As we ponder the role of faith in the public realm there is one strand of thought which keeps presenting itself, which needs to be addressed head on. This strand says that the Biblical demands for justice apply only to individuals, not the government or society.

The problem with this interpretation is that it ignores the biblical context of the calls for justice. To remove the moral teachings in the Bible from the societal structure in which, and to which, they were given is to misread the Bible. The prophets' demands for justice, repeated by Jesus, are directed at Israel as a whole, both the people and the government. The call for righteousness and the call against sin were understood collectively. It is the people as a whole who sinned and who are called to build a community based upon God's demands of justice, compassion, and mercy. This is not to say that the Bible contains no mention of personal morality, but the idea that Christian ethics can be practiced absent a collective practice is deeply flawed.

Let's take the notion of love, communal or individual virtue? You can't read the word 'love' and not have it mean what it has meant for you in the past. But if one considers that the Greek word – the original language of much of the New Testament - from which 'love' is translated could be one of three words for love, one might want to ask which of the Greek words for 'love' is in a given passage 'agape', or 'eros', or 'philos?


A few years ago I was invited to the White House briefing on Faith Based Initiatives. I was grateful for the invitation and for the recognition that, indeed, the faith community does much to weave the moral fabric of care for those in need, that's who we are, we can do no other. But that is also who many of us long to be as a larger community, as a country.

The luncheon speaker at the briefing was former President Bush. The then-president got many standing ovations that day but one came after a comment that struck me as lacking an understanding of biblical context. The president lifted up the work of the faith community saying he valued it because, "After all, the government cain't love." I sat wondering if I could name why I wasn't applauding. Well it had to do with what one understands the Biblical message is about love. When we read the biblical witness, is love a sentiment that only individuals can have or is love the great moral and ethical imperative behind the decisions that we should make as a larger community?

For those of us who are Christians, we have Jesus' demands on our whole lives, not just the private sphere. Jesus did not say, "come and follow me everywhere except into the voting booth." Jesus did not say to help the poor except through government agencies. He said help the poor, period. Our energies as Christians should not be focused on removing social safety nets over against private efforts to lift God's children up so they don't need those safety nets. We have to be about both. Simply put, the government won't force people to live in Sec 8 Housing if there are enough Habitat Homes but in the mean time Section 8 beats the street especially in Minnesota.

The private sector and the public sector need to work together. Churches simply do not have the resources of the federal government and the scale of these issues is beyond us. Government often does not have the grassroots capabilities to be as efficient in communities as local charities do, nor does it have the ability to transform the entire person and lift people up in more than simply material ways.

But government does have the ability to take advantages of economies of scale (e.g. Social Security, national defense, Medicare) to tackle problems and avoid geographic financial disparities that would leave the poor to care for the poor.

Government is not the solution, but it will be part of it. It is a limited view and an incomplete appropriation of the Gospel that does not permit the government to be an instrument of justice and mercy.