Faith and action

The pharisee walked by on the other side and so did the teacher of the law. The man was saved, not by the religious establishment, but by an enemy - the Good Samaritan.

We are called to this same level of action in our world today. There are plenty of wounded strangers, there are plenty fo outcasts. There are plenty of root causes too.

There is that old proverb about giving a person a fish and they will eat for a day and teaching them how to fish and they will feed themselves. Sometimes our picking up of the stranger is giving a fish and sometimes it is beginning to teach fishing.

This is because we often seem to find it easier to help the end result of a bad system than to fix the system. For example, you will know, if you have done any wotk with the homeless, the high proportion who have mental health issues. I would argue that if you worked on the mental health system to have better outreach and follow-up care when people are not in crisis you might find people stayed off the streets longer - but that means fixing, ultimately, the healthcare system - and that is a big thing, a very big thing as we are all learning.

It is a decision we have to make - and this is a tough question - is refusing to engage with the root causes of poverty and injustice and simply treating the end result a little less than we should be doing. But there are two big problems with root causes - one is that it gets political and a lot of folks don't like that and secondly change at the roots of society (say in healthcare) affect the whole of society and so our action suddenly becomes something which we do not go home from - something which we live in with those we seek to help.

Now, not for one second, am I suggesting that anyone should not to the good and great things they have been doing. But what I am suggesting is thinking about a highly incarnational model for our action - where we all change for the benefit of all - where we remove the "us" and "them" in out minds and see ourselves as all created by the same hand. Imagine social policy in a country where people saw each other as equal and could not stand for another to do without.

I am not giving a model or policy, simply a theology of humanity. I am certainly not claiming to be very far down this road myself - I often feel like the pharisee when I see so many people with so little - but if we really believe what we say about God being the creator and preserver of all humankind then surely we will have to enter in - not just calling 911 for the wounded traveller but, like the Samaritan, taking care of his every need.