DON’T ASK WHY SOMEONE KEEPS HURTING YOU – ASK WHY YOU KEEP LETTING THEM

by Lance Wallnau

SET THE RECORD STRAIGHT
There is a common slander made against Christians that needs to be refuted and permanently dismantled. Next time you hear the line: “Christians focus more on morality than poverty”, be ready to politely and clearly set the record straight.

David French, a writer and attorney with the American Center for Law and Justice, comments: “I chuckle when I hear the common critique of the religious and secular left: ‘Evangelicals are obsessed with gays and abortion.’ The criticism is so common that it’s often internalized and adopted by the church itself … It is, pure and simply, a talking point. And it’s FALSE. Demonstrably false.

As noted by The Philanthropy Roundtable: “In 2009, overseas relief and development supported by American churches exceeded $13 billion, according to path-breaking calculations by the Hudson Center for Global Prosperity. (This includes not just evangelical churches but also Catholic and mainline Protestant congregations, and covers both direct missions work and donations to private relief groups.)

In 2012 alone, the evangelical relief group World Vision spent “roughly $2.8 billion annually to care for the poor,” according to World Vision U.S. President Richard Stearns. “That would rank World Vision about 12th within the G-20 nations in terms of overseas development assistance.”World Vision is only one such major evangelical ministry.

Groups such as Samaritan’s Purse, Food for the Hungry, World Relief and many others provide hundreds of millions of dollars in anti-poverty programs at home and abroad. The gold-standard accountability group for evangelical ministries, the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability, represents groups that provide food, medical care, education, adoption services, orphan care, post-prison assistance, substance abuse help and other critical services at home and abroad.

”What are the hard numbers?

1.) In aggregate, the more than 600 evangelical ministries represented in the ECFA provide more than $9.2 billion in relief assistance on orphan care, relief work, and on medical, educational, and other services to the poor. .

2.) The total spent on national/state issues (marriage and abortion) is $270 million.

3.) That’s not even considering the countless hours that Christian churches and ministries devote to helping the poor and the needy, nor the private actions of individual Christians. From clothing closets and food distribution to driving the elderly to medical appointments and caring for abused women in their private homes, believers nationwide, animated by their faith, are bearing both public and deeply personal witness to the faith they profess.The fact is, Christian commitment to the poor dwarfs our efforts on issues like abortion and same-sex marriage.

All people reading this should use the information in this thread to “set the record straight.”

P.S. What is most irritating about this accusation is the FACT that Evangelicals give 2x more generously to philanthropy and ministry causes than their liberal counterparts

FURTHER READING AND INFORMATION: “Christians, Poverty, and the Culture Wars: Casual Slander”