Stewardship
Stewardship
It is in the area of stewardship that I think Christians have done an enormous amount but have also failed in a very serious way. The priority was right, but the reach was short. Let me explain.
The world is in great need. There is so much that needs to be done. Ask yourself this question: Which worldview has reached out the most globally? The numbers are staggeringly disproportionate. I remember in the early days of my travels walking into institutions for people with leprosy. You can go to the fringe of the Sahara desert or to the island of Molokai in Hawaii and see the footprints of Christian missionaries at work there. Look at the hospitals in many parts of the world, the orphanages, the rescue homes, the care for widows. Look way beyond the reach of one’s own land. It is not enough to say that America has had much and therefore Americans ought to give. What about the wealth in the oil-rich nations of the world… how many hospitals and universities, orphanages and rescue homes have been built by that money? There is so much need in India that one just grows accustomed to it and walks by. Does Allah desire that billions of dollars be spent on a mosque while millions of people live in terrible need? Bangladesh, a Muslim country, is one of the poorest areas in the world, where hundreds of thousands live below the poverty line. In contrast go to Abu Dhabi, also a Muslim country, where the sheikh has spent more than $3 billion to build a mosque. Is this stewardship? Is this for God’s glory, or is it for the glory of an earthly kingdom that forgets others of the same faith who are living on the edge?
But present-day Christians cannot rest on the actions of Christians of previous generations. Today, we would do well to also ask ourselves this same question as we build our church megaplexes that often border more on memorials to human icons than on anything that lifts the heart toward God.
Whatever one may say, only the blind and the antisocial can ignore the realities of a desperately needy world. Christopher Hitchens’s cheap book attacking Mother Teresa showed a heart that was so hard he could not be touched even by the reach of a little woman with a big heart.
But I have to say that there is one area in which we as Christians have been negligent. We may have a good track record for reaching out to the hurting of the world… to building relationships with the world, but by and large we forget that there is a natural world out there to be protected as well. We have been negligent in matters of the environment, and just because the environment has no feelings we trample it underfoot. The pantheist deifies the impersonal and we ignore it. Both extremes are wrong. The created order was meant to be cared for.
If essence gave me the reason for relationships, existence gave me the mandate for stewardship. The world exists in real terms. It is not merely form. It is also substance.