Who Does the Dirty Work?
Christianity can certainly get a lot of hate these days. In some circles, it’s gone from the established religion of the culture to a questionable belief system, pocked with sketchy views of some moral issues. But our culture forgets how much incredible good Christianity has done in the past 2000 years.
Leslie Fain sent me this article. The article itself (“I Was An Astrologer – Here’s How It Really Works and Why I Had To Stop”) is interesting, but Leslie and I were interested in this quote:
Astrology is one big word association game. I loved it, though I was losing interest in other mystical practices. Partly I didn’t have time, because I was now immersed in theatre while working as a temp typist at St Vincent’s, a Catholic hospital. But as I bounced from one department to another, my views changed. I’d understood organised religion to be something between an embarrassment and an evil. Yet as AIDS did its dreadful work – this was the 1990s – I watched nuns offer compassionate care to the dying. Christian volunteers checked on derelict men with vomit down their clothes. I became uncomfortably aware that New Agers do not build hospitals or feed alcoholics – they buy self-actualisation at the cash register.
When you look at the history of the world since Christ, it’s more than striking how many good things have been initiated by Christians. Hospitals themselves are a Christian idea, originating shortly after Jesus left the earth. Schools for the poor and women, universal literacy, hospices, orphanages or adoption or foster care: these are just a handful of the ideas originating with Christianity and implemented by Christians. The one thing these institutions or movements have in common is that they do not necessarily benefit the originator or the promoters or the workers. Sometimes they actually do the opposite – they cause the Christians to LOSE power or to be terribly inconvenienced or to die. But we died to ourselves when we were baptized (Romans 6:5), so it doesn’t matter to us if we die. And James has said that “faith, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.” 2:17 So Christians have motivation to initiate ideas that only benefit others, especially the powerless and oppressed and sick, but without Christ, it is hard to sustain a self-denying ethic.
As you drive around this week, look at the institutions, companies, and ideas that surround you and think about how many were implemented by a Christian ethic. Then thank God for the lives given in the last two millennia to bring the Kingdom down to earth.
