The depth of hope
Nathan Brown

I am "into" social justice. I feel strongly about the need for Christians to speak up, stand up and work toward alleviating poverty, injustice, oppression and exploitation in our world in as many ways as we can. This can mean we refuse to participate in some of the things we know to be wrong in our world, as well as taking positive steps to make a difference. I believe this is important for the good of the world, to lift up the victims to see a practical expression of our Christianity and for the credibility of the church.

I believe these priorities are noble and worthwhile-but I am not going to claim credit for them, as though I am somehow better than anyone else. Yes, there are personal choices and priorities involved but these are often sparked as much by external and other motivations than any inherent saintliness.

I am interested in social justice as much as anyone who is a product of my age, education, opportunities, role models and cultural trends. For example, I am a member of a generation that for a variety of reasons- including increased travel and communication opportunities-is increasingly aware of these issues around the world. When I am honest with myself and others, although connecting with strong and recurring themes in the Bible, I have to admit there is an element of "trendiness" in my focus on justice issues.

But, while I hope fashionable social concern for justice can bring positive results and be an entry point for many who will move to deeper commitment, by itself such an impulse struggles to hold up under the overwhelming weight of sorrow, injustice, tragedy and evil in our world. When confronted with the vast sum of human suffering, it is too easy to become paralysed or despairing. When "we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time" (Romans 8:22*), what we do-even collectively-seems as though it can never be enough.

In such a frame of mind, I am drawn to an answer so much bigger than any social activism or outspokenness we can come up with: "He will remove all of their sorrows, and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. For the old world and its evils are gone forever" (Revelation 21:4). It is a promise of a world recreated and all the world's problems resolved, answered and banished forever. What an incredible act of social justice-with so much more to it, of course.

In his recent book, George Knight puts it like this: "The only sufficient and permanent answer to the vicious difficulties facing a lost world, Christ taught in both the Gospels and in the book of Revelation, would be His victorious return in the clouds of heaven. Therein is real hope. All else is Band-Aids" (The Apocalyptic Vision and the Neutering of Adventism).

This is the ultimate hope we share. And, faced with a torrent of wrong, this is our only hope.

But as this hope seeps into our lives, it changes our attitudes to life today, our priorities and our concern for the many hurting people around us. We seek to share the hope we have-perhaps by telling, perhaps by listening and, recognising that hurting people will often "hear" more readily what we do, perhaps by enacting. It isn't like Jesus really gives us a choice about caring. Consider the second half of Jesus' sermon on His second coming, found in Matthew 25: while promising His return, Jesus calls us back to our world. "We draw near to Him by following Him even on clumsy and reluctant feet and without knowing more than two cents worth at first about what is involved in following Him- into the seventy-five mile per hour, neon-lit pain of our world" (Frederick Buechner, Secrets in the Dark).

Suddenly, the "trendy" attention to issues of injustice and poverty becomes something so much deeper. In light of the ultimate promises and the real concerns of God we find expressed throughout the Bible, we are drawn into a more urgent and profound care for people and their outrageous sorrows. "For the Lord is righteous, and he loves justice. Those who do what is right will see his face" (Psalm 11:7).

*All Bible quotations are from the New Living Translation.

This has been an editorial from Record, February 7, 2009