justice

The JUST LOVE Conversations

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The glory of the Gospel is not just God’s love in us, as miraculous as that is, but God’s love and life through us, transforming our lives and flowing into the world.

The content of Wayne and Tobie’s new book, Just Love, invites us to rethink how the Gospel is often portrayed.

  • What if we had been focused on his love writing justice on our hearts, rather than a preoccupation with our sin and personal piety?
  • What would the church of Jesus look like if his love had always been at its center?
  • What would it change about our understanding of salvation, justification, transformation, and the nature of his kingdom taking expression in the world?
  • And, most of all, how can you experience more of his love and life in our own God Journey?

No wonder the Gospel seems so weak in our day; it has been emptied of its power. We jump through some religious hoops, claiming our salvation, without ever having touched the rich treasure of God’s love for us.

My coauthor, Tobie, and his wife are coming to Kansas City to visit family in July. We are planning a meet-up in Overland Park, July 9-12, this summer.  I would like to introduce them to you, and we want to unpack the themes of this book that will help you discover the richness of his love, as well as have a whole new way to understand the story of Scripture.

We concluded the book by saying that these realities are better explored than explained, and that’s exactly what we want to do in three transforming days in Kansas City. Tobie and I will facilitate a series of conversations to explore how God’s love and life flow into us, and then out from us to fill the earth with his glory.

You’re invited to join us for the Just Love Conversations

July 9-12 
We will gather at the Westbrooke Church
9777 Antioch Rd, Overland Park, KS 66212

Our Schedule:

      • Thursday, July 9:  7 pm – 9 am
      • Friday & Saturday, July 10-11:  9:30 am – 4:00 pm
      • Sunday, July 12:   9 am – 12 noon

Evenings will be free to explore Kansas City, rest, or connect with others for meals and fellowship.

Though we have plenty of room now, space is limited. We will register people on a first-come, first-served basis. When it fills up, we’ll start a waiting list in case of cancellations. If you’d like to register or need further information, email wa****@********am.org, listing the names of each person you are registering. There is no cost for the JUST LOVE Conversations, though people can donate to Lifestream Ministries to help defray the costs if they would like to help us. We will let you know when the need is covered, and send any overage to our Kenya Fund.

People from out of the area are welcome to fly or drive in to be with us. We’re trying to make arrangements for a special group rate with a hotel in Overland Park, near our meeting place. I can send you that information if you’re interested.  Unfortunately, we are competing with a FIFA World Cup game in KC that weekend. The more we have, the better rate we can get. We have arrangements now for a group rate, but you need to register at the hotel by June 17 to qualify.

So to sign up, all you need to do is email me, listing the names of the people you’re registering, and if you want more information on our host hotel.  That’s it!  

Give it some thought and come join us if God lays it on your heart. I’d be excited to see you there.

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And one more thing:

We are hoping to raise $18,000 to help an orphanage in Kenya purchase a tractor. They host 380 children in an orphanage and school, and we discovered that they ran out of food last week. We immediately sent them $1700.00 to bridge the immediate need. They told me their real need is a tractor. They used to have one to help farm the land and hire it out to raise money for the children, but they had to sell it during COVID to meet new government regulations in their facility. They hope to restart the farming enterprise as a means to care for these children. We’re going to try to pool some money to help them do it.

If you want to help, please visit our Donation Page at Lifestream. Check the box for “Kenya Relief”. You can also Venmo contributions to “@LifestreamMinistries” or mail a check to Lifestream Ministries  • 107 N. Reino Rd, PMB# 411 • Newbury Park, CA 91320-3710. Or, if you prefer, we can take your donation over the phone at (805) 990-8780.

As always, every dime you send will end up in Kenya. We do not take out any money for our administrative costs.

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I Will Miss You, Tony

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Tony Campolo passed away last week, and though I’m a bit late, I want to acknowledge his powerful contribution to Christian thought around the world and to my own life personally.

I never had the chance to meet him or hear him speak in person, but decades ago, his books and recordings challenged and inspired me. If you’ve never heard It’s Friday But Sunday’s Coming (the whole thing is sermon is powerful, but the story I’m referring to begins at 50:20) or The Kingdom of God Is a Party, don’t wait any longer. Any of his books are a great treat as well.

As you’ll see, Tony Campolo was among the most humorous speakers ever. Inside that humor was a constant challenge to be mindful of the poor and to realize that our calling as followers of Jesus is to lay down our lives for the needs of others. Many evangelicals didn’t like him, calling him a “liberal” as a way to dismiss his message. Indeed, I didn’t agree with everything he taught, but that’s true of most people. I have no problem enjoying the chicken and spitting out the bones. He coined the term, Red Letter Christians, to help Jesus followers take seriously the words of Jesus in the Gospels about visiting the sick, feeding the hungry, and reaching out to those in prison.

Since we’ve been talking about the focus of justice and righteousness on The God Journey before we had to take a hiatus, I’m freshly aware of the link between the Kingdom of God with God’s kind of redemptive justice for the broken, the marginalized, and the wounded and how skewed our preoccupation with personal holiness rather than the injustice in a fallen world.

I know no better illustration of that than how Tony Campolo addressed many chapels at Christian universities. He would often begin his talk with a statistic about how many children died the night before from malnutrition and related diseases around the world, numbering in the thousands.  Letting it sink in, he would then add, “And most of you don’t give a sh*t.”

