Agape Defiled - How the Church Has Failed 55 Million Orphans
By: Rolley Haggard
There's an elephant in the living room. Only it isn't an elephant,
and it isn't in the living room. It's a golden calf, and it's in our
baptismal font and our pulpit and our sanctuary and our Sunday School
class and our Bible study group and everywhere else we worship and serve
God, because, truth be told, it's in our hearts.
To put it bluntly: We, the church of Jesus Christ, have an idol.
It's called ministry.
Ministry?
Yes, ministry: busying ourselves with the things of God. Granted,
ministry seems very un-idol-like. But then, subtlety is the hallmark of
seductive sins. It has been the devil's most effective stratagem since
the beginning of time: Get the sin to seem no sin. Better, get it to
seem like service to God. Better still, get it to be service to
God. Sins don't get more subtle than that, nor does idolatry seem like
idolatry when we're busy doing things God instructed us to do. It seems
like true Christianity, like pure and undefiled religion.
But is it? Even ministry can be idolatry when it supplants what God
most wants from us. What is the acid test of true Christianity, of pure
and undefiled religion? What does it look like?
Pure and Undefiled Religion
We are not left guessing. In James 1:27,
God tells us what “pure and undefiled religion” looks like: “Visit[ing]
orphans and widows in their distress.” That's divine shorthand for
serving “the least of these” with sacrificial agape love. Acts of
compassion, exemplified by coming to the aid of suffering women and
children, are the distinguishing marks of true Christianity.
The American church, by stunning contrast, has been characterized the
past 40 years—ever since Roe v. Wade—by the deliberate and
thoroughgoing neglect of 55 million orphans in exquisite distress. One
has to wonder if the cold indifference shown by the church to these
orphans could have been any more absolute had salvation itself depended
on completely ignoring them.
Rolley Haggard is a feature writer for BreakPoint.
BreakPoint is a Christian worldview ministry that seeks to build and
resource a movement of Christians committed to living and defending
Christian worldview in all areas of life.
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