Great NYTimes OpEd Piece About Why We Are Really Helping the Poor

David Brooks has an excellent piece today in the opinion section of the New York Times. He reflects on the same type of idea I have been talking about here as to the real motivations or helping the poor. Here is a segment of what he said in his op-ed piece.

The discussion also reinforced a thought I’ve had in many other contexts: that community service has become a patch for morality. Many people today have not been given vocabularies to talk about what virtue is, what character consists of, and in which way excellence lies, so they just talk about community service, figuring that if you are doing the sort of work that Bono celebrates then you must be a good person.

Let’s put it differently. Many people today find it easy to use the vocabulary of entrepreneurialism, whether they are in business or social entrepreneurs. This is a utilitarian vocabulary. How can I serve the greatest number? How can I most productively apply my talents to the problems of the world? It’s about resource allocation.

People are less good at using the vocabulary of moral evaluation, which is less about what sort of career path you choose than what sort of person you are.

In whatever field you go into, you will face greed, frustration and failure. You may find your life challenged by depression, alcoholism, infidelity, your own stupidity and self-indulgence. So how should you structure your soul to prepare for this? Simply working at Amnesty International instead of McKinsey is not necessarily going to help you with these primal character tests.


Exactly. Young pastors today are rushing into the social gospel without asking what their motivation or the motivations of their congregants are. I believe that many are substituting "helping the poor" for solving pesonal sin and guilt instead of emphasizing the cross as the solution to that problem and the social gospel coming out of the cross, the cross being the center of Christianity, not the social gospel being the center.

A Must Read to Answer THE Question!

Why did I become a Christian after growing up in a liberal Protestant church and finally become an atheist in college? Tim Challies has an excellent post today that answers the questio I I was asking in those days, which was, "Isn't there something better than all of these religions where you have to 'do something' to get anywhere?" Yes, there is an answer and the answer is what Jesus Christ did at the cross for us. In his blog post Tim goes through some of the religions, telling us whqt they reuire and then ends with true Christianity and what it requires. This is a must read! Here's the link:


http://www.challies.com/articles/the-ledger#more

Safe Church

Church, more and more, is becoming unsafe. How so? Pastors talk about movies that are unwholesome, winking and mumbling something about "but don't take the kids, it's probably for adults." why is the pastor even talking about these movies much less encouraging congregants to go see them? At church functions and/or church-sponsored small groups they are serving alcohol. And then the list goes on to include smoking of cigars at church functions, gambling and dancing with people you don't know cheek to cheek. Why is this a problem? Before you call me an old fogie, or worse et, legalistic, I hope you will read the rest of the post.

This is another example of church leads not knowing their members. How many men in churches are fighting pornography, are ex-alcoholics,, fight lust, are getting over gambling addictions, and so forth? And we are telling them to go to sexual movies, to dance, to drink, smoke and gamble? Are we nuts? This is coming about because of the big backlash to the former (and I do stress former) fundamentalist legalism. But that is past now so let's get over it. But we don't get past it if we simply go to the opposite extreme. We need to protect church members that have come out of the world into the glorious light of Jesus Christ. While certain members can partake of these things outside the church, shouldn't the church b a safe place?

But how do we accomplish this safety without being or appearing legalistic? The answer is we explain why we aren't doing these things as a church--to be a safe zone. But members can use their own prayerful discretion outside the church in their own lives. Frankly, a lot of this stuff that is going on today is simply rebellion. I've been in churches recently where leaders brag about drinking, smoking cigars and outdoing each other in what types of movies they've seen. I hope that church membs begin to leave these types of churches as it is obvious a new kind of holiness is needed today, one following the Spirit, not legalism.

The Christian Carnival for April 25, 2012

Hi there! Welcome to this week’s Christian Carnival. Here is the lineup:

*Pam at What Christians Want to Know talks about Christian Fellowship in her post entitled, Christian Fellowship Quotes. The unique thing about this post is that Pam lists quotes from well-known Christians on the subject of fellowship. Very interesting reading.