Of course, the room would be scandalized at such a coarse word in their imagined holy place.

When the room settled, he would point to the heart of the problem. “What’s worse is that you’re more upset with the fact that I said ‘sh*t’ than the fact that thousands of kids died last night.”

He wasn’t always invited back. In my more legalistic days, I would have been more concerned about his use of a bad word than I would have been about a hunger problem that seems too large for me to fix. That wouldn’t be true today. Justice is holding a bigger heart for the poor and deprived. Policing the word ‘sh*t’ is just a misplaced, legalistic preoccupation with righteousness.

Of course, we can care about injustice at the same time we watch our mouths, but Tony was making a point here.  I hope you don’t miss the larger issue as well. People concerned with their piety are often disengaged from how their lives impact others. That’s why they can profess Jesus while viciously fighting a culture war with a moral superiority that leaves no room to love their “enemies.”  It’s why some can think of themselves as holy; they don’t use “bad words,” but they still gossip about others to destroy relationships.

That’s why I’ve come to see, “Seek first the kingdom of God and his justice…” (Matthew 6:33) as a better translation than the word righteousness. We can seek righteousness and not always get to justice, but you can’t seek relational justice and not become more godly. Treating others the way we would want them to treat us is where the kingdom of God advances in the world. Of course, they are not unrelated, but one fixates on our good, and the other focuses on the fulfillment of God’s heart by being a beacon of his compassion in a broken world.

Tony, we will miss you here, and yet the joy I’m sure you’re finding there is beyond compare. Rest in peace, my friend. You served him well in this world.

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As for a personal update, my back continues to heal from fusion surgery, and though I still have to be careful while it heals, I’m almost pain-free there. I’ve been on a lower dose of chemo the last two weeks, so I have some really good days of late, but next week, they are going to be ramping up the dosage, and I’m not sure how I’ll be doing then.

Sara joins me on today’s episode of The God Journey podcast to share how our current challenge has also affected her journey. It’s called Expectations, Disappointment, and Hope.

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Letting Jesus Fight for Us

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If you haven’t listened to our current podcast about Vengeance, Mercy, and Justice, it’s something I’ve been noodling on for a few weeks. It started with this quote from Adam Smith, “Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.” Too often, our society “lets off” those who are well-connected at the expense of those who have been the victims of their violence or greed. Such “mercy” only adds more pain to those they harmed.

And yet, mercy is what we want for ourselves and those we love, even if we have wronged and offended innocent people. And when we or someone we love suffers at the hands of another, our cry isn’t for mercy but justice. It’s strange, isn’t it? We want mercy for our failures and justice for those of others.

How does God sort through the wake of human pain and brokenness, dispensing both mercy and justice in a way that does not excuse the evil done or revictimize those wronged? Complex questions, to be sure. I don’t know how God does it or will do it when he sums up all things at the end of the age, but I trust him with it. Walking that line between justice and mercy is something we find challenging to do.

Even our cries for justice are often thinly veiled hopes for vengeance. We want people who cause heartache for others to suffer indescribable pain and call it justice. How often have we heard that “justice was served” by a murderer being put to death or dying by his own hand? But was it? Did it restore the life of the one they murdered or right the wrong they had done? Of course not.

The other day, I was talking about this with my friend, Luis, and he shared a recent dream. He was in a battle with a vicious hoard, primarily humans, but also mixed in were animal-human hybrids. He had expended all his ammunition, and still, they came toward him to destroy him. In the fury of adrenaline and the frustration of a losing battle, Jesus came to him in the dream.

“What do you want, vengeance or justice?” Jesus asked him with Luis breathless and terrified

All of his emotions screamed for vengeance in the rage of his own powerlessness. But with Jesus standing there, he knew that was best. “I want justice.”

“Then you better let me fight for you,” Jesus responded, and there the dream ended.

I’m not sure all that means, but as we talked about it, we realized how easily the adrenaline of our fear and anger spills over into feelings of vengeance. We have no idea where the dividing line is. Learning to live in his love will invite us to let Jesus fight for us. He has to show us the way where love can walk through the darkness without being exploited by those who are destructive and also know when he’s inviting us to lay our lives down for someone else’s good. Only he is wise enough to negotiate this space where mercy and justice are complements to each other, not competitors.

I love the instructions he gave his disciples: “Go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’” The economy of the coming kingdom is based on a mercy that doesn’t excuse evil nor allows us to be exploited by it. It’s a long process to learn the power of that statement and discover that his mercy is greater than any sacrifice of time, money, or life that we can offer him.

Who is sufficient for these things? We are not. How much more pain have we caused by trying to save ourselves or fix a situation that is beyond us? Of course, that does not mean we quietly suffer abuse or injustice. Allowing him to fight for us is not lying down and suffering the abuse of others. It means we will first find our refuge in him. He is the only one that can hold us in any storm, heal the damage we have suffered, and make up for what others have stolen from us. From there, he may well show us a way to resist those who seek to abuse us or help others find the justice they deserve. But now, we won’t be doing it with vengeance or our limited wisdom or power, but responding where love and justice dance together in his victory.

Micah invites us into that same reality: “He has shown you, O mortal, what is good and what the Lord requires of you: To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” (Micah 6:8). And I think the “with your God” phrase at the end applies to all of the previous invitations:

Do justice… with your God!

Love mercy… with your God!

Walk humbly… with your God!

Because, in fact, that’s the only way we can do those things.

 

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