righteousness or self-righteousness

Danny Nalliah, Australia's poster child for all things right-wing and his group 'catch the fire ministries' held a prayer vigil on Mount Ainslie this past weekend to pray for Australia to be 'Saved' from all its heathenness and sin (apparently the bushfires and stuff are linked to our sinfulness). The prayer vigil was met by a group of protesters from various groups, gay rights activists, pro-choice, strippers, prostitutes, etc (you know the kind of people that extreme right-wingers see as the spawn of Satan, sinners and tax collectors).

Danny's prayer group was a direct result of signs of satanic rituals being held on the mountain, which was interpreted (possibly quite correctly) as a direct spiritual attack on Australian Politics. I have come from a quite right-wing upbringing, and whilst there are those who would probably see me as very left wing today, there are still things that I hold onto from my upbringing, and spiritual warfare is one of those things... I don't see demons behind everything, a la 'this present darkness' , but I cannot deny that there is some sort of otherworldly battle going on... some may call me naive, but that's OK, I'm comfortable with that.

What does bug me about this right-wing approach to the state of the world, is that it pins all the responsibility on evil spirits or on their human spawn (the anti-Danny protesters etc). In their view, our responsibility as good Christians is to live righteous lives and pray - then God will hear our voice and revival will come. They feel that through doing this and being vocal in the public arena they are doing their bit, they are being honorable to God. As I write this all I can think of is the pharisees that Jesus had to deal with... They too at a time when their nation was being oppressed (not by spiritual forces but Roman ones), saw that they needed to live more 'righteous' lives, to separate themselves and pray, calling all those around them to live a similar life, so that God would hear them and liberation (or in our language revival) would come.

This motivation in and of itself seems honorable, being righteous can never be a bad thing... but us being fallible human beings with big egos we often slip into self-righteousness. This clearly is the position that the pharisees were in. This is what Jesus battled, whilst at the same time hanging out and loving the sinners and tax collectors, those that that the pharisees saw as hell spawn.

Who did Jesus warn were in danger of the fires of hell??? - the pharisees or the sinners and tax collectors???

If you don't know the answer to this question I suggest you read the gospels - Jesus only every really referenced hell when he was talking about those who thought they were safe, but evidently were not - the self-righteous ones, the pharisees.

Interestingly the word righteousness and the word justice are synonymous in both the Old and New Testament. So really a person cannot truly be righteous unless he is fighting for justice, and who is it from a biblical perspective who needs justice? - the poor and oppressed, the marginalised... those that Jesus hung out with and loved, the sinners and tax collectors. Righteousness is not about being set apart and untouched by the world, it is about bringing our faith, our love and our support into a broken and hurting world, and in doing this, we will be truly set apart, because we are the only ones that are there caring for the unloved, risking our comfort, our time and our lives for the sake of others, the lost, the rejected, sinners, prostitutes, disabled, refugees, etc. etc... just like Jesus did (remember WWJD?).

I worry that we as Christians have done the same thing as the Pharisees, we see ourselves as righteous and set apart because we don't hang out with the sinners and tax collectors, but we are happy to condemn them (and possibly even demonise them if the situation suits). We sit in our churches and Christian schools and clubs and home groups and think we are saved and righteous. Outside the sinners and tax collectors continue to live their 'heathen' lives, and we pray, pray that the Lord would send revival and that the sinners would become saved and Australia would be won for Christ... but revival hasn't come. Contrary to Yonggi Cho's assertion, I don't think that prayer is the key to revival.

As I have stated before, Jesus had a different response, he saw the condition of the sinners and tax collectors and did not condemn them but rather lived with them, loved them and through them established his Kingdom. Interestingly if you look at true revivals in history (I'm not talking about the more unusual and dubious revivals of current times) they began amongst the sinners and tax collectors of their day... they began amongst the outcasts of society, those that were marginalised. They began as Christians stepped down from their ivory towers and began to live amongst, and minister to these people.

If we truly want to see Australia Changed for the Lord, then we can't sit back and pray for change, the whole time being self-righteous, waving our fingers in disapproval at the tax collectors and sinners. We need to get our hand's dirty, live amongst, show love to, and help those at the margins. Our faith is meant to be one of love not condemnation, I think we have forgotten that along the way somehow.