Monday 18 May 2015

Christian churches and the poor

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A church that pays out to help the poor, but doesn’t pray with them, looks less like a church than ... merely another N.G.O.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/17/opinion/sunday/ross-douthat-do-churches-fail-the-poor.html?rref=collection%2Fcolumn%2Fross-douthat

When I was considering becoming a Christian, this was exactly how churches seemed to me. From the advertizing material outside or the leaflets and decor inside, I could not perceive anything spiritual going-on in them; but just an adjunct to mainstream soft-left, feel-virtuous politics and charity. Nothing that would turn around my alienated life; nothing that would turn around the demotivated and nihilistic nation. 

Anyway, there are no real 'Biblical' poor in Britain - instead a vast, massive, majority of the population are spiritually impoverished; starved almost to death, hungering and thirsting for meaning.

3 comments:

JP said...

It is obvious that the Left is clamoring for the Churches to "do more charity" because the Left wants to accelerate the process of de-spiritualization of all Churches.

Bruce Charlton said...

@JP - I indeed. And what makes it worse is that the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Pope are joining-in - or leading the way.

Nathaniel said...

I think we have a Biblical warning in this regard - the story of Judas asking Jesus to sell the perfume to help the poor... so the left asks the LDS to stop building so many temples, the Catholics to stop owning so much art work... just give it all away to "charity" - so that real charity suffers.

Evil always working through lies, deceits, round-about motives.