I think that Christina Moore brought up some interesting points last week in her article “Faithful followers of Christianity cannot just dial it in; effort required.”  I agree that many Christians in America have become complacent.  However, I think some of the topics discussed need a bit of clarification.

The sense that I gathered from the article was that there are certain list of things that we should and should not do in order to be a good Christian, and by doing these things, we can improve our relationship or standing with God.

Some examples offered in the article were to not swear, to love everyone, to be sexually pure and to honor God.  I would take these thoughts a step further and ask a few questions that might make us uncomfortable to think about.

What about people who are oppressed?  Stay with me, people, this is important.  It seems to be a contradiction that issues such as sexual morality and swearing were addressed as key issues in a Christian life, but how Christians respond to poverty and social injustice were not mentioned at all.  Just as an example, 25,000 people die each day from hunger, and we’re worried about

not swearing?

I don’t necessarily mean to attack Moore’s article because I do agree that we shouldn’t be complacent.  Any action is better than inaction because at least you’re doing something.  This query is actually directed at those who concern themselves with the flecks of dust and ignore the planks.  And I’m merely raising the question: What does not being complacent look like?

It’s a matter of questioning what offends us.  That’s fine if you want to get offended by swearing, sexual impurity or even “the walk of shame,” but you should be equally if not more offended that people are starving to death when we possess the resources to end world hunger.  But for many people this seems not to be the case, and I’m curious as to why that is.  It’s a logical inconsistency.

I think that Moore is right in asserting that action is a necessary part of authentic faith.  That doesn’t mean that action is a requirement for grace.  Grace is freely given and freely received.

But, if you call yourself a Christian, and you are sincere in that claim, it would be expected that you lead your life modeled after Christ’s.  I take this to be the point that Moore was making toward the end of

her article.

So what is this ambiguous “action” referring to?  The act of taking a stand for something, standing up for what is right, fighting against injustice, all of these are wonderful descriptions of appropriate action.  But what I would say is the most meaningful, is being in communion with the poor.

When we enter into these relationships with each other and we build connections and see “the poor” as our friends, here is where we encounter God.

By building relationships with each other, we are building our relationship with God.  And there is nothing more sacred than that.  So Christina is right, we do need to try harder — at being intentional with our relationships.