Are some people more lost than other people? Should the current deprivation of some people create more motivation for missions than the relative prosperity of other people?
I was thinking about these questions as I reflected on the (too-oft) tendency for missionary appeals to concentrate our attention on the temporal deprivations of people in faraway places. I am sure you’ve seen them. Pictures of slums, starving children, moral debauchery. Statistics about poverty, sickness, unemployment, crime.
Please don’t misunderstand me. All of these things ought to provoke compassion in us. They ought to bother us because sin and its effects ought to bother us. But do any of them really provide direct motivation for the spread of the gospel? Are healthy, prosperous, intact families living in nice homes less motivating?
I know this may seem like an odd question, but I think it is an important one. The tendency to motivate Americans for missions by appealing to the deprivation of other people is really a base attempt to turn our materialism into an ally of the gospel. Instead of seeing people as headed toward an eternity apart from Christ, they are presented as objects of our pity because of their desperate circumstances. If you doubt that this is what’s happening, imagine the presentation full of rich kids dressed in designer clothes or young adults chatting in a Starbucks.
Why does one conjure up the idea of being lost and the other doesn’t? Have we subtly confused the promise of the gospel with the American dream? Is it possible we have become more concerned about the temporal welfare of people than their eternal destiny?
Don’t read this as arguing against compassion. I am arguing against the misuse of human sympathy and the danger of misdirected compassion. As I said, I am thinking about it and wanted to encourage you to do the same.