Advocacy

Most glaringly, as the church is crying out for the state to do better at all the things the church was built to excel at, the church isn't even trying to take these functions back. Not on a meaningful scale. 

Rather, the church believes that her role now is advocacy with the state, not service of the poor, the sick, and the immigrant. The church seems to believe that the best thing we can do for others is to provoke the state to do better for them. 

You may have guessed this by now, but I don't believe this. 

Jesus never once spent His time asking the Romans to do better. 

Actually, He didn't even spend His time asking the Pharisees to do better. 

He spent His time encouraging and empowering the people to do better. 

And truthfully, that's the only way things ever change in a meaningful way. 

The church has gone from practicing compassion to just preaching it. From being merciful to protesting for it. From extending grace to demanding it. From being love to judging it. 

And it's not a good look for the church. 

The truth is that you do more good in this world by simply loving your actual neighbor than by attending a thousand protest marches in support of something so undefined as "your neighbor." If you want to change an actual life, then you need to engage an actual life. 

It's the same difference as giving money to a cause versus actually supporting a cause. 

Let's say you see a fundraiser for a family in need. You feel like maybe you ought to give a little, perhaps out of guilt because you know your life is easier than whatever they are going through right now. Or maybe simple charity because you've lived that story yourself and you know how difficult it is. So you give money. And other folks give money. And now, that family has money. 

Great. But did you actually do anything for them? 

Having the resources to get help and having help are very different things. It's nice to be able to say, cool, now I can pay the restoration company to clean all the burned-up possessions out of my house. But it's even better to look up and here are your actual neighbors with gloves, trash bags, and a big ol' jug of ice water to get them through the day. 

This is what the church used to be so good at, but not any more. It used to be, "Hey, church - Bob is moving on Saturday, and we'd love to have some help" and the whole church shows up with boxes and trailers and everything you need to move Bob to his new house. 

Now, it's "Hey, church - Bob is moving on Saturday, and we're a little short of what we need to hire a moving truck for him. Would you consider giving a little bit extra this week so we can get Bob moved?" 

Weak. 

That's not what Jesus made us for. And yet, it's what we've convinced ourselves we're supposed to do. 

So all of a sudden, you see pastors and "faith leaders" standing on street corners, holding signs and begging the government for more compassion, more mercy, more grace, more faith....more of all the things the faith leaders themselves are supposed to be the best at. And at the end of the day, they go home having done absolutely nothing for any of their actual neighbors and somehow feeling good about it. 

Pharisees.