Rethinking Christianity

I am reading a book (this is Ben by the way) by Brian McLaren called "Everything Must Change: Jesus, Global Crises, and a revolution of hope". This has been a wonderful and challenging book to read. In the beginning of the book McLaren recalls a trip he took to Africa to meet with a group of local pastors. The following is what one of the pastors had to say about modern evangelical Christianity and what church leaders were doing in his area:

"You pastors are causing such destruction in Khayelitsha. It reaches to the skies. I know you mean well, but you don't realize that you cause devastation in the lives of the people among whom I work. You come in to Kayelitsha every Sunday to set up your tents, which is good, but I have listened to your preaching, and you are preoccupied with three things, and three things only. First you constantly talk about healing. You tell people they can be healed of HIV, and some of them believe you, so they stop taking their medication. When they stop, they develop new resistant strains of the disease that don't respond as well to the medications, and they spread these tougher infections to other people, leaving then much sicker than they were before. Then you're always telling the people they need to be born again, but after they're born again on Sunday, they're still unemployed on Monday. They may be born again, but what good is that if their problems are the same as before? You know as well as I do that if they're unemployed, they're going to be caught in the poverty web of substance abuse, crime and gangs, domestic violence, and HIV. What good is that? All this born-again talk is nonsense. Then what do you do? After telling these desperately poor people to get born again and healed, you tell them to tithe. You tell them to 'sow financial seed' into your ministries and they will receive a hundredfold return. But you're the only ones getting a return on their investment. You could be helping so much. You could motivate people to learn employable skills, you could teach them and help them in so many ways, but it's always the same thing: healing, getting born again, and tithing."

In recent years, I have realized that modern evangelical Christianity needs to change drastically. While there are a lot of good things that are a part of it, I believe that it needs to go beyond a promise of future security. It should motivate people to care for the poor and meet people's physical needs as well as spiritual needs. Jesus commands us to care for the needs of the poor and that is what he actually did with his life. I hope that Sarah and I learn to do this in our everyday interaction with other people. I am excited to discover more about what it really means to live as Christ did.