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Middle Church in New York City recently created a stir on Twitter when they posted this: “God cares infinitely more about making sure everyone has food, shelter and healthcare than ‘accepting Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and savior.”[1]

Not everybody will say it so bluntly, but this is an increasingly fashionable opinion among Christians, especially those on the ideological left. Practically stated, in the minds of many the mission of the church is to work for justice!

But exactly which injustices should the church fight against? Over the past two week we’ve talked about abortion and racism, but those two injustices only scratch the surface.

What about the attempted extermination of people with disabilities? 89 to 97 percent of mothers who receive a positive diagnosis of Down syndrome during the prenatal period choose abortion. Denmark’s abortion rate for unborn Down syndrome babies is 98%. Iceland’s is almost 100%.[2]

What about the extermination of racial minorities in China? Since 2017, at least 1 million Uighur people (a Muslim minority in China) have been interned in forced labor camps. Forced sterilizations, forced abortions, and more have led experts to label what’s happening in China a genocide.[3]

What about Human Trafficking? 20-40 million people worldwide are in modern slavery today and about 50,000 people are trafficked into the U.S. each year.[4]

What about the unequal access to healthcare? We often talk about this problem in our country, but the reality is it’s a far greater problem globally. In South Sudan, there are only four ventilators. Throughout sub-Saharan Africa, 28% of health facilities lack access to reliable electricity, making it hard to operate critical machines and store medicines. Millions of people die each year from preventable infections such as malaria, HIV, and tuberculosis.[5]

What about unequal access to clean drinking water? Approximately 1.8 million children die each year as a result of diseases caused by unclean water and poor sanitation. This is around 5,000 deaths a day. Water-related diseases are the second biggest killer of children worldwide.[6]

What about crippling global poverty? 689 million people survive on less than $1.90 a day. Shutdowns related to the COVID-19 pandemic threaten to reverse decades of progress in the fight against global poverty. While the full impact is unknown, the World Bank estimates that an additional 88 million to 115 million people will fall into extreme poverty in 2020, with the total rising to as many as 150 million by 2021.[7]

What about world hunger? 8.9% of the world’s population (690 million people) is undernourished. An estimated 14 million children under the age of five worldwide suffer from severe acute malnutrition, also known as severe wasting, yet only 25 percent of severely malnourished children have access to lifesaving treatment.[8] All this despite the fact there is enough food produced in the world to feed everyone on the planet.

A report from the United Nations published in the medical journal The Lancet estimates that because of the world’s response to the virus 300,000 people could die due to starvation every day over a three-month period, meaning shutdown-related deaths would far surpass the novel coronavirus’ total death count.[9]

What about religious persecution? 260 million of our brothers and sisters experience high levels of persecution. In 2020 alone 2,983 Christians were killed for faith-related reasons (8 per day), 9,488 churches or Christian buildings were attacked, and 3,711 Christians were detained without trial, arrested, sentenced, and imprisoned.[10]

I believe that each of these examples is a type of injustice in our world today. Yet these are only a handful out of thousands of examples. In a world filled with injustice, what does it look like for the church to be just?

[1] Twitter, @middlechurch, Jan 26, 2021, 9:23 AM  

[2] Randy Alcorn, Pro-Choice or Pro-Life: Examining 15 Pro-Choice Claims—What Do Facts & Common Sense Tell Us? (Sandy, OR: Eternal Perspective Ministries, 2020), 45.  

[3] Associated Press, “China Cuts Uighur Births with IUDs, Abortion, Sterilization,” AP NEWS, June 29, 2020, https://apnews.com/article/269b3de1af34e17c1941a514f78d764c.  

[4] “11 Facts About Human Trafficking,” DoSomething.org, accessed February 8, 2021, https://www.dosomething.org/us/facts/11-facts-about-human-trafficking.  

[5] Eleanor Tyson, “Four Ventilators: What COVID-19 in South Sudan Reveals About Healthcare in the Developing World,” Activism, Meet Impact | Novel Hand (blog), December 22, 2020, https://novelhand.com/covid-19-and-healthcare-in-south-sudan/.

[6] Randy Alcorn, “The Least of These: Those without Clean Water and Sanitation,” Eternal Perspective Ministries, January 2, 2013, https://www.epm.org/blog/2013/Jan/2/without-clean-water.  

[7] “Poverty Overview,” The World Bank, accessed February 8, 2021, https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/poverty/overview.  

[8] “World Hunger: Key Facts and Statistics 2021,” Action Against Hunger, July 12, 2018, https://www.actionagainsthunger.org/world-hunger-facts-statistics.   [9] Randy Alcorn, “The Fall-Out Effects of COVID-19 Have Greatly Affected the Needy Worldwide; How Can We Help Them in Christ’s Name? - Blog,” Eternal Perspective Ministries, November 30, 2020, https://www.epm.org/blog/2020/Nov/30/covid-needy-worldwide.   [10] Open Doors, World Watch List 2020, accessed February 8, 2021, https://www.opendoorsusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/2020_World_Watch_List.pdf.