There are 2,000 verses of Scripture that tell us we must be committed to protecting the poor and the oppressed... There is no concern of Scripture that is addressed so often and so powerfully as reaching out to the poor.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the moral obligation to support and protect those who are marginalized and in need.
Tony Campolo's quote highlights the significant emphasis placed in Scripture on the importance of compassion, social justice, and commitment to helping the poor and oppressed. By stating that there are 2,000 verses dedicated to this theme, it underlines the moral imperative for individuals and communities to actively engage in efforts to address poverty and injustice, suggesting that such actions are central to ethical living and spiritual practice.
In practice
This quote can be used in a church sermon to inspire action towards social justice.
When in fact we live in a society that makes life hell for gays and lesbians, this community has got to stand up and say, ‘We’re on your side as you struggle for dignity,’ and, ‘Yes, we will defy anybody who says otherwise, even if we have to go to Disneyland to prove it.’
Your past is important but it is not nearly as important to your present as the way you see your future.
Sadly, we do a much better job of making people feel guilty than we do of delivering them from the guilt we create. We need to confess this and change our ways.
Those issues are biblical issues: to care for the sick, to feed the hungry, to stand up for the oppressed. I contend that if the evangelical community became more biblical, everything would change.
I don't know how your theology works, but if Jesus has a choice between stained glass windows and feeding starving kids in Haiti, I have a feeling he'd choose the starving kids in Haiti.
Jesus never says to the poor: ‘come find the church’, but he says to those of us in the church: ‘go into the world and find the poor, hungry, homeless, imprisoned.
From birth, man carries the weight of gravity on his shoulders. He is bolted to earth. But man has only to sink beneath the surface and he is free.
What you meet in another being is the projection of your own level of evolution.
Both dreams and myths are important communications from ourselves to ourselves. If we do not understand the language in which they are written, we miss a great deal of what we know and tell ourselves in those hours when we are not busy manipulating the outside world.
Do you want to be a man of today or a man of tomorrow?
Men have gained control over the forces of nature to such an extent that with their help they would have no difficulty exterminating one another to the last man. They know this, and hence comes a large part of their current unrest, their unhappiness and their mood of anxiety.
Just as a well-filled day brings blessed sleep, so a well-employed life brings a blessed death.
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