Really? Ouch. Is that the only message that we are sending now-a-days? I fear that at times, the answer is yes.
As former SBC President Frank Page aptly stated in his Presidential address at Convention in San Antonio (08), "For far too long, Southern Baptists have been known only for what they are against, it is time that they are known for what they are for!"
How about compassion as a starting point, not only for the SBC, but for all Christians. Consider this passage from Matthew:
35 Jesus was going through all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every kind of disease and every kind of sickness. 36 Seeing the people, He felt compassion for them, because they were distressed and dispirited like sheep without a shepherd.
A major point that modern American evangelicals miss about Jesus' ministry is his compassionate nature. More than once, we are told that Christ has compassion upon those around Him, and not only for their spiritual condition. He healed their illnesses, and was moved by their "dispirited" state, a word me might translate as "despondent" or "depressed". The Ancient Mediterranean was a factory of misery and Jesus did not turn a blind eye to the plight of the poor, the helpless, nor the ones at the top of the heap responsible for most of that misery.
Strangely absent from the teachings of Jesus are tirades against the local sex trade, the exploitative nature of the collection of Roman taxes, or even a pamphlet about drunkenness. This is not to say that Jesus was unconcerned with sin. Sin is what caused His mission to be necessary. He bore the ugliness of sin on His shoulders from birth until the Resurrection destroyed the power of sin (1 Cor 15). So we can be certain that these issues were subsumed in his universal call to repent (Matt 4:17). But interestingly, Jesus tends to avoid dealing with specific sin issues when dealing with those outside the Kingdom and outside the religious circles of His day (cf. John 8, the woman caught in adultery where Jesus does not launch into a dissertation on the destructive power of sexual sin, but says, "neither do I condemn you AND go and sin no more"). Instead we see Jesus staring into the sin of the masses, and responding not with hatred, but with a zealous love.
Point of fact, the only people He seems to "chop wood" with is the Pharisees; those who claim to be the true faithful, the remnant, what we might have once called "The Moral Majority" of their day ( cf. Matt 23 for a grand tour of Jesus' antipathy toward the Pharisees). But this is another topic for another day.
Jesus felt deep compassion and longing for those who were hurting. The words splagchnizomai and eleos; which are translated as both 'mercy' and 'compassion', pop up more than three dozen times cumulatively in the NT, the bulk of these appearances are in the Gospels. Take these three examples from Matthew:
When He went ashore, He saw a large crowd, and felt compassion for them and healed their sick. Matt 14:14
And Jesus called His disciples to Him, and said, " I feel compassion for the people, because they have remained with Me now three days and have nothing to eat; and I do not want to send them away hungry, for they might faint on the way." Matt 15:32
Moved with compassion, Jesus touched their eyes; and immediately they regained their sight and followed Him. Matt 20:34
Perhaps then it is no mistake that Matthew places this teaching on compassion directly before the following exhortation from Jesus:
37 Then He *said to His disciples, " The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. 38 "Therefore beseech the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into His harvest."
Step one: Be compassionate: recognize the needs that exist around you; both spiritual and physical.
Step two: do something: seek out ways in your family life, and in the life of your church family to get to work in the harvest fields.
There is much to be done friends, but it begins with compassion.
It has been said that the opposite of love is not hatred, but apathy.
I say Amen to that.
(BTW, for a good survey of SBC compassion ministries, check out the Baptist Global Response, and Southern Baptist Disaster Relief. You may be surprised how much mercy us Southern Baptists actually have)
