The Social Gospel

I'll return to the covenants in a day or two, but first I wanted to write a little something on the social gospel, or social outreach by the church in general.  I've seen a lot of social outreaches (feeding the hungry, clothing the poor, disaster relief, etc.) being supported by churches and Christians lately, and that's great.  We're called to visit the widows and orphans in their affliction (James 1:27).  We're even called to feed our enemies when they are hungry (Romans 12:20), but sometimes it can miss the point.

Humanitarian efforts mean nothing if they don't forward the gospel.  I'm not saying every bowl of rice has to come with a tract, but if we merely clothe a man and then leave him alone, is he really much better off?  A glass a water may stave off a man's thirst for awhile, but only the living water of Christ can make a man never thirst again (John 4:10).  Man is born, by virtue of his sinful nature, with a one way ticket to an eternity in Hell.  That is his real affliction, far more serious than water or food (though God knows that we need those things too, Matthew 6:32).  Now obviously we of means should not ignore the physical sufferings of our fellow man, but as J. Gresham Machen said:

Wherever the notion is cherished that the relief of physical suffering is somehow more important--more practical--than the welfare of the human spirit, these material things are being made the chief object of pursuit.  And that is not Christian love.  Christian love does not, indeed, neglect man's physical welfare; it does not give a man a sermon when he needs bread.  It relieves distress; it delights in affording even the simplest pleasure to a child.  But it always does these things with the consciousness of the one inestimable gift that it has in reserve.  (From What is Faith?)

There has always been a tendency in some branches Christianity (at least in modern times) towards nourishing the body of man while neglecting his soul.  Perhaps it's because man, many times, is so much more appreciative when you feed him or clothe him.  Many unsaved men will respond with a blank stare, or even outright derision, to the gospel message when shared with him.  A hungry man will rarely refuse a warm Big Mac.  And yet man is so much more hungry for the Gospel--they just refuse to realize it.  I was reminded of this again, reading Michael Horton's excellent article on the tension in evangelicalism between its reformed and anti-reformed, pietist roots.  The latter roots lay in the second "Great Awakening", led in great portion by Charles Finney.  This movement

confused the Kingdom of Christ with the kingdoms of this world and imagined that Christ's reign could be made visible by the moral, social, and political activity of the saints. There was little room for anything weighty to tie the movement down, to discipline its entrepreneurial celebrities, or to question its "revivals" apart from their often short-lived publicity.  (From the article mentioned above)

This in part led to the Social Gospel movement of the early 20th century which held the belief that the second coming could not occur until the church had rid the world of social evils but largely ignored the call to evangelism.  This confusion of the Kingdom of Christ with the kingdoms of the world, as Horton puts it, has never really lost its hold on the mainstream church.  

Humanitarian and social efforts are like life support.  They can never cure the disease or remove death from the door, it just makes life a little more palatable and delays death a little longer.  Life support, in its proper use, is just a tool to give the physicians more time and opportunity to supply a cure.  To provide life support and withhold the cure (the gospel) is no favor to the patient!  Death will still come, and he will be no better off when it does.  We have the cure, let's use it.