Review:Richard Stearns book, A Hole in Our Gospel, was the 2010 Christian book of the year. It is the prequel to his 2013 book, Unfinished. The themes are the same: that there is a world of desperate need crying out for the church in America, particularly, to move from being a “spiritual cocoon where Christians can retreat from a hostile world to a transformation station whose primary object is to change the world” (Richard Stearns, Hole in our Gospel, Nelson Books, 2010, p. 179). The gospel hole he laments is the focus “on a personal and a transforming relationship with God through Jesus Christ to the exclusion of a concomitant public and transforming relationship with the world” (p. 2). He believes “charity, equity, and mercy and the marks of the kingdom of the Messiah and Christ wanted it to begin on earth” (p. 57).
In this book Stearns tells his own radical move, for him and
his family, from his wealthy CEO status in the American business world to the presidency
of World Vision USA. The question that catalyzed that move was: “Are you
willing to be open to God’s will for your life?” (p.
34). It is the same question he poses to all his readers in this book.
-M.L. Codman-Wilson, Ph.D.,
10/20/2013
Excerpts:
What is the Hole?
“The idea behind the hole in our Gospel is basically the
belief that being a Christian or follower of Jesus Christ requires much more
than just having a personal and transforming relationship with God. It also
entails a public and transforming relationship with the world…When we committed
ourselves to following Christ, we also committed to living our lives in such a
way that a watching world would catch a glimpse of God’s character – his love,
justice, and mercy – through our words, actions, and behavior…God chose us to
be his representatives…The good news Jesus proclaimed signified the coming of
God’s kingdom on earth…Living out our faith privately was never meant to be an
option” (pp. 2, 3, 15).
“The kingdom of God, which Christ said is within you, was
intended to change and challenge everything in our fallen world in the here and
now. It was not meant to be a way to leave the world, but rather the means to
actually redeem it…Our charge is to both proclaim and embody the Gospel so that
others can see, hear, and feel God’s love in tangible ways…God is concerned
about the physical, spiritual, and social dimensions of our being. This whole gospel is truly good news for the
poor and is the foundation for social revolution that has the power to change
the world” (pp. 17, 18, 22).
“According to Isaiah 58, God will delight in his people when
they obey Him. When the hungry are fed, the poor are cared for, and justice is
established, He will hear and answer His servants prayers; He will guide them
and protect them and they will be a light to the world. This is a vision of
God’s people transforming God’s world in God’s way. There is no hole in this
gospel. This is what Jesus meant when he prayed “Thy will be done on earth as
it is in heaven.” Charity, equity, and mercy are the marks of the kingdom of
the Messiah and Christ wanted it to begin on earth” (p.57).
“Jimmy Carter
believes the greatest problem of our time is the growing gap between the richest
and the poorest people on earth…When he was awarded the Noble Peace Prize in
2002 for fighting poverty and disease and promoting democracy,…he said ‘The
results of this disparity [between the rich and poor] are root causes of most
of the world’s unsolved problems including starvation, illiteracy,
environmental degradation, violent conflict, and unnecessary illnesses that
range from Guinea worm to HIV/AIDS’” (p.98).
“[Yet] for most of the past 2,000 years ‘loving our
neighbors as ourselves’ has meant exactly that – loving our immediate neighbors” (p.100). “Our problem is that the plight of
suffering children in a far off land simply hasn’t gotten personal for us… Almost
ten million children will be dead in the course of a year due to preventable
causes related to their poverty.” That is the equivalent of 100 crashing
jetliners a day. “We must pray constantly that God will soften our hearts to
see the world as he sees it” (pp.108, 107, 110).
Poverty
“What I discovered in my travels…is that almost all poverty
is fundamentally the result of a lack of options…The poor are trapped by
circumstances beyond their power to change…It is crystal clear from Scripture
that God loves the poor, while hating their poverty, the man-made actions that
contribute to that, and the apathy of the ‘well-off’ that allow it to persist” (pp.118, 120).
“Poverty is extremely complex. Picture the poor caught in a
spider web of interwoven causes that trap them hopelessly while the marauding
spiders of hunger, war, disease, ignorance, injustice, natural disasters, and
exploitations prey upon them unrestrained. While there are solutions to poverty
– ways to free them from the web – there are no simple solutions…Injustice is
often the cause behind the cause. In other words, if people lack food,
healthcare, or education, are venerable to disease and have no access to land
or financial capitol, it is frequently because they have been exploited or
manipulated by unjust people and structures” (pp.125,
127).
