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.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the moral obligations to help others and suggests that adherence to biblical principles could transform society.
In this quote, Tony Campolo underscores the importance of addressing social issues such as healthcare, hunger, and social justice, framing them as core biblical responsibilities. He argues that if the evangelical community fully embraced these biblical teachings, it could lead to significant positive changes in society, reflecting the idea that faith should inspire practical action in the world.
In practice
In a sermon discussing the role of faith in social action.
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.
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.
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.
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.
We get into the habit of living before acquiring the habit of thinking. In that race which daily hastens us towards death, the body maintains its irreparable lead.
Racial prejudice, anti-Semitism, or hatred of anyone with different beliefs has no place in the human mind or heart.
...if we know God our knowledge of... everything will be brought to perfection, and, in so far as is possible, the infinite, divine and ineffable dwelling place (cf. Jn. 14:2) will be ours to enjoy. For this is what our sainted teacher said in his famous philosophical aphorism: 'Then we shall know as we are known' (I Cor. 13:12), when we mingle our god-formed mind and divine reason to what is properly its own and the image returns to the archetype for which it now longs.
The truth is always an abyss. One must — as in a swimming pool — dare to dive from the quivering springboard of trivial everyday experience and sink into the depths, in order to later rise again — laughing and fighting for breath — to the now doubly illuminated surface of things.
Ignorance of the law is no excuse in any country. If it were, the laws would lose their effect, because it can always be pretended.
Philosophy attempts, not to discover new truths about the world, but to gain a clear view of what we already know and believe about it. That depends upon attaining a more explicit grasp of the structure of our thoughts; and that in turn on discovering how to give a systematic account of the working of language, the medium in which we express our thoughts.
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