What Difference Does It Make?
What Difference Does It Make?
In a great church in Brooklyn, New York, where thousands gather weekly, I was introduced to a twelve-year-old girl. Some months ago, she was brought by somebody to meet the pastor because she was being courted by one of the roughest gangs in the area. The initiation into that gang involved taking a razor blade and slashing some random person’s face. The pastor talked to her at length and, sensing an intense anger within her, finally asked, “Who are you angry at?” Gritting her teeth, she replied, “I’m angry at my father, I’m angry at my mother, I’m angry at God, I’m angry at Jesus…” The list went on and on. The pastor gently spoke to her, telling her that God could change her heart from hate and anger to love and peace, and finally he prayed with her.
Today she is at that church every day. She helps in the offices, in any way she can. She’s a sweet little thing but could fight the toughest gangster because she has come from a rough background. One day recently, the pastor asked her how her week had gone. “Oh, fantastic, just fantastic,” she said. “Jesus was so good… so good.” Then she paused, raised her index finger, curled her lip and said, “Except on Thursday…” The pastor said it took everything he had to keep from bursting into laughter. “Jesus was good, except on Thursday.” That’s as transparent as one can be.
The Lord transforms us with extraordinary power and makes his truth relevant, even to the point of knowing that his own children can sometimes be disappointed in him until they realize and accept that his message does not mean an escape from the sharp edges of life. In this church there are so many nationalities that when I asked the question “How many?” the answer was, “It would be hard to think of any nationalities that are not here.” They are people from disparate backgrounds, with hurts and fears and facing economic struggles, all finding Jesus’ message relevant to their own particular need.
A few years ago, the noted English journalist Matthew Parris wrote an article that caught all of his readers by surprise. Parris is known as an avowed atheist. This is how he describes a recent visit to Malawi, the country of his birth:
Before Christmas I returned, after 45 years, to the country that as a boy I knew was Nyasaland. Today it’s Malawi… It inspired me, renewing my flagging faith in development charities. But traveling in Malawi refreshed another belief, too: one I’ve been trying to banish all my life… It confounds my ideological beliefs, stubbornly refuses to fit my world view, and has embarrassed my growing belief that there is no God. Now a confirmed atheist, I’ve become convinced of the enormous contribution that Christian evangelism makes in Africa: sharply distinct from the secular NGOs… Education and training alone will not do. In Africa Christianity changes people’s hearts. It brings a spiritual transformation. The rebirth is real. The change is good.5
He continues that he wished he could conclude that the answer for Africa is to be found in enough aid and in education, but that does not fit the facts he saw. The missionaries’ faith in God and the character of their lives had been transferred to the people, bringing an enormous change in their ethos and in their way of thinking and acting… the smiles of confidence that put them on equal footing, shaking off a servile and servant look. So much change within them was impossible to explain away. He takes issue with the long-held belief among Western academic sociologists that tribal value systems developed over centuries by tribes are “best” for them and are intrinsically equal or of equal worth to ours, observing that tribal belief is no more peaceable than ours and in fact, suppresses individuality. People are forced to think collectively, which feeds into the gangster politics of the African city, an exaggerated respect for the leader, and a literal inability to understand the concept of a “loyal opposition.” The whole structure of rural African thought is weighed down, he says, by anxiety, fear of spirits, ancestors, nature, and the wild, and it is a weight that grinds down the spirit.
Acknowledging the heartache and destruction that have come to Africans as a result of this, he ends with these staggering paragraphs:
Christianity… with its teaching of a direct, personal, two-way link between the individual and God, unmediated by the collective, and unsubordinate to any other human being, smashes straight through the philosophical/spiritual framework I’ve just described…
Those who want Africa to walk tall amid 21st-century global competition must not kid themselves that providing the material means or even the know-how that accompanies what we call development will make the change. A whole belief system must first be supplanted. And I’m afraid it has to be supplanted by another. Removing Christian evangelism from the African equation may leave the continent at the mercy of a malign fusion of Nike, the witch doctor, the mobile phone and the machete.6
This is an incredible acknowledgment, by an avowed atheist, that mere spiritual or altruistic ideas are not enough; it is only the message of Jesus to change the heart that will change a continent. I admire Mr. Parris’s bold recognition of this. If Christians would live out their faith with confidence and in love, I suspect he would say this is true not just for Africa, but for the world as well… perhaps even for Mr. Parris.
G. K. Chesterton was right: The problem with Christianity is not that it has been tried and found wanting, but that it has been found difficult and left untried. The message of Jesus is beautiful and magnificent and life-changing. If you have not already discovered that for yourself, may you discover it now. Spirituality is not good enough.
Jesus proclaims the truth—that is why it must exclude all that is contrary to it. He lived and spoke with authority—that is why what he said applies to each of us. His message bridges the greatest gulf within us—that is why it is relevant even today, two thousand years later.