Compassionate Evangelism in a Fragmented Society

A FUNNY thing happened on the way to Utopia; somewhere be tween 1950 and 1970 the great American melting pot broke. Whether it was the wars and their residues, the growth of knowledge, the shrinking of the globe, the loss of belief in the American dream, all of these and many more who knows? But the dream was shattered, and to a degree is gone. . .

-vice-president for education, Kettering Medical Center at the time this article was written

A FUNNY thing happened on the way to Utopia; somewhere be tween 1950 and 1970 the great American melting pot broke. Whether it was the wars and their residues, the growth of knowledge, the shrinking of the globe, the loss of belief in the American dream, all of these and many more who knows? But the dream was shattered, and to a degree is gone.

No longer is there one America nurtured on the McCuffey Reader, plunging upward towards its manifest destiny. Now we have a polarized society, and the polarization drive continues to split and fragment our country.

In our society today it is often easier to find the areas of dis agreement than the areas of agreement. We almost seem to revel in these antagonisms and gleefully choose up sides. But the attaching of labels to people can produce some very real problems.

Why must we attach labels, any way? Isn't every one a precious person for whom Christ died? Can't we listen to or watch out for another point of view without becoming so disturbed and threatened that we must lash out in re ply? Do we really care about people enough to attempt to reach out and help them regardless of the labels society may have imposed upon them?

Of course, it's far simpler to retreat into comfortable and conventional stereotypes and take a simplistic view when we consider the spreading of the gospel to all the world. After all, the gospel is "the good news for all," and if we move into a segment of society and they do not receive us as we think they should, we can shake the dust of their villages off our feet, adjust our halos and move on, or better yet we can get up in a meeting and bewail the awfulness of sin. We can indulge ourselves in criticizing the younger generation. Or we can blame all the tragedies in the world on the Communists, or the drug pushers, or any other people or devices that can keep us from either caring for people or having a real witness for Christ.

In the Gospels, you recall, the sharpest criticism of Jesus came from the Pharisees, and they said (in modern English), "He would rather go with all those drunks and gluttons than with us righteous folks." They spoke truly, for out of a great love and compassion, He reached to all in real need. And with it goes the companion truth Jesus strongly condemned those who lived rigid and legalistic lives while having no real sensitivity to the needs of people around them nor a recognition of the emptiness of their own "shell-shackled" lives. Do you suppose Jesus knew something we don't when He said, "I send you forth as sheep among wolves"? Do you suppose there is more safety in being a sheep among wolves where we must look to Cod only for sup port? As sheep among sheep, we tend to stagnate; our lives be come bland; we lose a sense of the need for God and, if we're not careful, our sense of mission. I wonder whether Jesus knew this? I wonder whether He knew that not only would we be stronger as sheep among wolves, but that we would get more satisfaction in being sheep among wolves. Do you suppose that God has placed in us a hunger to live dangerously? That only out there where the real battles of life are being fought can our souls find real peace? Is there not a spirit of adventure in every man, and ought that adventure not be used to spread the gospel?

In my temperance work I've spent a great deal of time studying alcoholism around the world. It is my privilege to have many friends who are recovered alcoholics, and to have spent a little time in working with those who were still suffering from addiction to alcohol. I have had ample opportunity to understand Alcoholics Anonymous, that wonderful, missionary organization that has helped hundreds of thousands of people around the world to recover from their dependency upon alcohol. Alcoholics Anonymous has a twelve-step program for recovery from alcoholism. Its first step is "I admitted I was powerless over alcohol," and the twelfth step states that Alcoholics Anonymous members will go to the aid of anyone in need who is in trouble with alcohol.

The diligence with which members of AA go to the aid of their fellow men, beggars description and puts to shame most of us Christians who state that we are zealous in the cause of Jesus Christ. Do you suppose a member of AA receiving a telephone call at one o'clock in the morning and dressing hastily to go to the aid of a fellow alcoholic does so because of some altruistic drive to help another drunk? Or does he do it because his sobriety depends on helping someone else? And if the latter is the case, as I believe it to be, can we learn something from this?

