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Journey Through Philippians and PhilemonSample

DAY 13 OF 13

Intro

Nicole introduces this lesson on how the Gospel and the Church are meant to make a difference in this world.

Social Impact: In Front of the Text

The Bible has inspired countless social movements that have made a positive impact on society.

The Social Impact of the Bible

The social impact of the Bible is of vital interest, especially in a world where believers are often blamed for how Scripture has been used to suppress people. We’ve noted in other lessons the inclination of younger Americans to choose their religious affiliation based on social agendas (e.g., justice, environment, poverty). Faith commitments now tend to be less about truth propositions compared to the past. Older generations asked, “Is it true” and “How can we prove it?” Books like Josh McDowell’s Evidence That Demands a Verdict became best sellers. They helped people assess Christianity based on the values and truth claims that were of greatest concern at the time.

While truth claims are as important—or more important—now than ever, the increased interest in the Bible’s political and social vision is a welcome addition. And that’s because at the heart of the Bible is a comprehensive moral and social vision for how God wants his image-bearers to live. Biblical Christianity is an inescapably social religion. It involves a social view of God, who is himself a community of persons:

The absolute mystery of whose life is an agapic threefold donation in which each one wants the other to be, lets the other be, consents to its generation or inspiration, prays to the other and lives with the other in an eternal conversation of expectation and fulfillment, unfathomable gratitude and surprise.

—Antonio López

(NOTE: “Agapic” means an expression of “agape” or godly love.)

And because God is a social communion, salvation is a social reality. The Church isn’t really a religion or even a spiritual movement. The Church is a society, a social network and community that participates in the life of God. Christianity is not a truth proposition or a creed but a social movement, and a social agenda. Every local congregation is meant to become a community of love and humility that mirrors God’s own divine communion. It’s concerned with breathing God’s life into the world, spreading the circulatory system of God’s eternal love and character into every human relationship. It seeks to repair the broken network of social relations that has fractured and splintered down through history since Genesis 3 where humanity turned away from our original communion with God. Just as the first sin was a breach of our relationship with God:

Sin is always an offense that touches others, that alters the world and damages it. To the extent that this is true, when the network of human relationships is damaged from the very beginning, then every human being enters into a world that is marked by relational damage. At the very moment that a person begins human existence, which is a good, he or she is confronted by a sin-damaged world. Each of us enters into a situation in which relationality has been hurt. Consequently, each person is, from the very start, damaged in relationships and does not engage in them as he or she ought.

—Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger

There are a lot of great causes out there that we might join or get excited about, but the visions that fuel them vary considerably. For Christians, every good cause is subordinate to God’s character and vision. Social engagement flows out of a deeply theological source.

Let’s now look at ways the Bible has inspired and influenced social change.

Sources: Antonio López, “Eternal Happening: God as an Event of Love,” in Love Alone is Credible: Essays on von Balthasar, 2008, p. 86. Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, ‘In the Beginning…’: A Catholic Understanding of the Story of Creation and the Fall, 1995, pp. 72-74.

The Bible & Social Causes

Women’s rights—In Genesis, we read that male and female are created in the image of God (Gen 2:27). Paul later says that we are no longer male or female but rather one in Christ Jesus (Gal 3:28). The equality of men and women in passages like these led many Bible believers to take leadership roles in suffrage movements around the world. It’s no coincidence that the First Women’s Rights Convention in the United States was held in a Wesleyan Church.

Opposition to slavery—Inspired by the equality of all men and women evident in these same passages, Wesleyans and people from many other traditions opposed global slavery and formed the backbone of the Underground Railroad in the United States. Slaves were transported secretly to Canada, a British territory safe for runaways, because of the work of biblical abolitionists like William Wilberforce.

Opposition to the death penalty—Many Bible believers have opposed the death penalty in the name of forgiveness and reconciliation. They emphasize mercy and want to extend the opportunity for repentance to those who have committed capital crimes. Some oppose the death penalty also because of the biblical concern for justice and equity among those who are tried in the court systems.

Worker’s rights—Among other movements, the Catholic Worker Movement, founded by Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin, sought to reshape society and the economic landscape according to biblical ideals of justice and charity. They press for fair wages and for better living and working conditions for those on the margins of society. They also promote environmentally conscious industry.

