Today is the National Day of Prayer here in America. Nice for Christians, annoying for atheist. An atheist blogger I regularly check out made this observation about today:
Today's the day to take action instead of idly praying. Worthy actions include: Giving blood, signing up to be an organ donor, helping a stranger, or donating money to your favorite secular non-profit so they can continue the good work that they do!
So his take [obviously a result of his atheism]: prayer is a futile, so be productive and do something that will make a difference. But I think if you remove one or two words from that statement, it could've been made by today's social-justice-inclined church-- that worshipping the Living God on Sunday is not as effective as getting out and performing good deeds. Just this past week during the evening news, I heard a minister state that "unless the church gets out and does something, then we're useless." Staple that to a phrase a read from another minister this week: "if your church shut its doors, would your community protest?"
Sounds Biblical, right? But is it?
I recognize that for years the church was inwardly focuses, too much so, that we began to support random acts of kindness. It was all well and good until people begin to adopt it as their driving theology; that eradicating hunger and poverty ought to be the church's top priority. While that can be a positive byproduct of the gospel, it isn't its focus. We Christians are called to be more than good-deed doers.
There's much more that I need to write about this, because some of you might be offended that I hold this stance. I'll try to get some more thoughts up about it soon. But I will say now that if we, as the church of Christ, exists only to perform good deeds and make our communities like us then we seriously need to check our priorities. Christians don't own the market on trying to make the world a better place.
Even the atheists do that.