
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, October 1, 1995                   TAG: 9509290026
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: G-2 EDITORIAL   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: E. WAYNE BROOKS
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

CHURCH'S MAIN ROLE ISN'T CHARITY

OUR NATION and state face a real problem. In a great humanitarian attempt to help our nation's disadvantaged citizens, our governments earlier in this century became involved. At least three things have become apparent from this experiment:

Many people have legitimately been helped.

An undesired subculture of people dependent upon the government has arisen.

The programs have gotten prohibitively expensive.

Gov. George Allen has proposed that government start cutting back on the welfare business and let private charities, especially churches, take up the slack. I support our governor and believe that, in general, the private sector can do a more efficient job than can government. But the biblical church must refuse to accept this responsibility of caring for all society's needy. This sounds very un-Christian, but consider the reasons.

A great misunderstanding of the purpose of church has arisen over the years. The church is generally viewed as the organization that ought to help take care of people's physical needs - feed the hungry, house the homeless, see that medical attention is given to the sick, and the like. But Jesus Christ said that our job is to tell the world of himself, the good news of forgiveness of sins, and eternal life available in him. Our church, in trying to honor that directive, gives half our annual income to missionaries who tell people of Jesus around the world and the other half to do that same job in our local community. Where would resources come from if we were to begin a social-welfare program here? We would have to divert money away from our prime directive, given by our leader Jesus, to a task he never asked us to do.

This doesn't mean the church should be unconcerned about people's physical needs. However, the Bible gives us a far more limited scope than that taken by government today.

Jesus spent much time healing sicknesses and casting out demons during his earthly ministry. As God, however, why didn't he speak the word and the sick everywhere would have been healed at once? Why did he limit it just to those who came to him? His primary intent in helping people wasn't just compassion. But through his compassion, he was proving to people that he was the promised Messiah of Israel, the incarnated God, and the only one able to give eternal life and forgiveness of sins.

The apostles in the early days of the church did many miracles of help for people. Again, the primary purpose was to authenticate that they were the real followers of the true God, and their message was genuine and trustworthy. The early church also helped people, but the primary focus of the help was internal. The Bible teaches that those who trust Jesus as their savior are molded by God's spirit into one family of God. As is true in any family, there's a responsibility to take care of family members.

Sometimes a ministry of assisting those outside the church arises to help present the Christian faith to people. This would include things like orphanages, rescue missions, substance-abuse centers, and the like. God obviously expects Christians to be moved by humanitarian needs like floods, famine and such. The church, however, was never intended to be a dispenser of physical life but rather of spiritual and eternal life.

E. Wayne Brooks, of Troutville, is pastor of the Woodland Church.

by CNB