

David Guaspari

The loving service which God sends His people into the world to render includes both evangelism and social action, for each is in itself an authentic expression of love, and neither needs the other to justify it.

John R. W. Stott A sower went forth to sow. Some of his seeds fell upon stony places.

Centuries passed; millennia. And the seeds remained. And the stones crumbled and became good soil, and the seeds brought forth fruit.

“Wait a minute,” said one listener. “You can’t play fast and loose that way with the natural facts. The seeds would die long before the soil could receive them.”

“Why would they die?”

“Because they can’t hold out in stony places, for thousands of years.”

“But, my dear, what kind of seeds do you think we are talking about?”

Stephen Mitchell We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark. The real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.

Plato

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which knew it would inherit the earth before anybody said so.

The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds watching him from the birdhouse.

The tear is famous briefly, to the cheek.

The idea you carry close to your bosom is famous to your bosom.

The boot is famous to the earth, more famous than the dress shoe, which is famous only to floors.

The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it and not at all famous to the one who is pictured.

I want to be famous to shuffling men who smile while crossing streets, sticky children in grocery lines, famous as the one who smiled back.

I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous, or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular, but because it never forgot what it could do.

Naomi Shihab Nye

To the empowering principle that people can withhold legitimacy, and thus change the world, we now add another. By deliberately changing the internal image of reality, people can change the world.

Willis Harman

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He who chooses the beginning of a road chooses the place it leads to.

It is the means that determine the end.

Harry Emerson Fosdick

There are moments in our lives, there moments in a day, when we seem to see beyond the usual. Such are the moments of our greatest happiness. Such are the moments of our greatest wisdom. If one but could recall his vision by some sort of sign. It was in this hope that the arts were invented. Signposts on the way to what may be. Signposts toward greater knowledge.

Robert Henri

I know now, Lord, why you utter no answer.

You are yourself the answer.

Before your face questions die away.

C.S. Lewis

Goodness is a way of living directly and lovingly in an ambitious world.

James Carroll

Be the light of the world, he says. Where there are dark places, be the light especially there. Be the salt of the earth. Bring out the true flavor of what it is to be alive truly. Be truly alive. Be life-givers to others. That is what Jesus tells the disciples to be. That is what Jesus tells his Church, tells us, to be and do. Love each other. Heal the sick, he says. Raise the dead.

Cleanse lepers. Cast out demons. That is what loving each other means. If the Church is doing things like that, then it is being what Jesus told it to be. If it is not doing things like that—no matter how many other good and useful things it may be doing instead—then it is not being what Jesus told it to be. It is as simple as that.

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The real enemies of our life are the “oughts’ and the “ifs.” They pull us backward into the unalterable past and forward into the unpredictable future. But real life takes place in the here and now. God is a God of the present. God is always in the moment, be that moment hard or easy, joyful or painful.

Henri Nouwen

Every Christian was sent into the world to be a preacher; and just like every other creature that God has made, he will always be preaching about his Lord. Doth not the whole world preach God? Do not the stars, while they shine, look down from heaven and say there is a God? Do not the winds chant God’s name in their mighty howling? Do not the waves murmur it upon the shore, or thunder it in the storms? Do not the floods and the fields, the skies and the plains, the mountains and the valleys, the streamlets and the rivers, all speak for God? Assuredly they do; and a newborn creature—the man created in Christ—must preach Jesus Christ wherever he goes. This is the use of good works. He will preach, not with his mouth always, but with his life. The use of good works is that they are a Christian’s sermon. A sermon is not what a man says, but what he does.

You who practice are preaching; it is not preaching and practicing, but practicing is preaching. The sermon that is preached by the mouth is soon forgotten, but what we preach by our lives is never forgotten.

Charles Spurgeon March 16, 1856

You must go into the fire if you are to pull others out of it, and you will have to dive into the floods if you are to draw others out of the water. You cannot work a fire escape without feeling the scorch of the conflagration, nor man a lifeboat without being covered with the waves.

C.H. Spurgeon

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solute, and it is the pledge of the sure fulfillment of His promises to all who trust in Him. He has means for the removal of every difficulty, that those who serve Him and respect the means He employs may be sustained. His love is as far above all other love as the heavens are above the earth. He watches over His children with a love that is measureless and everlasting.

Ellen White The Ministry of Healing, pp. 481-482 These souls whom you despise, said Jesus, are the property of God. By creation and by redemption they are His, and they are of value in His sight. As the shepherd loves his sheep, and cannot rest if even one be missing, so, in an infinitely higher degree, does God love every outcast soul.

