For a moment, consider what type of situation would drive you to get up and move to a different country? For most of us, unless their was a strong appeal of adventure or a cause, being faced with moving away from friends and family, all that we are familiar with, and being faced with learning a new language, culture, and starting over from scratch would be a painful prospect. Surely for many, it would take a dire circumstances. Perhaps being so desperate for work, and faced with a starving family, you might consider this? Or if you had a child that was in need in medical help that couldn’t be found where you lived?

A number of evangelical organizations have called for today to be a day of prayer and action for immigration reform. I thought I would try to participate and contribute by writing a short blog post on the subject. In writing this blog post, I wanted to draw our attention to consider the thoughts and aspirations of people around the world. Immigration is a contentious subject, many want to secure our borders to ensure that the rule of law is properly enforced. Others are focused on providing a path to citizenship for those who are here without any personal decision to break the law. Fortunately there is hope that a growing movement towards a bipartisanship solution that both recognizes the importance of consistently enforced laws, and values the dignity of those who are here and contributing to our society without any willful efforts to break laws. However, I am writing this post as an encouragement to not just look at these proposals from the perspective from how it will affect you or me, but from the perspective of those throughout the world. As we consider immigration by putting ourselves in others shoes, and how we might look at America from the outside, from a global perspective, from God’s perspective, I believe it should not only shed light on these hot topics, but point us towards changes that are needed that are rarely even discussed.

Certainly one of the most prized values in America is freedom. The high value placed on freedom has been primary in shaping our country, from social structures, government design, to our economy. America’s economy in particular, has had a history of being characterized by giving people the freedom to innovate and work hard to create something of value and to reap the benefits of their work and creativity. And this experiment in economic freedom has been nothing short of a spectacular success. America’s economy over the last century has revolutionized how we live in a way that has no equal in history. Now they are certainly problems with America’s economy, and economics is far more complicated than simply reducing rules (sometimes lack of certain regulations and interventions actually inhibit opportunity and freedom), but in general our economy, designed around the principle of giving people the freedom and opportunity to choose how and what they will do to innovate and contribute has been an incredibly productive system.

One of the most fundamental tenets of such a free economy is ensuring minimal barrier for people to take advantage of opportunities they see to work and participate. Taking advantage of opportunity can involve many things, but certainly one of them is the freedom to move to where opportunity exists. And domestically, America has basically always given its people freedom to move and find work where it exists. Restrictions on movement of laborers represents not only a economic drag, but a fundamental violation of the principle of giving people freedom to work, contribute, and innovate. And immigration restriction is exactly that type of violation of freedom. Giving freedom of movement at the state level, yet arbitrarily creating heavy restrictions at the national level represents an inconsistent, hypocritical treatment of the principles of freedom. Every visa denied, at least at economic level, represents a deterioration in the free global market, and a strike against another human’s opportunity to pursue using their God-given talents to create value.

When we, as a country, welcome an immigrant, we are taking our commitment to freedom seriously, and treating freedom as a value worth affording to every human, not just those born on US soil. We are giving a person, or a family a new opportunity, and making good on our claim to be the land of opportunity. As the great economist J.K. Galbraith said:

‘Migration is the oldest action against poverty. It selects those who most want help. It is good for the country to which they go; it helps break the equilibrium of poverty in the country from which they come. What is the perversity in the human soul that causes people to resist so obvious a good?’

Many fear the effects of immigration, but in reality, freedom of movement makes us all stronger. Some fear crime related to immigration, despite the fact that research has shown that immigration does not increase crime. Immigration gives us more of opportunity to appreciate the beauty and diversity of the culture and nations of the world, as well as diversifies our economy.

But more importantly immigration needs to be viewed not from the narrow perspective of just how we fear it may affect ourselves, but we need to consider the perspective of others. Again, what dire situation, or great opportunity might drive you to move to a different country? Anyone willing to face the incredible challenges of moving to another country has a tremendous drive for something better, for himself and for others, and this is exactly what we need to be rewarding. If we truly believe it to be a self-evident truth, that all men are created equal, we must treat freedom as a value worthy of every person, not just Americans.

