Christian Social Responsibility

From the Preface to The Fabric of Faithfulness, by Steven Garber:

That evening, in the company of twenty-five young Chinese ex-patriots, I had reflected on a question that has become the core of my own calling, name, why is it, in the face of situations that seem too complex, too broken, that human beings sometimes still choose to enter in – knowing that they will suffer, knowing that it will cost them – that for love’s sake they still choose responsibility?

This was my second time meeting with a group like this; a year earlier I had been asked by a noted China specialist to spend an evening with “the Havels of China,” as she described them. They were the intellectual leaders of the Tiananmen Square generation, a diaspora, scattered across North America - from Vancouver to Boston. Not allowed to return because of the public character of their protest, some were working in journalism and business while others were studying in relevant disciplines that would enable them someday to return to China. One of the gave me his card, which included all of the needed information, with these words in italics on the bottom: China for the 21st-century. Since Tiananmen, he had already finished a first Ph.D. at UC Berkeley, and was working on a second at Harvard.

As I sat there listening to their stories, I was overwhelmed. On the one hand, they had suffered so much. The depth of their sadness ate away at my heart. But at the same time, the seriousness of the desire to return home, and its motivation, was amazing. They simply said: “We love China – and we want to go home and be part of the rebuilding of our culture.” I heard that again and again.

But they had a question that had brought them to Washington: “We have been reading the philosophers of the world, and are not satisfied. We want to return to China, and know that we might be imprisoned or die if we do. But we love China, and so we will go home. The more we read it seems to us that the Christian vision of human nature and history might give us a basis to return, a raison d’etre that makes sense to us philosophically – what do you think?

Nothing cheap could be said.

Having known personal and political heartache, and knowing that any honest account of the present and future implicated them more, they had found in their faith a way forward. For the sake of love – in imitation of Christ – they could suffer, even as they acted responsibly in and for history, hoping for the way the world ought to be.

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The Fabric of Faithfulness is a wonderful book. Its main premise is an exploration of how Christians can successfully weave together belief and behavior. Related to that premise is the idea presented in the above passage. According to Steven Garber, Christianity presents a very real social challenge. Being a Christian means, in part, feeling and acting upon a deep conviction that we ought to be working to make the world a better place.

If this is true, then I think it follows that Christians need to live their individual lives in a way that also fits into a broad context of social activism and change. Both individually and collectively, Christians are called to further God’s vision for the way the world ought to be.

The question that I’m still pondering is, to what degree does the Bible mandate Christian social involvement and responsibility?