*Michael at Chasing the Wind has done one of the most thorough Bible studies of the Parable of the Samaritan I’ve seen. Reading this would be a great morning Bible study, and you can find it at his post entitled, Be a Good Neighbor.

*Rodney at Beyond Belief writes about the New Agey book, Course in Miracles. He gives us an audio of a pastor discussing why this book is NOT Christian. This is an important post as so much New Age and Buddhist thought is flooding into our evangelical churches. His post, very worth the read, is called, A Course in Miracles.

*Rob at the One Money Design blog reminds us that our career IS our calling. Read his thoughts on this vital subject in his post entitled, Can You Combine Your Calling and Your Career?.

*At the Closer 2 Thee blog, Joshua gives
an analogy of water heaters to illustrate our Christian life. I bet you’re curious as to how we are like water heaters, so you'll have to read his post entitled, Water Heater.

*Parents want to know where their children are at all times. So what does that have to do with a pure Christian walk? Ridge at the In Faith blog tells us how it applies in his post entitled, God Knows.

*Dan, at the same blog, writes about being able to help a quadriplegic in a very interesting way in his post, Harmonica Lessons.


*The Rhapsody of Realities blog is very encouraging this week telling us to keep on trekking in faith and not to give up, in their post entitled, There’s Hope For You in Christ.

*Md Shanta at the Your Spirit, Mind and Body blog writes about our two natures warring against each other and how to resolve this war in the post, What Nature Drives You?.

*My contribution this week is the answer to the question, "Are all Christian women supposed to submit to all Christian men?" I found a great article that does justice to this question in my post, Submitting To all Men?.

Submitting to All Men?

An interesting topic came up in my Christian chat room. Are all Christian women supposed to submit all Christian men? Is this what the New Testament teaches? Or do the references to "women" and "men" actually mean wives and husbands? Some NT passages are very clear that the reference is to wives and husbands, but others, such as I Timothy 2:12, may not.

I found a very good article that discusses this dillemma. It's called "Women, Stop Submittimg to Men!"

http://www.dennyburk.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/3-Moore.pdf

This really spoke to me this Easter. Because Jesus Christ was crucified and arose from the dead, I was able to become a different and new creation just like in this song (although I never hit children nor did really bad things). The words are from a song by the Gaithers.


Thanks To Calvary

Today, I went down to the place where I used to go
Today, I saw the same old crowd I knew before
And when they asked me what had happened, I tried to tell them
Thanks to Calvary, I don't come here anymore.

Thanks to Calvary I am not the man I used to be
Thanks to Calvary things are different than before
And as the tears ran down my face I tried to tell them
Thanks to Calvary, I don't live here anymore.

Then we went down to the house where we used to live
My little girl ran behind the door, like so many times before
And I said "Honey you don't need to be afraid,
you've got a new daddy now
And I said, "Hon never fear, you've got a new mommy here,
Thanks to Calvary we don't live here anymore.

Thanks to Calvary I am not the man I used to be
Thanks to Calvary things are different than before
And as the tears ran down my face I tried to tell them
Thanks to Calvary, we don't live here anymore.

Thanks to Calvary I am not the man I used to be
Thanks to Calvary things are different than before
And as the tears ran down my face I tried to tell them
Thanks to Calvary, I don't live here anymore.

Thanks to Calvary, we don't live here anymore.


Words by William J. and Gloria Gaither.
Music by William J. Gaither

A Great Survey to do in Your Church

Every church should do what this article suggests. That is, do a survey of your congregation, including youth, to see if they even know what to say to a non-Christian as to what Christianity is, and how to become a Christian. Years ago, in most evangelical churches, this would be a no brainier. But today? well...........read the article at the link below.

http://www.christianpost.com/news/the-gospel-test-do-your-people-really-know-the-good-news-72466/