Generous?

October/Winter has a special Keller air to it; it’s not far off the feeling I get at Christmas. Having waited for this years offerings and I gleefully snapped it up asap. 150 pages in..

About an hour ago I was chatting over the idea of Social Justice with the lads in the trainee office. If you are 20 something then the idea of social justice is not a new one. Our discussion circled these topics. Social justice is culturally a very fashionable idea, which means in churches that like to drown themselves in secular culture it has become a defining reason for Christ not having come back yet. Quite a lot of my reading earlier this year about the Emerging Church movement, many of whom are a point in case. During the election if David Cameron was asked whether religion had a part to play in the Big Society, the role was to be one of charity and general do-gooder-ing.If I am honest, this has tainted my view of social justice; I am easily sceptical about it. The churches main reason for existence is not merely to do social justice, as if it were some civil service; when people try sell the Church short in this way, I get my back up and retreat as near to the other end of the spectrum as I can.

Perhaps that is slightly over stated; I can’t help but read the Bible and be convicted that all people (even more so those have received the grace of the God) should help the poor and marginalised. Really what happens is that I caveat my social justice very heavily. This is the challenge of Generous Justice; I realise I practice Stingy Justice. “Yeah helping people is important but, I don’t have much myself” or “I would help but, they won’t help themselves” etc. Keller makes a fine point that, those who have been touched and changed by the unbounding generosity of Christ, cannot help but be generous to others. Christ could have said of us when we were unwilling and unable “I would help but, they won’t help themselves”. He didn’t though.

Still 50 odd pages left to chew over. I think they look at how we should go about it, which might indeed deal with how the Church as a gathered body doesn’t degenerate into a branch of civil service and yet practises social justice.

I am also aware that the title of the post suggests this will be a review of the latest Delirious? album. Let me assure you, I will never do that.