Pure religion

Arminian NT scholar Scot McKnight has weighed in on the World Vision debacle:

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2014/04/07/world-vision-and-the-brother-of-jesus/

Here are some of the highlights:

When I think of World Vision and the monies Kris and I send to World Vision (and still will send should you care to know and we are thinking of adding to our support — and believe when I say I despise the culture wars and our support of WV has nothing to do with that), I think of words from the brother of Jesus at James 1:27, words that many of the critics of World Vision’s recent decision need to read with some integrity- and soul-searching:  

• Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. 

The critics of World Vision, if the numbers are right, may be right in their own minds about what to believe, but they won’t be right before God if they lift those donations and don’t sink them into compassionate donations toward those in need in our world. And they are surely not right if they have merely taken an opportunity to pounce on brothers and sisters though they do not care about orphans and widows (this is not just about children, folks, it is about widows, the most neglected segment in the church today — read Miriam Neff’s book about widows, please). 

What is the world? In James that word will refer most especially to power-mongering, violence, and verbal assaults on one’s brothers and sisters. Notice James 1:19-21 and then 2:5 and 4:4 and especially James 3:13-15. James, as always, has much to say. 

A good-before-God religion cares for the needy and eschews violence against one’s brothers and sisters.

This is so confused at so many different levels. 

i) First of all, it's striking that what he takes to be self-evidently true, critics of World Vision take to be self-evidently false. This reflects McKnight's insularity. There's a growing rift between the evangelical left and the evangelical right, where some positions taken by the evangelical right are simply inconceivable to the evangelical left. Members of the evangelical left belong to like-minded, ideologically self-reinforcing communities where their assumptions go unchallenged. It's a self-enclosed subculture. They can't even enter into the mindset of Christians with whom they disagree. 

ii) Notice how he equates criticism of World Vision with "violence." If you criticize World Vision management for hiring homosexual "couples," that's tantamount to practicing "violence" against one's "brothers and sisters."

a) One problem is trivializing the concept of violence, so that a "verbal assault" is equivalent to "violence."

b) Another problem is his failure to appreciate that, when World Vision management capitulated on homosexual marriage, that, in itself, is a test of their withering Christian commitment. Are they "brothers and sisters"? 

iii) Offhand, I don't know of any Bible verses which command charity towards widows and orphans outside the community of faith. Aren't such verses typically directed at Jewish widows (in the OT) and Christian widows (in the NT)? 

That doesn't mean it's ipso facto wrong to extend charity to needy individuals outside the community of faith. But McKnight is ripping these commands out of context. 

iv) Then he seems to indicate that he wants to opt out of the culture wars or compartmentalize charity towards widows and orphans from the culture wars. Evidently, he's never bothered to notice that when liberals win the culture wars, widows and widowers are among the first casualties. 

Liberals push to euthanize the elderly because seniors are a drain on the healthcare system. A development which Wesley J. Smith regularly documents at Human Exceptionalism. 

Liberals would rather see limited medical resources go to worthier causes, like insuring sex-change operations, fertility coverage for same-sex couples, building more transgender rest rooms, and developing HIV vaccines. 

And their policies are just as harmful to orphans. They are shutting down Christian adoption agencies that refuse to place children with homosexual "couples." Christian agencies which insist that children should be placed with normal couples who can model a normal father/mother, husband/wife relationship. 

Instead, liberals are now making adoptive children guinea pigs in their social engineering experiment. Forcing orphans into an unnatural environment. Classic corruption of minors.  

For that matter, it's only a matter of time before liberals have CPS remove children from their Christian biological parents. 

v) In addition, the way liberals deal with unwanted children is to kill them. Having largely won the legal battle on abortion (through judicial fiat), they are now pressing ahead on after-birth abortion (i.e. infanticide). 

vi) Furthermore, as the president of World Vision has indicated (in an interview), World Visions employees are not allowed to "proselytize." But in that event, they are treating symptoms rather than causes. After all, the problem of widows, orphans, and poverty in general, is often exacerbated by a false religion informing the culture.

For instance, when Muslims practice child marriage, that means more women and children will be widowed or orphaned, since the husband/father will often predecease them by a wide margin. Likewise, the Hindu caste system creates a culture of poverty. So does belief in reincarnation and karma, which is punitive and fatalistic. 

One fringe benefit of evangelizing the lost is to reduce certain social maladies which result from a false worldview.  

vii) Likewise, simply providing for the physical needs of the poor, when you refuse to evangelize them, is a short-term solution to a long-term problem. For they are still hellbound.