Freedom is meant to be put to use

 I’m reading an excellent book right now titled “Good News About Injustice” by Gary Haugen.  I would recommend it to any of you.  Today I want to share an excerpt from the book, and then add my comments:

“A preacher once asked me (and the rest of the congregation) to consider a scene that has stayed with me ever since.  He asked us to recall the story about the feeding of the five thousand.  The disciples brought complaints about the hungry multitude to Jesus, and he responded compassionately by blessing the bits of food from a boy’s lunch- five loaves of bread and two fishes.  ‘Then he gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the people.  They ate and all were satisfied’ (Mt 14:19-20).  The speaker then asked us to imagine a scenario in which the disciples just kept thanking Jesus for all the bread and fish – without passing them along to the people.  He asked us to imagine the disciples starting to be overwhelmed by the piles of multiplying loaves and fish surrounding them, yelling out to Jesus, ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you!’ – all the while never passing along the food to people.  And beneath the mounting piles of food, the disciples even could be heard complaining to Jesus that he wasn’t doing anything about the hungry multitude.”  (Haugen, page 115).

A stunning picture isn’t it?  Prior to telling this story the author tries to convey that sometimes we pray and wish that God would do something about the ills of the world, but we don’t realize that we have a role to play; we need to use the gifts and abilities he gives us to join him in serving and helping others. 

The quote I copied strikes at the point of material surplus, and we can easily take that and think, “we are blessed with more than enough, we should give.”  I am personally so blessed that a number of people accept this conviction and then support us financially to do our work of service here.  The author takes the story a different direction, however, and points out that we can do something with our surplus of freedoms as well.  He tells the story of a 12-year-old Filipina girl who is raped, and although there are witnesses and an arrest warrant, the offender is not imprisoned because he has connections with the local police.  We can quickly say that this would not happen in America, because of the well-established rule of law our free country provides.  We have a lot of freedoms that much of the rest of the world does not enjoy.  Perhaps I could say that if the fish of Mt 14 were freedoms, we would be covered in a stinky heap.  The disciples recognized that the fish they were given were meant to be passed on.  The work of justice, just like the work of charity and service, is recognizing that what we have been given enables us to meet needs of others; we are to pass on the blessing.  Unfortunately I think justice often gets left behind, because unlike charity and service, justice can require more difficult interventions.  Consider it though, we’re dripping with freedom, shouldn’t we be determined to: “Seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow”? (Is. 1:17)