Back in June there was a phrase that Gunner used on rawchristianity.com, “argument from silence,” that caught my attention. He used it in reference to possibly our culture’s most powerful method of convincing us that God is not important. I’d like to briefly add to this suggestion that we, both as a whole culture and as individual creatures, enforce arguments from silence everyday with the things we choose not to think about, talk about, and physically do anything about.
Now to apply it in just one area for a Christian, I’ll start off by saying that if the God of the Bible was important, then certainly the things Jesus commanded his followers to do are important. Over and over the focus of his ministry was on the destitute poor, the hurting, the disabled, the orphans, the hopeless widows… but if today’s American Christians continue blocking out the cries of these people, then who is left to care? Well, why should anyone else care? Certainly when we pick apart the current framework of our culture, there isn’t a good reason for these non-contributing consumers to be a vital function to society, because what are they doing for ME? They aren’t marketable, they don’t sell products, they don’t look good in advertisements, they don’t buy up the latest trends.
Instead, it’s the true Christian who wants to help these people, these images of God (Genesis 1:26; as Dustin Kensrue of the band Thrice quotes, “we are the image of the invisible,” relating to Colossians 1:15), because the follower of Christ has come to grips with the fact I personally, regardless of my social status, was and is the helpless poor in front of a perfect God who should have destroyed me long ago, but for his mercy did not. True Christianity changes everything when it’s actually put into practice. Now let’s stop arguing from our silence.
(further Christian perspective on the poor: Psalm 10:14, 140:12, Isaiah 25:4, 41:17, Luke 6:20-21, 14:12-14, James 2:5, Deuteronomy 15:7, Jeremiah 7:5-7, 22:3, Matthew 5:42, Ezekiel 22:29,31, 1 John 3:17, Proverbs 19:17, etc)