Men may deny the claim of His love, they may wander from Him, they may choose another master; yet they are God’s, and He longs to recover His own. He says, “As a shepherd seeketh out his flock in the day that he is among his sheep that are scattered; so will I seek out My sheep, and will deliver them out of all places where they have been scattered in the cloudy and dark day.” Eze. 34:12.

In the parable the shepherd goes out to search for one sheep—the very least that can be numbered. So if there had been but one lost soul, Christ would have died for that one.

The sheep that has strayed from the fold is the most helpless of all creatures. It must be sought for by the shepherd, for it cannot find its way back.

So with the soul that has wandered away from God; he is as helpless as the lost sheep, and unless divine love had come to his rescue he could never find his way to God. Ellen G. White Christ’s Object Lessons, p. 187 Even the merest gesture is holy if it is filled with faith.

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complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.

I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can.

I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live.

I rejoice in life for its own sake.

Life is no brief candle to me.

It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.

George Bernard Shaw Man and Superman

The mind has exactly the same power as the hands: not merely to grasp the world, but to change it.

Colin Wilson

Here are the two best prayers I know: “Help me, help me, help me” and “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

Anne Lamott Traveling Mercies

Through simply touching, more directly than in any other way, we can transmit to each other something of the power of the life we have inside us. It is no wonder that the laying on of hands has always been a traditional part of healing or that when Jesus was around, “all the crowd sought to touch him” (Luke 6:19). It is no wonder that just the touch of another human being at a dark time can be enough to save the day.

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To God one man is never like another; each is His individual child, and each has all God’s love and all God’s power at his disposal.

William Barclay

The love of God is infinite for every human soul, because every human soul is unique; no other can satisfy the same need in God. W. B. Yeats

Our confession of His faithfulness is Heaven’s chosen agency for revealing Christ to the world. We are to acknowledge His grace as made known through the holy men of old; but that which will be most effectual is the testimony of our own experience. We are witnesses for God as we reveal in ourselves the working of a power that is divine. Every individual has a life distinct from all others, and an experience differing essentially from theirs. God desires that our praise shall ascend to Him, marked by our own individuality. These precious acknowledgements to the praise of the glory of His grace, when supported by a Christ-like life, have an irresistible power that works for the salvation of souls.

Ellen White Desire of Ages, p. 347

We need to experience God’s healing and love before we can become a healing presence. We need to live in close commune with God before we can live in solidarity with the suffering humanity. To practice the law of love, we need to love Christ and model after him. There is no greater happiness than devoting one’s life to loving God and loving the poor and the suffering.

Mother Teresa

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and deep oceans. He imagined knees and bridges and languages and onions and red and cameras and porcupines and ebb and flow and flight.

He imagined male and female and twilight and pickles and 64 colors of crayons. And somehow they could exist on the same planet, residing in the same backpacks, accessible by both Windows and Mac users. Imagined and then created.

Our relationship with God is ever about the new, the next, the future, the pathway out of exile and home. The first conversation, containing the shortest question in the Old Testament, was God asking, “Where are you?”

It was the beginning of the collision between what was past and what would come. It was our first brush with his imaginative powers. It was the first day of the rest of our lives.

Ray Tetz

People are prepared for everything except for the fact that beyond the darkness of their blindness there is a great light. They are prepared to go on breaking their backs plowing the same old field until the cows come home without seeing, until they stub their toes on it, that there is a treasure buried in that field rich enough to buy Texas. They are prepared for a God who strikes hard bargains but not for a God who gives as much for an hour’s work as for a day’s. They are prepared for a mustard-seed kingdom of God no bigger than the eye of a newt but not for the great banyan it becomes with birds in its branches singing Mozart.

They are prepared for the potluck supper at First Presbyterian but not for the marriage supper of the lamb.

Frederick Buechner

The sacred moments, the moments of miracle, are often the everyday moments, the moments which, if we do not look with more than our eyes or listen with more than our ears reveal only… a gardener, a stranger coming down the road behind us, a meal like any other meal. But if we look with our hearts, if we listen with all our being and imagination… what we may see is Jesus himself.

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Static or dead faith is like someone standing under a lantern fixed to a post. It is light all around, but there is nowhere further to walk. A person who professes to walk with God is like a person carrying a lantern before him on a pole; the light is in front of them, always lighting up fresh ground, and always encouraging them to walk further.

Philip Yancy

The young priest Pere Henri’s Easter Sermon: “I want to talk about Christ’s humanity, I mean how he lived his life on earth: his kindness, his tolerance.

We must measure our goodness, not by what we don’t do, what we deny ourselves, what we resist, or who we exclude. Instead, we should measure ourselves by what we embrace, what we create, and who we include.”

Joann Harris From the film “Chocolat”

Hope has two beautiful daughters. Their names are anger and courage; anger at the way things are, and courage to see that they do not remain the way they are.

