Bandaids and Antibiotics

I know I said that there were several things that Brian said last week that I wanted to process, and then I stopped for a few days after just one. So today is a two for one! One post but two related things- charity and justice.

For me this topic actually goes back to a guest speaker we had in one of our classes in the fall. A woman from the General Board of Church and Society came to speak to us about doing charity work versus working for justice. She compared charity to putting a band-aid on a patient with systemic failure; working for justice, on the other hand, is like looking for and treating the source of that failure. Sometimes the work that we do- though it is good work- is really just treating the symptoms, putting on a bandage that staunches the flow a bit, rather than actually healing the disease. That's what injustice is- the disease of our world.

To that end, Brian made two points about injustice. One of the people at the discussion brought up the verse in James: "Religion that is pure and undefiled before God is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world." They actually only quoted the first half of that verse, the bit about orphans and widows. The second half, keeping oneself unstained by the world, has been used for a long time to support total abstinence in all of its forms- abstaining from sex, from alcohol, from certain kinds of music or movies, even from spending time with non-Christians.

I'm not saying that any of those aren't good for certain people in certain places of life (except that last one- I'm pretty sure that it's completely counter to the life and ministry of Jesus to avoid anyone who doesn't fit the goody-two-shoes bill). What Brian suggested, though, is that keeping oneself unstained by the world might perhaps mean something bigger. Rather than living a cloistered and antiseptic life for fear of being stained by the world, he suggested that it meant refusing to participate in the injustices of the world. That seems to me to be more in line with the message of the verse and of James as a whole.  Religion is living out your faith by the things that you choose to do and the things you choose not to participate in. We choose to give aid; we choose not to harm. We choose to work for justice; we choose not to support injustice.

That brings us to the second thing Brian said- that "charity always moves toward issues of justice." Feeding the homeless, working in food pantries, sponsoring children for school or medicine or even just Christmas presents- these are all good things. But who hasn't felt the sting of doubt? How can I keep doing this when the need never seems to end? There are always more homeless, more poor, more oppressed. It gets so overwhelming. No matter how many sandwiches I hand out there is always another hand reaching for the next one. Eventually we realize that all the good we are doing just isn't enough.

Technically, you have two choices once you reach that point. The first is to simply give up. Throw your hands in the air and say "I'll never succeed, so I just quit!" This is simply unacceptable to me. Quitting when the journey gets rough makes me question the sincerity of the commitment in the first place. Were you doing this because you believe in it or because it made you feel good?

For me, the only real choice is to take the energy you've been putting into charity and to throw it into work for justice. That's what Brian meant. Eventually you realize that despite all of your pretty band-aids, the patient is still sick. The world is still diseased. Injustice permeates it, sickening everything it touches. Then you start looking for what's causing the sickness in the first place. You start trying to root out the injustice wherever it is found. It's like running a long and intensive course of antibiotics- it turns out to take a lot more effort than just putting on a bandage, but it's a lot more effective. It takes a long time but it's so worth it in the long run.

That's what religion is about. It's not about being some cultish, cloistered movement living by some obscenely long list of rules; it's about caring for the world. Working for peace and justice, not participating in systems and tools of oppression. We participate in the world, for good or for ill. Personally, I want that to be for good. And not just good that offers a quick fix to a long term problem, but a real work of healing in a world plagued with hatred and injustice.