Thoughts on Jim Wallis' Chapel Presentation
American Evangelicals have alway been involved in helpin folks out (ok maybe a little less so in the past century than they were in the previous) but we are famous world over for our activism and culture of helpin out. We've been, as Jim was saying this morning, pulling bodies out of the river for years. Throwin a heaping helping of basic food supplies at tsunami victims or sponsoring soup kitchens and ministries to street people is like pulling a half drowned person out of the water but it seems like the river is always full and there are always plenty of bodies comin downstream. What Jim pointed out this morning is that in the evangelical community, nobody ever dares to ask who it is thats throwing all of those poor folks in the river in the first place. I think the scary reality behind that is that it might just be us. Were pushing em in at one end with big business capitalism, bomb dropping sprees, military coups and defacto segregation and at the other end were trying to pull them back out and salvage the salvagable in the mess we've made. Its pretty telling that we never ask the big questions or draw unsavory conclusions about guilt and responsibility while at the same time trying to keep the racket to a minimum by wound patching sorts of humanitarian efforts. If we ever want that river to be unclogged by the bodies of those who fall and get pushed through the cracks were going to have to deal with the hand we and our party politics played in creating that flow and seek structural political and economic changes that stop the flow at its source.