Tuesday, December 15, 2015

Love all

Before Thanksgiving a group of department stores ran an ad saying that, "the four-letter word that defines the season is L-O-V-E and not S-A-L-E".  They slipped in a message that they have everyday low prices, but I appreciate the fact that they purposely closed their stores on Thanksgiving Day instead of following the recent trend to start "Black Friday" sales on Thursday.

The Advent Conspiracy theme for the final Sunday of Advent is "love all".  Of course we love our families.  But instead of buying expensive gifts to prove our love, we are being challenged to show our love to those who are in need throughout the world.  I may not consider myself to be wealthy, but being a part of the middle class in the US means I have much more in material possessions than I need.  According to the Wall Street Journal online (Oct 13, 2015), one of the fastest growing industries in the US is self-storage: Americans have too much stuff.  I may think of myself as one of “the 99 percent” but If I have 2 cars, I am part of the "1 percent" relative to the rest of the world (93 percent of the world doesn’t own a car).

So it makes sense for Christians in the US to help alleviate poverty.  Richard Stearns (the president of World Vision) points out that the total income of American churchgoers is $5.2 trillion.  Imagine what a tithe of that income could do!  In fact, just a little over 1 percent of that could alleviate extreme poverty worldwide.  The problem is that most American Christians don’t consider extreme poverty in the rest of the world to be our problem.  Giving by the American Church is down to about 2 percent, down from 3.3 percent in 1933… the height of the Great Depression.  And most of that giving is spent on ourselves.  Only 2 percent of the 2 percent is spent on the rest of the world.  Giving in general and giving to global efforts especially is counter-cultural.  The Advent Conspiracy is calling us to be counter-cultural.

But going counter-cultural has a cost.  The stores probably lost some money.  And I will have to invest some time to find some good organizations for my giving.  Some family members may be miffed that they didn’t get the expensive trinket they had put on their Christmas list. But let Santa worry about Christmas lists.  God’s call to the Church is to “love all”: "Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” (Matthew 25:40)