Showing posts with label Charity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Charity. Show all posts

Sunday, November 06, 2022

Work For The Bread That Doesn't Perish

John 6 is often brought up in contexts like soteriology, the eucharist, and the historicity of John's gospel and miracles. That's appropriate, and it should keep happening, but the passage is also relevant in another context that should get more attention than it does.

In verses 26-27, Jesus rebukes the crowd for being overly focused on physical food and not focused enough on spiritual food. And he said that in a context in which problems like lack of food and poverty were much bigger than they are today, especially in a place like modern America. It's a documented fact that there's been a major decrease in poverty worldwide over the last several decades. It's also a fact that the modern world has far more technology, medicine, comforts and conveniences, literacy, and other advantages than people had in Biblical times. Yet, people, including Christians, frequently don't make the relevant distinctions between the Biblical context and ours. As if the tens of trillions of dollars we spend on government programs to help people in physical contexts, military assistance in such contexts, private charities, etc. don't make us significantly different than ancient Egypt, ancient Israel, or the Roman empire or only make us a little different. But even in a setting in which people were much worse off in these contexts than they are today, Jesus often made comments like the ones in John 6:26-27. How much more should we be doing it today?

The culture often suggests that the primary or only context in which Christians are doing good is when they benefit people physically in the short term (giving food to people, giving them clothing, giving them medicine, providing shelter, etc.). And Christians frequently accommodate that mindset by giving an inordinately large amount of attention to that sort of work. (And the fact that liberal professing Christians do that more than conservatives doesn't prove that conservatives aren't doing it. You can do something to a lesser extent, yet be guilty of doing it to some degree.) If people still haven't noticed the explicitly Christian names of the hospitals they go to, the widespread presence of explicitly Christian charities in so many contexts, etc., then they're culpably negligent. We can point these things out to them from time to time, but we need to keep the priorities Jesus set out in this passage in John 6 (and in many other places). There's some value in explaining to people what charity work and other such things Christians have done over the centuries, but we need to avoid taking that too far. You can be overly focused on it and leave people with false impressions. Mind precedes matter, and there are higher priorities than benefitting people physically in the short term.

I've occasionally heard John Piper make a good point in this context. One of the reasons why Christians should be so focused on work like evangelism and missions is to benefit people physically over the long term. The afterlife will have a physical dimension after the resurrection. The spiritual has priority over the physical, but as far as the physical is concerned, the long term has priority over the short term.

Thursday, July 21, 2022

Piling A Double Load On Other Men's Shoulders

This is a major problem in apologetics, as in other contexts:

"This is the age of proxy. People are not charitable, but they beg a guinea from somebody else to be charitable with. It is said that charity nowadays means that A finds B to be in distress, and therefore asks C to help him. Let us not in this fashion shirk our work. Go and do your own work, each man bearing his own burden, and not trying to pile a double load on other men's shoulders. Brethren, from morn till night sow beside all waters with unstinting hand." (Charles Spurgeon)

Wednesday, October 14, 2020

Help The Liconas

Mike Licona and Nick Peters have done a lot of good work in apologetics over the years. Here's a GoFundMe page to raise money to help Allie Licona Peters, Mike's daughter and Nick's wife.

Thursday, June 14, 2018

Help Melinda Penner Of Stand To Reason

She's been part of Stand to Reason since helping Greg Koukl found it twenty-five years ago. She had an accident last year and needs financial help. Here's a GoFundMe page for her.

Friday, September 01, 2017

Rednecks

Let this sink in for a minute.....Hundreds and hundreds of small boats pulled by countless pickups and SUVs from across the South are headed for Houston. Almost all of them driven by men. They're using their own property, sacrificing their own time, spending their own money, and risking their own lives for one reason: to help total strangers in desperate need.

Most of them are by themselves. Most are dressed like the redneck duck hunters and bass fisherman they are. Many are veterans. Most are wearing well-used gimme-hats, t-shirts, and jeans; and there's a preponderance of camo. Most are probably gun owners, and most probably voted for Trump.

These are the people the Left loves to hate, the ones Maddow mocks. The ones Maher and Olbermann just *know* they're so much better than.

These are The Quiet Ones. They don't wear masks and tear down statues. They don't, as a rule, march and demonstrate. And most have probably never been in a Whole Foods.

But they'll spend the next several days wading in cold, dirty water; dodging gators and water moccasins and fire ants; eating whatever meager rations are available; and sleeping wherever they can in dirty, damp clothes. Their reward is the tears and the hugs and the smiles from the terrified people they help. They'll deliver one boatload, and then go back for more.

When disaster strikes, it's what men do. Real men. Heroic men. American men. And then they'll knock back a few shots, or a few beers with like-minded men they've never met before, and talk about fish, or ten-point bucks, or the benefits of hollow-point ammo, or their F-150.

