godliness in epidemic

When the goverment announced that there would be eviction halts and rent freezes, a former friend from a former church EXPLODED on FB.

I use the term 'former' because she doesn't follow my journal. We don't interact. I don't think she's commented on my stuff once. Her posts come up and I read them because they're infrequent, but - like so many evangelical Christians - they're not actually a form of interaction, there to add a layer of contact and love, just another pulpit from which to preach.

She's very conservative, very evangelical, very judgemental. She thinks of things in the way that I was when I was 22 and everything was pure and clean and simple and obvious. I've since grown out of that perspective because...life, maturity, empathy, and the friendship of a lot of people whose experience comes up quite contrary to mine. And I feel like the social justice of God needs more emphasis right now than plain evangelism.

Everyone thinks they know what we're selling in Western culture. Most of them think it's snake oil. Why? Because a lot of people calling themselves Christians don't practice what they preach. Many of them are high up. Many of them are leaders. Many of us Christians in the trenches have made excusess for them and defended them and reclaimed them to positions of glory and authority once more 'because: grace'...and nonbelievers have decided that hypocrisy is just what the church is and does. They don't have an ear to hear, because we poured our own poison in there, and then demand that they hear the gospel while they're writhing in pain.

And no, they don't know the grace, but if what we do is 'grace' then they don't want any of it. Christians who are more concerned with making sure that their marriages are sacrosanct and their right to worship and proselytise is maintained and their middle-class morality is properly visited on everyone around them.

I quite frequently feel rather like the Scotsman who, upon discovering that his name wasn't down as one who loved God, asked for his name to be put down as the one who loved his fellow man.

Is this just me? That strain of: we love God by loving our fellow man - and yes, the gospel is in there, because I never spoke to an Evangelical who hastened to stress the importance of telling the gospel, as though that evangelistic streak wasn't ingrained into us - but the early church in the Roman empire loved the sick and the helpless and the dregs of society so well that the empire freaked out because people were coming to see that weird monotheism of the 'Jewish Christ' was a real thing, full of the kind of love and concern that was even accorded to slaves - bought goods and chattel, who these 'Christers' yet declared to be made in the image of the divine...

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As I type (and hopefully post this), the general consensus is that Australia has been spared the worst of COVID-19 - at least in the first wave. We were lucky in timing, in our geography and isolation, in the lowered numbers of tourists thanks to the bushfires over summer. We also had a population who largely trusted their officials, who were well-informed, who are pragmatic about health practices and the need for them in a time of infection. And we had governments who took things seriously, who organised, who made responsible decisions regarding health.

At bible study tonight, we talked about 'survivor's guilt' - the idea that we prayed for succour and God gave it to Australia. But...what about the Christians of other countries, praying for a miracle? If the answer so far is 'yes' for Australia to be spared, why not for, say, China? For Brazil? Italy? The UK? The US? What makes us special? Why were we spared?

I posited that the question we should be asking is not "why were we spared" but "what do we do now that we have been spared?" We have been blessed - but it is through grace that we have been blessed, not through our own righteousness, it is the gift of God. And Christians should be asking themselves 'what do we do with this gift?'

My own perspective is one of a new society - yes, rooted in the value of all human beings, rooted in the value of the environment that God has given us to steward, rooted in the principles of justice and fairness, equality and righteousness. I envision a society and structure when people don't need to fear that they'll be left behind because they've fallen unexpectedly pregnant, and the bounty that we have in excess can be shared around to everyone who needs it. I want to see abundance and plenty, generosity and community, kindness and, yes, the understanding of God's grace upon all people.

No, I don't think that's going to happen.

As I noted in the earlier half of this post, I think part of that is because of our hard hearts - not just to the news of God's grace and justice and mercy, but our hearts hardened to the equality of our fellow man, and the inherent unfairness of our society which is dressed up in a false fairness: a self-righteous sense of entitlement. "We have all this because we deserve it," which even Christians think, when they should know otherwise.

The thing which changed the world of the Roman Empire was Christian love that expected no benefits, had no hope other than the return of Christ and the knowledge that to serve him meant serving those with no means of paying back. I feel like Western Christianity struggles deeply with anything even close to this graciousness: the idea that the people whom our sense of self-righteousness condemns might be turned through our love of our fellow man.

I don't know how this can be accomplished by the church. I don't know if it can be accomplished by "the church" or if it's something that individual Christians must work at, until the impression of 'the church' (the ecclesia, the body of Christ, the saints called to righteousness in the blood of Jesus) is not that of judgement for being less righteous, but simply the love of our Creator and Lord for his Creation.