“It is estimated that a child dies every 5 seconds from
hunger related causes… Almost one in 7 worldwide, 854 million people, do not
have enough to sustain them. This makes hunger – malnutrition - the number one
risk to world health, greater than AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis combined.
About 9 million people per year or 25,000 people each day die of hunger or
related causes…Yet, the world can and does produce enough food to feed all of
its 6.7 billion inhabitants. The problem is that both the food and the capacity
to produce it are unequally distributed” (p.135).
God’s Answer to
Poverty
“All across the world widows, orphans, the sick, the
disabled, the poor, and the exploited are crying in desperation to God for
help, for comfort. These millions of prayers are being lifted up to God. And
we, each of us who claim to be Christ’s followers, are to be his answer. We’re
the ones who can bring the good news of Christ to the poor, the sick, and the
downtrodden. God has not turned his back on the poor in their suffering, God
has sent us” (p.167).
“If church leaders do not have an outward vision to become
salt and light in our world, to promote social and spiritual transformation,
pursue justice, and proclaim the whole gospel, then the church will fail to
realize its potential as an agent of change…It will be a spiritual cocoon where
Christians can retreat from a hostile world, rather than a transformation
station whose primary object is to change the world” (p.179).
“If we look at the
things that God condemns when he looks at the behavior of his followers,…it
seems that sins of omission grieve him even more than sins of commission, yet
it is these that which we tend to be fixated” (p.
185).
Money
“The American Dream…suggests that were entitled to any
income that comes to us because we worked for it. But the Bible…teaches us that
all we have or receive comes from God. He has simply entrusted it to us. There
is a big difference between entrusted and entitled…God wants us to invest His
money on His behalf by undertaking His kingdom work” (pp.204, 206). “The Bible devotes twice as many verses to money
as it does to faith and prayer combined…The tithe (required in the Old
Testament) provided for the work of God’s kingdom by supporting the Levitical
temple worship system…but a portion of the tithe was also intended to care for
the aliens, the fatherless, and the widows” (Deuteronomy
14:28), (pp.210, 211). “The average giving of American church givers in
2005 was just 2.58 percent of their income, about 75% less than the biblical
standard of 10%...Only 5% of American households tithe. [But] If we all paid
our tithe we would have an extra $168 billion in funding the work of the church
world-wide. In perspective, Americans spend $705 billion on entertainment and
recreation, $179 billion by teenager from ages 12-17, $65 billion on jewelry, $58
billion on state lottery tickets, $31 billion on pets, and $13 billion on
cosmetic surgery. The total US government foreign assistance budget for the
world is $39.5 billion…This $168 billion could bring an end to world hunger,
solve the clean water crisis, virtually eliminate the more than 26 thousand
daily child deaths, guarantee education for all the world’s children, provide a
safety net for the worlds tens of thousands of orphans, and provide the
universal access to drugs and medical care for the millions suffering from aids,
malaria, and tuberculosis…The world would see the whole gospel – the world
would see the kingdom of God – not just devoid of deeds but defined by love and
backed up by action” (pp.217, 218, 219).
A Response
“It’s time to commit. What are you going to do about it? In
the end, God works in our world one person at a time…Each of us has resources
of time, talent, and treasure to offer to God” (pp.257-258). “As you contemplate just how you might become
involved,…it would be easy to make one of two mistakes. You could become so
overwhelmed by the magnitude of the challenges that you turn away hopeless,…a
pessimist. Or, you could dive in with naive enthusiasm as an optimism underestimating
the problems…because you see only opportunities. But the realist sees the
possibilities between the two. And that’s who we must be, we must be people of
the possible. Robert Kennedy once said, ‘There are those who look at things the
way they are and ask why…I dream of things that never were and ask why not?’” (p.274, 275)
“How do you see the world around you? Do you see people who
need God’s love, suffering that breaks God’s heart, evil that goes unchallenged…Which
gospel have you embraced:
·
a revolutionary gospel that is truly good news
for a broken world or
·
a diminished gospel with a hole in it that’s
been reduced to a personal transaction with God with little power to change
anything outside your own heart?” (p. 279).