And the next time they hear someone talk about "the patriarchy", or "male privilege", they'll snort, turn off the TV and go to bed.

In the meantime, they'll likely be up again before dawn. To do it again. Until the helpless are rescued. And the work's done.

They're unlikely to be reimbursed. There won't be medals. They won't care. They're heroes. And it's what they do.

Taken from a well spoken dude just like most of us

Tuesday, January 12, 2016

A pacifist response to the "Syrian refugee" crisis


There are several basic problems with his pacifist response to the "Syrian refugee" crisis:


i) "Refugee" is often a euphemism. We need to distinguish genuine refugees from looters or terrorists. 

ii) Charity depends on private property rights. If you refuse to protect property, then you have nothing to share with refugees. The thugs will hoard it all for themselves.

iii) Likewise, you can't very well give asylum to refugees if you refuse to protect people from rape, robbery, slavery, murder, &c. 

iv) It's not just a question of terrorism, but sharia. Look at what is unfolding before our very eyes in Europe.

v) You don't value life if you refuse to protect innocent lives. Sprinkle pens this bleeding-heart piece about "refugees," but in pacifism, life is cheap. The lives of "refugees" are forfeit, because pacifism refuses to protect innocent lives.

vi) He quotes Mt 25 out of context. In context, the "stranger" refers to persecuted Christians. 

vii) His appeal to OT charity blurs distinct categories:



viii) His appeal to OT law is highly selective. A pacifist appealing to OT law is quite ironic. OT law is hardly nonviolent. It contains laws of warfare, as well as not a few capital offenses. It includes a provision to kill a house burglar (Exod 22:2). 

Sprinkle needs to explain what principle or criterion he uses to differentiate the culturebound provisions of the OT law code from the transcultural provisions. 

ix) Apropos (viii), the Mosaic penal code is often incompatible with the varieties of sharia. In consistency, Sprinkle must say Muslims "refugees" can only be covered by Mosaic provisions regarding the treatment of "strangers" on condition that they renounce sharia and submit to the Mosaic penal code. If OT law mandates how they should be treated in one respect (charity), then it mandates how they should be treated in other respects (e.g. death penalty for rape).

Tuesday, July 14, 2015

Help A Good Christian Apologist And His Family

I just saw a post by Dan Phillips about Ed Komoszewski's declining health and an opportunity to help him and his family. In addition to Dan's comments about Ed's work, see the remarks by Dan Wallace and Rob Bowman on the GoFundMe page. I've recommended a book Ed co-authored, Reinventing Jesus, for years, and I've often given copies away to other people. Please donate as much as you can to help Ed and his family.

"do not neglect doing good and sharing, for with such sacrifices God is pleased" (Hebrews 13:16)

Wednesday, October 08, 2014

Liberal Hatred And Liberal Priorities

David French, a lawyer who writes for National Review, recently commented:

"I’ve defended Christian campus groups from exactly these kinds of policies for more than 14 years (representing a number of groups, including some impacted by Cal State’s policies), and in that time I’ve heard just about every excuse imaginable for excluding Christian groups from campus. In reality, however, universities are motivated by malice. They hate the Christian message, often despise its messengers, and have literally been casting about for more than 30 years for the right legal argument to exclude the Christian voice from campus."

Philip Bump writes in the Washington Post about a recent study that confirms something that's been found by other studies:

"Of the states that gave the most to charity in 2012, the top 17 all voted for Mitt Romney that year. The bottom seven states in giving all voted for Obama....Religious people give more to charity. And in its annual assessment of the nation's religiosity, Gallup reveals that the states at the top of the giving list -- Utah, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee -- are also at the top in terms of religious devotion."

Sunday, March 16, 2014

Help A Christian Teacher And Apologist Care For His Wife

I saw J. Warner Wallace link to a page here about donating to help Doug Groothuis take care of his wife, who was recently diagnosed with dementia. Please consider making a donation.

Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Who's Actually Less Loving?

I just came across a study about the role of the Bible in the lives of Americans, through a link from J. Warner Wallace. You can read about the study in more depth here. Notice, for example, the sections on "Giving to Non-Profit Organizations". Take note of the contrast between how much particular groups give and how often those groups claim that they object to Christianity because it's unloving, divisive, hypocritical, etc. Here's an article by Chris Price on Christianity's historical influence on charity.

"…why do we not observe that it is their [Christians'] benevolence to strangers…their care for the graves of the dead and the pretended holiness of their lives that have done most to increase atheism [Christianity]?…For it is disgraceful that, when no Jew ever has to beg, and the impious Galilaeans [Christians] support not only their own poor but ours as well, all men see that our people lack aid from us." (Julian the Apostate, cited in John Cook, The Interpretation Of The New Testament In Greco-Roman Paganism [Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, 2002], 327)