Social Justice Burnout

In 1986 I was 26 and very busy serving the needs of the teen moms in our rural county.  This younger me, the one sure of the answers, the one full of confidence and the one who possessed a small bit of talent had founded Bethesda Pregnancy Services and I was proud–of myself. 

My calling, as I called it, had begun much earlier when I gave my first ever impromptu speech as a high school freshman. My impromptu subject? Abortion. I had just five minutes to prepare but I knew exactly what I would say because I’d been pondering the abortion debate from a young person’s perspective.  I mounted the small platform, faced my peers, and made the case that Christians cannot oppose abortion without meeting the needs of those who choose abortion because they are needy. Righteousness and mercy mixed with reason–in my way of thinking–the perfect marriage. My speech teacher agreed.

When I quit work at 22 to raise our first child, the opportunity to practice what I’d preached became an organization which I called Bethesda Pregnancy Services because Bethesda means “House of Mercy.” Over the next four years, dozens of volunteers from several local churches came along-side and Bethesda became what I’d intended. We staffed a 24 hour hot-line, met needs for housing, clothing, food, information, and local services. Whatever the need, we did our very best to meet it. We even saved a few babies.

But after four years of running Bethesda Pregnancy Services, the day came. It always does for social justice Christians.

It hit me in the face like the contrast between life and death. It came in the form of a petite little seventeen year old that we’d taken care of when she was fifteen and carrying her first baby. Pregnant again, she wanted another baby shower, another this and another that and the cycle unbroken by repentance became a darkness filled coffin that I’d helped to build.

We mean well. We do. No one can fault the energy and vision with which we dispatch our own good plans. In meaning well we hope to do good. And in doing good we hope to re-frame the world’s perception of Christians but in time, our mixing the temporal with the spiritual muddies the waters and the face of Christ loses its distinct features. And after more time spent burning our social justice selves out, the face of Christ begins to look like every other go-to-get-something-god.

In the end, burnt-out and disillusioned, I had to confess my great plan didn’t work.

It never does.

It’s the treating of the sin cancer with pain reliever. The tumor still grows and spreads and takes over vital functions until death finally gets his way.

Let us not be ashamed of the Life Eternal that resides within. The miracle of the new birth should not, cannot, be muddied. It’s all we really have to offer that is life-giving. There, the death-cycle is broken once and for all by Him who gave His life once and for all.

So I’m thrilled that in a recent blog post on Holy Experience that the boy got all that Ann Voskamp had at the moment–the Children’s Bible. And I’m glad that even in lieu of the Gospel in print that we can preach unashamed, “Give your life once and for all to the God of Love and don’t look back. Leave your old life in the dust where it belongs and walk in newness of life.”

Rest in this one message Beloved!

For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. Romans 1:16

Rejoice!

Binsey