Have you noticed that our journey along the path of history has taken us away from the question of national behavior and brought us face-to-face with a special Community and their practices? This Community is an ever growing company of Christ-followers we know as the Church. The nation they lived in was Rome. It was a worldwide Empire ruled by an Emperor who was viewed as a deity. This community had no say in how things were done in the Empire. Unlike us, on the eve of a national election, they could not look at several possible leaders and choose the one they wanted based on whether or not he or she would honor principles important to them. They were stuck with what they had for leaders and if they resisted they were crucified. It was that simple. But something quite remarkable happened. They practiced this principle of “generosity” in a tireless commitment to the “sacrificial love” of Jesus in their dealings with each other and their world. And their world was radically changed as a result.
Charles Colson, a lawyer once implicated in the notorious Watergate scandal that spelled the end of Richard Nixon’s political career, now a devout Christ-follower and founder of a renowned ministry to prisoners known as Prison Fellowship wrote about the revolutionary influence of this generous movement. His book is titled The Faith. In it he writes, “ … consider the inexplicable (to the world) love and sacrifice Christians modeled in Roman times when devastating plagues arrived. … (A)t the onset of a plague, the wealthy fled to their country estates. But Christians believed each human being was made in the image of a loving God. Instead of fleeing, they ministered to plague victims, often at the cost of their own lives. Their tending to the sick increased the survival rate of plague victims by as much as two-thirds, and this witness attracted many new converts. By acting on the teachings of Christ, without regard to their own welfare, these Christians progressed from being a small sect to the dominant cultural group.” Dominant cultural group? They grew in numbers and influence so radically that the once great Empire was
Christianized and survives today as the widely diverse and worldwide Christian Church. And, still, the practice of “generosity,” in the form of Christlike “sacrificial love” is their trademark.
In “Guardian,” September 12, 2005, Roy Hattersley wrote, “Faith does breed charity. We atheists have to accept that most believers are better human beings.” He went on. “Late at night, on the streets of one of our great cities, that man – a Salvation Army Captain I know – offers friendship as well as help to the most degraded and (to those of a censorious turn of mind) degenerate human beings who exist just outside the boundaries of our society. And he does what he believes to be his Christian duty without the slightest suggestion of disapproval. Yet, for much of his time, he is meeting needs that result from conduct he regards as intrinsically wicked.
Civilized people do not believe that drug addiction and male prostitution offend against divine ordinance. But those who do are the men and women most willing to change the fetid bandages, replace the sodden sleeping bags and - probably most difficult of all - argue, without a trace of impatience, that the time has come for some serious medical treatment. Good works, John Wesley insisted, are no guarantee of a place in heaven. But they are most likely to be performed by people who believe that heaven exists.
The correlation is so clear that it is impossible to doubt that faith and charity go hand in hand. The close relationship may have something to do with the belief that we are all God's children, or it may be the result of a primitive conviction that, although helping others is no guarantee of salvation, it is prudent to be recorded in a book of gold, … as "one who loves his fellow men". Whatever the reason, believers answer the call, and not just the Salvation Army. When I was a local councilor, the Little Sisters of the Poor - right at the other end of the theological spectrum - did the weekly washing for women in back-to-back houses who were too ill to scrub for themselves.
It ought to be possible to live a Christian life without being a Christian or, better still, to take Christianity à la carte. The Bible is so full of contradictions that we can accept or reject its moral advice according to taste. Yet men and women who, like me, cannot accept the mysteries and the miracles do not go out with the Salvation Army at night.
The only possible conclusion is that faith comes with a packet of moral imperatives that, while they do not condition the attitude of all believers, influence enough of them to make them morally superior to atheists like me.”
What Hattersley cannot grasp is that the Spirit of Christ who compelled the 1st Century Jewish Passover pilgrims to follow this God-man changes human hearts. Those changed hearts become like God himself. For them, as Tolstoy put it, “what is good and bad change places.” It is, for them, the “right thing” to be generous. To give until it hurts. Men and women filled with the Spirit of Christ become, increasingly, like Jesus and instinctively practice His “sacrificial” brand of “love” because they have His heart.
For almost 39 years I have believed and insisted that, if the Church of Jesus Christ, Christ-followers wherever they may be found, truly had their hearts changed until the sacrificially loving Spirit of Christ unquestionably determined the guiding principles and real practices by which they lived, any politician offering welfare carrots to the electorate would find he or she had no audience. He’d be beating a dead horse and getting nowhere. For there would hardly be “a needy person” to be found.
It may sound idealistic. But before you dismiss my proposition completely remember. A ragtag band of ordinary folk from Palestine started a movement that, without raising a sword or rousing support for a Liberationist Revolution, transformed an Empire and continues to multiply into the billions on the principle that God will “bless – treat lavishly, generously – all the families of the earth through a people who, like Him, live generously and do so because they’re convinced they are their “brother’s keeper.” Our nation and our world is being transformed by this movement. Jesus of Nazareth is bringing “abundant life” to more and more millions all the time. The “poor” are hearing “Good News,” as they did while He walked this earth. Liberty is a gift of our God. He’s been setting people free since the beginning of time. He will do so now. The most significant thing that can happen this Election Day is a Church wide resolve to reassume responsibility for “feeding the hungry, giving water to the thirsty, housing the stranger, clothing those who need clothes, caring for the sick, visiting the prisoner, bringing Good News to the poor, and sight to the spiritually blind, offering freedom to the oppressed, and extending, to all who will receive it, the Grace of God. This resolve, sealed by genuine repentance for the wrongs we have done, and a new determination to do what is right in the eyes of God, will, more than any other change, make this nation more and more the land our Founders dreamed it would be.
God will bless America but only if we do the right things.
It begins with generosity.
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