The church sometimes seems so aware of "the evil" that lurks around it that it turns inward to protect itself and becomes increasingly vulnerable to the dry rot of a loveless life. We forget so easily that "greater is he that is in you, than he who is in the world." In this fragmented society it's easy to find those whose life styles are very different from our own. Eric Fromm has stated, "The real test of our love is when we can love those who have a different set of values than we do." One quick glance at the society in which we live will show us an endless list of those living by different sets of values than ours. The alcoholics, the drug users, the hippies, the alienated youth, and on, and on, and on. We glibly quote, "Love the sinner but hate the sin," but as I look at myself and my fellow Christians, I sometimes conclude that only God seems able to do it.

Let's penetrate a little deeper into the real meaning of what we're saying. I would assert categorically that if I must verbalize another man's sin by labeling it, I have already rejected the man internally whether 1 am aware of it or not. On the contrary, shouldn't we abhor the sin which so easily besets us? Shouldn't we concentrate on finding ways to show we really love people? Not just to get from them nice behavior?

To our shame, as the quality of living has gone up, the quality of loving has gone down. We have forgotten that if we would win some to the gospel, we must be winsome; and you don't need to be very bright to see it, if you stop to look. Too long we have assumed that we could pass laws or regulations to solve problems. We've assumed it in our church. But laws don't solve problems; people solve problems. We will not solve the problems of racism by hate and fear. We will not solve problems of racism by passing more laws. As necessary as it may be to pass laws, we can only solve those problems when we believe that God loves all people red and yellow, black and white, and that in the words of the hymn, "All are precious in His sight."

We can solve these problems only when a black man or a red man can sit comfortably in the same pew with me and vice versa, and neither of us recognizes our differences. We can solve these problems only when we are ready to be friendly on a one-to-one basis. It is my firm conviction that God works only through people. A new law, or a more stringent enforcement of the law, can become but Another subterfuge, another way to delay, or another "gospel blimp."

We won't solve the problems of alienated youth by concentrating upon all the evil of the debauchery, the problems, the sins in which they may be involved. Don't we know that "what we are for must be greater than what we are against"? Haven't we learned that we don't attack people's crutches that support them with out putting something better in their place lest we destroy them something better, richer, finer, and more rewarding in their place?

Evangelical Christianity, to which we are related in its traditional Christian approaches, has not remotely touched the disease center of our society. It has not touched the inner city by its traditional methods. It does not reach the "cliff-dwelling" couples in the high-rise apartments that dot our landscape. It does not reach the alienated youth.

Yet, as we look around us, I'm sure you can see that never was the door so wide open to evangelism in all the history of America. The whole side of the house is down. The youth revolution of the sixties was more than just a sophistication of the usual intergenerational cleavage; more than just the time-honored changing of the guard. It was something akin to the nineteenth-century industrial revolution, which change be came a permanent part of man's everyday life. It has not been a calm evolution, but an immediate, radical upheaval on a vast scale. And while some of youth's militancy has disappeared in the seventies, do not be deceived; the life style of the youth continues to permeate our society.

As a result, to spread the gospel today, our church needs a whole new life style in strategy of out reach. The fact that the actual con tent of the gospel is not registered in the minds of the youth today is the largest moral problem we face.

Christians ought to be more concerned for the education of black children than are the Black Muslims. Seventh-day Adventists ought to be more interested in peace than are the Legions of Students for a Democratic Society. Christians ought to be more interested in feeding hungry children than the Black Panthers are, and we ought to be more concerned for the poor than the Civil Rights workers have been. We ought to be more interested in the immi grants than are the labor unions. We need a simplification of our message and our mission; to be able to confront every man where he finds himself with the simple gospel of Jesus Christ.

Give us a Christlike spirit; not to spend all our energies in fighting the changes about us, but to relate helpfully, meaningfully, and lovingly to the needs of our fragmented society.


Adapted from an address given on December 28, 1971, at an employee seminar at St. Helena Hospital, Health Center, Deer Park, California.


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-vice-president for education, Kettering Medical Center at the time this article was written

December 1973

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