The Hippocratic Oath

The image in front of you from a 12th-century Byzantine manuscript is a copy of the Hippocratic Oath. This oath dates to the 5th century BC and is a vow taken by physicians to care for the sick with integrity. It reads, in part:

I will use treatment to help the sick according to my ability and judgment, but never with a view to injury .... Into whatsoever houses I enter, I will enter to help the sick, and I will abstain from all intentional wrong-doing and harm, especially from abusing the bodies of man or woman, bond or free.

This oath resonates with biblical values. The scribe who copied this document found it to be so compatible with Christian ideas that he copied it in the shape of the cross from the crucifixion story in the Gospels, identifying it with Jesus and his ethical commands.

In the late fourth century, after the legalization of Christianity in Rome, hospitals came to be seen among Christians as second in importance only to church buildings. Hospitals as we know them today—with in-patient medical treatment—originated during this time under the guidance of two Christian Bishops, Basil of Caesarea and John Chrysostom. These bishops, like other Christians of their time, believed hospitals to be pillars of a truly Christian society and a way to follow Jesus’ instruction in the Gospel of John to “[L]ove one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another” (John 3:34b, NIV).

Sources: G. E. R. Lloyd, In the grip of disease: studies in the Greek imagination, 2008, p. 75.

Helpful resources: Amanda Porterfield, Healing in the History of Christianity, 2010, p. 52; Ira M. Rutkow, Surgery: an illustrated history, 1993, p. 27.

American Civil Rights & the Bible

One of the better-known relationships between the Bible and social activism is found in the ministry and work of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. In his famous “I Have a Dream” speech given at the 1963 march on Washington D.C., he quotes from Isaiah 40:4-5, casting a vision of a biblical society transformed to mirror the harmonious communion of God:

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.

This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

—Martin Luther King, Jr.

In a final speech before his assassination, King seems to hint at his premature death by connecting his role in the civil rights movement with that of Moses as he led the Israelites through the desert, but did not live to see his people inhabit the land that God had promised them:

Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And he's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land!

—Martin Luther King, Jr.

While King is the most well-known civil rights activist, many other African Americans referred to the Bible in their pursuit of justice. Modjeska Simkins, the secretary of the NAACP in South Carolina, drew on a wide range of biblical themes and images in confronting racism. She compared white persecution and lynching to the murder of Abel by his brother Cain in Genesis, and offered a connection between Job and the African-American people:

Like ourselves—Job (was in a) great struggle against power. In Ephesians 6:12 we find, [“]For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of darkness in this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.[”] Make no mistake. That is where we are. Wrestling against evil in high places—against poor, disenfranchised, various forms of racial and sexual abuse, obvious and subtle …. We are striving to exist in an alien society.

James Lawson was a Methodist minister who worked with King and other activists, and after King’s death, continued to train younger activists in the tactics of non-violence. When faced with persecution he insisted:

The politics of Jesus and the politics of God are that people should be fed, that people have access to life, that people should be treated equally and justly. Especially the marginalized. The poor, the illiterate, the jailed, the hungry, the naked—those are all terms Jesus uses.

Lawson found not only guidance but also strength in the Bible.

There’s an idea in the New Testament that love vanquishes all fear. There is all across the Bible the advice, “Do not be afraid! Do not be dismayed. When you see all these things happening, do not be alarmed.”

Along with his fellow activists, guided and empowered by the Bible, Lawson had an enormous impact on American society and the place of African Americans within it.”

Sources and helpful resources: David L. Chappell, A Stone of Hope: Prophetic Religion and the Death of Jim Crow, 2004, pp. 63, 66; Heidi Hall, "Civil rights advocate James Lawson was rooted in faith," in The Tennessean, March 02, 2017; Martin Luther King, Jr., "I Have a Dream," Research and Education Institute, August 28, 1963; Martin Luther King, Jr., “I've Been to the Mountaintop,” Americanrhetoric.com, April 3, 1968.

Misuse & Abuse of the Bible

Because they’re negative developments, we probably don’t think of these answers as “causes” or social agendas, but that’s exactly what they are. They’re attempts to promote social change or reorganization, and the Bible has been used to validate each of them.