Augustine

The English language is generously stocked with words for the many preoccupations and occupations of Human-reparans [the human being as a repair animal]: who repair, restore, rehabilitate, renovate, reconcile, redeem, heal, fix, and mend—and that’s the short list. Such linguistic variety is not gratuitous. These are distinctions that make a difference. Do you want the car repaired, so that you can continue to commute to work? Or do you want it restored, so that you can display it in its original glory? Is a patch on that jacket adequate, or do you insist on invisible mending, on having it look as if there never were a rip to begin with? Should that work of art be restored, or simply preserved? Why do some ecologists want to preserve an environment rather than try to repair the damage done to it?

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reparations cannot—and vice versa? What was thought to be at stake for citizens of the new South Africa in the contrast between restorative justice and retributive justice—between the healing promised by a Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the punishment exacted through an adversarial court system?

Elizabeth Spelman

For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.

Nelson Mandela

Man’s goodness is a flame that can be hidden but never extinguished.

Nelson Mandela

There is no easy walk to freedom anywhere, and many of us will have to pass through the valley of the shadow of death again and again before we reach the mountaintop of our desires.

Nelson Mandela

If there are dreams about a beautiful South Africa, there are also roads that lead to their goal. Two of these roads could be named Goodness and Forgiveness.

Nelson Mandela

There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children.

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If the only prayer you said in your whole life was “thank you,” that would suffice.

Meister Eckhart At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person.

Albert Schweitzer There is more hunger for love and appreciation in this world than for bread.

Mother Teresa To love another person is to help them love God. Soren Kierkegaard I don’t preach a social gospel; I preach the Gospel, period. The gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ is concerned for the whole person. When people were hungry, Jesus didn’t say, “Now is that political or social?” He said, “I feed you.” Because the good news to a hungry person is bread.

Bishop Desmond Tutu A person is a person because he recognizes others as persons.

Bishop Desmond Tutu We may be surprised at the people we find in heaven. God has a soft spot for sinners. His standards are quite low.

Bishop Desmond Tutu I am not interested in picking up crumbs of compassion thrown from the table of someone who considers himself my master. I want the full menu of rights.

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The progress of our foreign missions depends not alone upon a few laborers, nor even upon many, but upon all who have received the light of truth. Every one can do something for the advancement of the work in distant lands. Our people are not half awake to the demands of the times. The voice of Providence is calling upon all who have the love of God in their hearts, to arouse to this great emergency. Never was there a time when there was so much at stake as today. Never was there a period in which greater energy and self-sacrifice were demanded Oh how much we need the quickening influence of the Holy Spirit; for we are living in a time of peril. The love of God shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit which is given unto us, will lead to right actions.

Partaking of the divine nature, we shall work as Christ worked, I am assured that we have everything for which to be thankful. It is our privilege to enjoy the richness of the promises that may be made fully ours. The Lord is ready to do large things for all those who believe. Jesus longs to quicken our hearts with healthful spiritual life. Jesus dwelling in the soul, purifying and ennobling all our faculties, guiding us into all truth, makes us a bright and shining light unto the world. Then let not this light burn dim. Moment by moment we need to live looking unto Jesus, who is the author and finisher of our faith Missionaries are wanted to carry the message of warning to other lands. God will accept of men who have devoted hearts, whom he can teach, and impress, and polish, by his own divine hand. God will require personal service at the hands of every one to whom he entrusts his truth.

Not one is excused. Some may feel that if they give their substance they are excused from personal efforts. But God forbid that they should deceive themselves in this. Gifts of means do not meet the requirement of God, for the duty is but half done. He will accept nothing short of yourselves.

You must work to save souls. All will not be called to go to foreign missions, but you may be missionaries at home in your own families and in your neighborhoods All are not called upon to go abroad; they may be successful in business lines, and are thus prepared to aid missionary efforts by their means. They may show to the world that business may be conducted on religious principles, that business men may live in strict fidelity to the truth. There may be Christian lawyers, Christian physicians, Christian merchants. Christ Resource Primer

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may be represented by all lawful callings When the work of the judgment is finished and decisions have been made for eternity, it will be seen that it is those who have given themselves wholeheartedly to the service of God who will stand right with heaven.

Some of these may not have been able to leave their families to go to some mission field, but they have been missionaries in their own neighborhood.

Their hearts have been so filled with the love of God that their great anxiety has been to win souls for Him. This has been more to them than silver and gold and the precious things of this world. And as they have labored in simplicity to minister the Word of truth, the Spirit of God has sent home the Word to the hearts of the people.

Ellen White Review and Herald, December 6, 1887; Testimonies to Southern Africa, 1892; Signs of the Times, September 4, 1879; Signs of the Times, March 3, 1898; The Upward Look, Chap. 25

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