Money and The Message

I’ve just read “A Christian Manifesto” by Francis Schaeffer. It’s very informative. I think he is spot-on with his insights. I disagree with him on one point, however. He says that “it is up to Christians to show that Christianity is the truth of total reality in the marketplace of freedom.” Maybe then it was, but now it’s up to God. Christians have blown it.
Everyone misses the point regarding affirmative action and Christian Freedom. Solomon was right. Money is the answer to everything. Jesus was right, too. The widow’s mite was more precious than all the others’ offerings combined.
Christian advocacy is all about money. Widows and tycoons respond to the call to give. The groups that handle the donations seek them out. They say things like, “We need your money to get the message out.” This is foolish. How much money did it take Jesus to get the message out? Moses? David? The First Christians? They were getting the message out while they were re-establishing themselves on foreign soils, broke and broken-hearted.
What is the message of Christianity? Christ died for sinful mankind and is the propitiation of sin; how much money is required to thus say?
What is the message of Christian advocacy? Beats me, but apparently it’s much more expensive to deliver than Christianity’s.
Christian advocacy is the use of money to sway perceptions/policy. Want less taxes . . . give to an advocacy group. Want to regulate abortion and immorality. . . give to an advocacy group. Want more respect shown to Christians. . . give to an advocacy group; as if the battle and the message of Christianity were the same thing!
This is also going on in the church worldwide. Money is the answer to everything. Money does make the world go round. Everyone understands this except Western Christians. The best thing going financially in most societies is as a designee to a religious title. Levites are always fat. They may or may not minister wholeheartedly to their skinny devotees, but the only meals they ever miss are the ones they deign not to eat.
So we send Christian advocacy messengers across the waters to make men twice the sons of perdition that we are; does this sound like progress? Not to me!
The message of Christianity never cost anyone anything except his/her status in the world. The message is simple and as affordable as ink on pages, like newspapers that slum dwellers and wait-listed train passengers in India spread out and sleep on.
There’s not near enough money available to propagate to the world “that Christianity is the truth of total reality in the marketplace of freedom”. Only Western Christians are foolish enough to believe they can buy or sell this concept as though it were a patent. The true message, however, will sail as free as the breezes to every nook and cranny of the world, as it always has and always will be.