Scott Todd’s “58:” project declares that eradicating poverty is not only possible but probable, if the people of the church put their backs into it.
Such audacious optimism is one of the most infectious, exciting qualities of the new evangelicals movement of which Todd is part, and it surged like electricity through his and other presentations at this spring’s Q conference, the signature annual gathering of next-generation Christian leaders.
Sure, in some of the quieter, more reflective moments of the three-day event in Portland you could hear acknowledgment of the heavy burden carried by this movement of new-century Jesus followers. These are, after all, the people who accept responsibility to right seemingly every global wrong you can name while restoring the credibility of publicly expressed Christianity in the process. But the workload is exhausting only when they lose connection with their ultimate power source, says Gabe Lyons, the host of Q and an unofficial spokesperson for the movement.
As an interested observer from overseas, this article focuses on the one quintessentially American trait that I find most problematic in a Christian context – this outrageous optimism that seems at times (like in this article) to tend towards a pursuit of earthly utopias.
Jesus said you will always have the poor with you. He said it because it is true. By all means wage war on poverty and aim for its destruction, but do so realizing that there will always be poor people and poverty will always need to be addressed. Don’t speak as though we can actually bring about a situation where there will be no poor.
It’s not true, it’s not real, and this kind of utopia chasing always gets in the way of genuine acts of love.
Of course the culture wars can be tamed if everyone adopts the cause of social justice, because “social justice” is the liberal agenda of identity politics. All conservatives have to do is declare defeat. I’m more concerned with regular old justice, instead.
Constitutional equality under the law and egalitarianism are two separate philosophies.
from [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egalitarianism#Philosophical ]wiki:[/url]
[blockquote] Among the notable broadly egalitarian philosophies are socialism, communism, anarchism, left-libertarianism, and progressivism, all of which propound economic, political, and legal egalitarianism. [/blockquote]
Our current economic troubles ( and Europe’s) stem from this conflict. The American philosophy is that equal treatment under the law is a basic god given right. Egalitarianism on the other hand is an expensive and inevitably futile pipe dream.
The same lesson, learning to distinguish the two, equality before the law and egalitarianism, applies to ALL so-called Liberal-Democratic polities, I suggest!