Social Gospel/Social Justice

I've been doing a lot of thinking about the idea of social gospel and/or social justice. I admit I am a bit conflicted on this area. I do believe as Christians we need to help our neighbor whoever that may be, but I also think that if we focus too much on idea of social justice, we tend to forget that our primary focus is the gospel. As I've been thinking about this, I've also been following what's been happening in the Anglican church: There is a schism developing between The Espiscopal Church in the United States and much of the rest of the Anglican church worldwide over the ordination of homosexuals as well as some other issues. The homosexual issue gets a lot of the press, but it is actually a symptom of a church that has lost its way, its focus on the gospel. The head of the church in the US believes that Jesus is a way not the way. I think this is real problem; everything else is just a symptom. Anyway, some of the US churches have actually left the ECUSA and placed themselves under the leadership of foriegn bishops, mostly African and South American. I've been reading a great deal about this on blogs like Stand Firm. I read the following as part a discussion on homosexuality and trying to justify it Biblically. I think that it really clarifies for me the idea that it is the gospel we are to give to people and that through it, people can find the healing that they need.
It was made in response to this comment:
"[D]o the specific condemnations, in Leviticus and the Epistles, outpunch Gospel evidence of Jesus’s concern for the marginalized?"

This argument drives me bonkers, and now I need to rant.
I’m not aware of the Gospels, or any Scriptures, using the term, “marginalized.” Jesus was concerned for the poor, i.e, his own family and probably 90 percent or more of the people of Judah. He told them they should not worry about how to clothe themselves or where their next meal would come from because God would provide for them in accordance with his plan.
He was concerned about, specifically, tax collectors (who were often some of the wealthiest people in Judah because of their dishonest practices) and sinners. He even ate and drank with them. He did this so that he might call them to repentance.
He commanded us to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, tend to the sick, and visit the prisoner. He healed some lepers and some who were blind, deaf, mute, crippled, or possessed by demons. Some of these people were social outcasts. Some were not. It wasn’t they way they were regarded by others that concerned Jesus. It was their own brokenness. Your faith could move mountains even if you had the tiniest amount, he taught them.
Today the poor we still have with us, as Jesus prophesied, and as well we have the hungry, the naked, the sick, the prisoner, the lame, the blind, the deaf, and the demon-possessed. Broken people still in need of wholeness. A fallen world still in desperate need of good news.
This business about his concern for the marginalized that is so often touted by liberal theologians makes it sound as if Jesus’ primary concern was to set aright the relationship between rich and poor so that we would learn to eliminate poverty and discrimination through our own efforts. To the contrary, his primary concern was the relationship between each of us and God, which is to be set aright by the simple act of each of us believing what God has said and trusting that he can and will keep his promises. If every person were in such a faithful relationship with God, there would be no poverty, because the Holy Spirit would be at work in each of our hearts to meet our neighbors’ needs.
We don’t attain social justice by working for it. We don’t “attain” social justice at all. Social justice arises through the efforts of God alone when we step back, take our hands of the steering wheel completely and permanently, and trust God’s providence. In the realm of the kingdom, prayer is our most powerful tool. It can accomplish anything. It is those still mired in this world who are heeding the call of the ruler of this world, working through our pride, that we must earn our salvation and that we can fix what is wrong in the world without God’s help.
You can’t save Judah through your own personal acts that you consider righteous, Jesus told the scribes and Pharisees. You must instead humble yourself, ask God’s forgiveness, and cast your burdens on the Lord. In that way, and in that way only, you open the door to your salvation and to miracles here on earth. The message, then and now, is counter-intuitive. Satan still does everything he can do, as he did then, to mask the gospel and change it so that we will not grasp its true implications.
Making sure people hear and understand the authentic message of Jesus, countering those who would distort it, is a vital vocation to which many, clergy and lay, are called by God. Thanks be to God that he is sending laborers into the harvest. Let us pray that he will continue to do so in the Anglican Communion.
[9] Posted by Rick O.P. on 06-25-2008 at 11:06 AM