The Klan thinks of itself as a Christian organization and its literature is full of biblical texts and often ridiculous interpretations of Scripture. The “God Hates F*gs” movement was founded by the Westboro Baptist Church. Apartheid, the state-legislated segregation of South Africa, was driven by white supremacists who called themselves “born Christians.” Defenders of the transatlantic slave trade were adept at distorting Scripture to their ends. You are beginning to see the Bible on both sides of most social movements and institutions. Let’s look at more in the following presentation.

Imperialism & the Bible

A number of biblical passages promote the spreading of the Bible’s message around the world. In the Gospels, it is said that:

The gospel must first be proclaimed to all the nations. Mark 13:10 (NIV)

And that:

This gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world … to all nations, and then the end will come. Matthew 24:14 (NIV)

Passages like this inspired the vibrant missionary movements that have characterized Christianity throughout its history and carried the Bible’s message into many different cultures globally. But for European nations who wanted to spread their power in the ages of Imperialism and colonial expansion, these passages were a convenient excuse for the subjugation of native peoples and the confiscation of their lands.

French colonial expansion in North America in the early 17th century is a prime example of this use of biblical content in defense of national interests. When lawyer Marc Lescarbot argued for the expansion of French culture in modern-day Canada, he based a part of his argument on Jesus’ Parable of the Talents, which he claimed demonstrated the authority of the French to claim native territories as their own:

These people are like the man of whom it is spoken in the Gospel, who had wrapped up in a napkin the talent which had been given unto him, instead of turning it to account, and therefore it was taken away from him.

In his view Native Americans were “guests of these forests and maritime shores” waiting for European settlers to come and teach them how to cultivate and civilize their land as the Bible had commanded. The call to “preach to the whole world” and the Parable of the Talents, according to Lescarbot, not only excused French Imperialism but also placed on the French a moral obligation to colonize.

Source: Saliha Belmessous, Assimilation and Empire: Uniformity in French and British Colonies, 1541-1954, 2013, pp. 20-23.

The Bible & the Environment

For the first eight chapters of the Bible, humans are vegetarian. It is only following the flood that Noah and his family are given the authority to eat meat:

The fear and dread of you will fall on all the beasts of the earth, and on all the birds in the sky, on every creature that moves along the ground, and on all the fish in the sea; they are given into your hands.Everything that lives and moves about will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything.

Genesis 9:2-3 (NIV)

Because of this passage some believers see vegetarianism as a moral issue. They tend to see this arrangement, where humans did not eat animals, as an ideal model for the way we should relate respectfully to our environment. This has been a minority position throughout Christian history, but it’s an important one that is growing today. It is, in part, a reaction against the view that God’s blessing in Genesis 1:28 is permission to abuse the environment:

God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”

Genesis 1:28 (NIV)

Many have misread this command to “subdue” the earth as permission to dominate and abuse it. Adam and Eve are made stewards of creation. Along with rule over the earth they are given the responsibility to respect and protect it as God’s creation. As Bible believers, we have a responsibility to care for the health of the environment and to invest in issues like pollution and sustainability.

Before we easily criticize those who have misused the Bible, let’s reflect on how we may at times have become zealous while not having personal integrity.

Personal Relationships & Big Ideas

Even if we’re not choosing the wrong cause or participating in vast social evils like slavery or pogroms, we can still get social activism wrong by having too narrow a view of it. We tend to isolate it in large-scale movements, but the social impact the Bible promotes is more local than you think. It’s in your house, your family, your immediate peer groups and the people you encounter casually over the course of the day. The Bible is asking us to heal society by our God-like engagement in personal relationships and in social systems.

It feels important to have the right ideas about big issues, and that is important—but God wants congruence between our “positions” on these issues and our everyday interactions. Sometimes it’s easier to deal with problems “out there” than with the people “right here.” Of course, keeping the more local, mundane relationships a priority doesn’t excuse the lack of involvement in systemic expressions of exploitation, abuse and marginalization.

The following questions provide an inventory on your preferences for social impact. There is no right answer. Use this instead to understand yourself and to seek balance.