Recently, as I was explaining to a visitor the various relief and development projects being implemented by our organization I was asked the question “how does the Gospel fit into that”. My immediate response was cliché and somewhat defensive until I gained enough clarity of thought to ask in return “what exactly is the Gospel”. I was met again with a question “If you feed the hungry, heal the sick or clothe the naked and at the end of a person’s life they have never received Jesus and their soul burns in hell for eternity what is the point?” In attempting to respond I realized that something, which was difficult to put my finger on, was wrong with the question.

After a lot of thinking and many rabbit trails I realized that the chief issue at hand is the compartmentalization that is common in Western thinking (and life in general). Our educational system is built on the premise that all things can and should be broken down to the smallest components and organized in clearly defined sub-divisions. The question that my guest raised was tainted with assumptions as to the nature of the Gospel and further the nature of the Christian life that were at their root caused by this compartmentalized manner of thinking. The Middle Eastern thinker (such as Jesus and his disciples) accepts that some things, perhaps most, exist in a state of tension. Questions that frustrate the linear Western thinker such as how can free will exist at the same time as pre-destination are more readily accepted in the Middle Eastern mind. Whereas a Western thinker seeks a definitive answer, a Middle Eastern thinker prefers to tell stories and respond to questions with questions. The acceptance of tensions allows for the Middle Eastern thinker to accept grays and colors outside of black and white.

Another contributing factor to the assumptions made by my guest results from the inability of people to see the world from another person’s perspective. For each of us the world is interpreted through a lens that has been developed through the course of our life by our experiences, our education, our family, friends and so on. The point from which we view the world is referred to as our paradigm and the perspective our particular paradigm gives us of the world is described often as our world view. For many American Evangelicals our lens is colored (or perhaps warped) by the extreme wealth of American culture today. Lastly I would point out the tendency of most, if not all, people to be self-centered. This means that not only do people view the world from a certain paradigm they tend to assume that their’s is the central and most important paradigm of all.

So how does compartmentalized Western thinking interact with the self-centered and wealthy world view of American culture to form the poorly considered question of my guest? First of all, for the American Evangelical being Christian has become synonymous with being a member of a certain financially successful portion of society that praises God for his having blessed America financially (presumably due to American faithfulness to Judeo-Christian principles, a concept which seems to ignore a great deal of American history) and who assumes that prosperity is equivalent to blessing and blessing results from God’s approval of the way things are being done. (Conversely this group of people then would blame poverty on God withholding blessing and God would only withhold blessing in order to discipline and so poverty is often equated with sinfulness). Then from this paradigm scriptures are sifted through the sieve of systematic theology, by which each ideal, principle or law is placed into a separate and appropriate category. Once the principles are categorized it becomes a logical next step to ask which are the most important and so value is assigned to each by way of the subjective filter that is an individuals paradigm. For example an American reading the Bible verses referring to the poor or the oppressed (there are at least 142 of them) would think little of them because there is little or no direct relevance to the American Evangelical because the American Evangelical is not poor. On a global level the American Evangelical Church represents the top 0.5% for individual economic status. Many in the Evangelical American Church do not even know any one who is poor and if they do know someone struggling with poverty it is an inconvenient poverty as opposed to a life-threatening poverty (the author acknowledges that poverty exists in America and that this poverty can be life threatening but generally the EV Church is not in contact with it).

At the same time, scriptures that refer to eternal salvation have relevance because what happens after death is a real, albeit future, concern for most people in most cultures. Because in the US our immediate concerns are often trivial (not life-threatening) there is more time to consider the future and eternity is quite a long time so much emphasis gets placed on this issue. Furthermore, it is a relatively simple and not costly thing to ask someone to accept Jesus compared to what it might cost to do something practical to remove someone from a cycle of poverty. So when Jesus says “preach the good news to all creation, those who believe and are baptized will be saved, those who do not will be condemned” (Mark 3:15) the American Evangelical recognizes that the personal cost is small the long term outcome is weighty and it becomes quite simple to place a great amount of emphasis on preaching salvation at the expense of other commands to remember the poor.

And so finally, two issues that are clearly important to Christ and his disciples–the eternal salvation of people and caring for the poor–come into conflict with one another. Christians in the relief and development industry find themselves in either/or debates defending their service to the poor to those who would declare that any activity that is not directly associated with the spreading of a message that brings people to eternal salvation is a waste. The model that Jesus lived did not teach this divided approach to life. Jesus did not compartmentalize evangelism from social action (Matt 11:5, Luke 4:18). He demonstrated both and he sent his disciples out to accomplish both (Luke 9:6) at the same time (though outside the scope of this article it would be interesting to discuss the discipleship model used by Christ compared to the evangelism model employed by the modern EV church).