[Cal]

I think that our knowledge that ultimately the world will end badly, with war, judgment and the Lord's return, works against our God-given instinct to invest in the good of the world's people. I see why someone would think like that. But the investment I'm arguing for is not one in the world system, not in politics or laws, but in the people themselves. It follows that good people make good societies. Even God does not begrudge this. This is what he intended.

The LCM taught us that nothing wrought outside its walls was worth a plugged nickel, no matter how much good it seemed to produce. But, really, where do you draw the line between spiritual good and seeming natural results? In my experience, spiritual good always results in some sort of outward change for the better in relationships, human life, outward happiness and so forth. I understand that God asks us to suffer in the natural for the sake of the spiritual. But that does not mean that happiness in the natural works against the spiritual. That is asceticism. And it's amazing how much the ascetic concept is worked in to our belief systems.

My point, I guess, is that attempting to draw a line between spiritual blessing and natural blessing is folly. God does not begrudge the natural. To quote C.S. Lewis, he made the physical, he likes it. The problem comes in when we attempt to have the natural without the spiritual. It can also come in when we become so spiritual that we neglect the natural. They are intended to blend together in a continuum.

One manifestation of this is the understandable expectation by the world that the Church, if we really means business about our "love "talk, would manifest love in ways broader and more down-to-earth than passing out free bibles and preaching about pie in the sky. Watchman Nee, when asked by those he preached to whether Jesus would fill their rice bowls famously responded, "He may break your rice bowls!" Well, that's quite nobly "spiritual." But Jesus himself never said or intimated anything like that. He fed the hungry, healed the sick and comforted the downtrodden. A spirituality that neglects these things is a sham. It's a fake. This is the spirituality the LCM taught. And it is a stronghold which ensures a life of ever learning but never coming to the knowledge of the truth.

"Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.' "They also will answer, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?' "He will reply, 'Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.' Matthew 25