I just listened to Gary Haugen speak at Fuller. Very inspirational, normal, looking white dude. He is the founder of the International Justice Mission that seeks to liberate people from oppression throughout the world by engaging the forces that keep them in oppression in very practical ways. He is a lawyer in Washington D.C, and started the Mission after he was commisioned to Rwanda after the genocide in 1994. As he looked at the thousands of corpses he realized that at the moment of their suffering, these people didn't need food, a sermon, a loving community, etc, that they would need at others times and are very important, but they needed someone to restrain the hand of the oppressor. he gave three stories of people (that millions more are like) who are trapped by violent forces that they have been able to liberate- one story about women and children who were forced to carry bricks for 12 hours a day with no hope, one story about sex trafficking of little girls, and one story about police brutality of children. Actually, two of the top 5 struggles of the poor have to do with legal issues- police violence and sex trafficking, and human slavery. Christians have historically been leaders in movements against injustice, but the church has often been very far behind retreating to the private world of faith and maintaining the status quo. (think slavery, civil rights movement)
In his talk today, he gave an urgent call for help. Over the last 100 years, Christians have basically left out the struggle for justice as a part of our mission. We have focused on evangelism and discipleship (5.7 billion a year now), relief of poverty and food (9.4 billion a year now), but basically contribute 0 to justice mission in actually engaging the powers of the world. He showed three circles of Christian missions- first evangelism/discpleship- tons of organizations; relief and development- lots of organizations that have all developed in the last 60 years; 0 social justice organizaions. He asked fuller for help because he believes the church is not adequately prepared to do something about the violence of the world. He called students of Fuller to help equip the church to understand God's truth about justice and his plan to bring shalom, to the earth through His people by engaging both personal private issues and structural, systemic issues. He called out for a generation to move to justice because our God is a God of justice for the oppressed, the orphan, the widow, and a sermon is not going to help them, just giving food and money is not going to help them. We need to give ourselves- our creativity, our energy, our imaginations, and our actions to expressing the character of God's justice. As paul says, "be prepared for action." God's plan to engage the powers of the world is his church, you and me, the people that His Holy Spirit dwells within.
It seems that there is a lot of lawyers with important roles to play in the future, and lots of ordinary radicals who need to rise up and move to action.
I remember reading his book in college, and it was a big paradigm shifter for me. (good news about injustice) Before that I really struggled with the grace/works paradgim that doing justice or good works is just trying to earn God's love and we need to receive God's grace. This made me often fearful and passive to act with conviction and confidence because I may be tryint to earn God's love. While I think many people do think they need to earn God's love and this is a trap, I think the real question people are asking is what difference does God make? So if God loves me, but what does He want for me and from me? I have learned that God's grace has chosen to be sent to express His character. We have been created and chosen with something to give to this world. We are saved to be sent. We are saved to participate. We are saved to take part in God's desires, intetions, Kingdom to put this world back together and bring His healing in all forms to this world before He finally returns to restore all things. When we move in this way, when we are asked to participate in what God is doing, we might actually find out that we actually need God because we cannot do what He is asking us without Him.
Well, there is a big vision, what it looks like is for communities of ordinary radicals to discern in their time and place---
