Changing the World

I am currently reading The New Christians (Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier). On page 17, Tony Jones writes, “The church that doesn’t challenge its members to face the core ethical issues that confront them every day at work is the church that has abdicated its responsibility.”

This statement has been playing a match of ping pong in my head as I have been having a constant back in forth. There are many ethical issues and I don’t know that I have addressed them with my students and the church. Prejudice is very real and exists in our world. We are prejudice based on race, education, finances, schools, religion, and the list could keep going. What is our responsibility to help the poor, the homeless, those with addictions, and who are abused and hurting?

I have always felt guilty about doing mission trips that help us confront many of these issues only to return home and return to the status quo. We may go to the inner city only to return home and not talk to another person of color and every stereotype that was broke down is quickly rebuilt. We may go to Latin America only to return and never ask the question, what is our responsibility to help Latinos in our own community? I love mission trips so don’t get me wrong, but how do we merge the lessons we learned on these trips with our everyday life and make the church confront these issues.

Jesus constantly confronted the ethical issues of the day. He made his disciples work through them. I think about the lesson of Jesus and the Samaritan woman. He challenged his disciples to see beyond race, gender, and morality and to see a child of God. Later on Peter would be challenged by God to accept Gentiles and then he would challenge the church to do the same.

So how do we challenge our students and churches to face the core ethical issues that confront us everyday in our county, city, schools, and circle of friends? What do we do when our students, parents, leadership, etc push back and reject it? Looking forward to reading your comments.