This is not just philosophical argument. The Bible also continually commends welcoming immigrants. The Hebrew word for immigrant is “ger” (also translated to alien, stranger, and sojourner), and is mentioned 92 times in the OT. One of the clearest articulation of God’s concern for immigrants is found in Deuteronomy 10:17-19:

For the LORD your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who shows no partiality nor takes a bribe. He administers justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the stranger, giving him food and clothing. Therefore love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.

Another key principle Biblical principle for countries is importance of generosity. The Bible continually teaches us to be givers, and without delineation between individual giving and collective giving. In fact, in Ezekiel, Sodom is specifically condemned for their lack of generosity (despite usually being known for their sexual immorality):

“Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy” – Ezek 16:49

It turns out that by far the most generous people in our society, in terms of sending money abroad, is our immigrants. Remittances, the transfer of funds by immigrants back to their country (usually to their family), far outweighs all international charitable contributions of all our charities combined. Immigrants make us a voluntarily more generous country.

In the debates about securing borders vs paths to citizenship, unfortunately it seems little is being said to advocate for simply allowing more visas, increasing the flow of immigration, and reducing excessive government restriction on the freedom to pursue life, liberty, and happiness, or even just a decent paying job to feed your family.

But, as I try to defend the alien, the poor in other countries, my post is a probably poor ramblings in comparison to the powerful and convicting words found at the pedestal at the Statue of Liberty:

“”Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!”” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

The Bible consistently and repeatedly exhorts us to defend and provide for the poor. Obedience to God means pursuing his vision through every means possible. However, many Christians object to helping the poor through public means, suggesting that we should only help the poor through direct church-based support (or Christian aid organizations), and helping the poor through government aid (and advocacy thereof) should be avoided. This stance significantly affects the means by which we are willing to seek to obey scriptures. Consequently, I wanted to discuss examine some of the objections that are often raised to public funding of programs to help the poor. Some concerns are legitimate and all should be rationally addressed.

The first objection to public assistance of the poor is that private giving works better than public means. If we really had to make a value comparison between the two, I would agree. However, this is a false choice. They are not mutually exclusive, no government assistance will ever eliminate the possibility and opportunity for churches and other organizations to meet needs as well. And conversely, the narrow way of taking up our cross and following Christ will never have the multitudes needed to directly fund all the needs of the world (but Christians may act as the examples and catalysts for more systematic alleviation of poverty). There will always be needs even with both the church and public assistance involved.

Let me illustrate this with a simple analogy. Suppose a group of people are standing by a beach, and someone’s starts struggling in the waves. The lifeguard jumps up and goes to help him. In the meantime, down the beach, another person’s starts drowning. They onlookers reason “the lifeguard would certainly be more efficient at helping this drowning person”, and so they stay on the beach and let the person drown. If the question you are asking is what is the most efficient method for the people that we do help, than allowing some to drown is no problem, we would be operating less efficiently, with more opportunity for mistakes if non-trained onlookers were to help. However, if we turn the question around and actually seek to make sure that everyone is helped, watching a person drown becomes unacceptable.

The appropriate question then is not which is better but whether or not public assistance is worthwhile at all. And this is definitely an important question to ask, but considering whether or not public assistance is beneficial is far a different test than if it is more beneficial than private assistance. From here, let’s consider the objections to public assistance having any benefit.

The first objection is to the actual taxes required to fund the assistance. Some try to claim that taxes are immoral or theft. I have written with this objection in more detail here, but briefly, taxation is one of the only activities of government that the Bible actually specifically ordains. Others may simply suggest that the tax cost is too high, and they don’t like to pay them. But the inconvenience of taxes certainly does not negate its legitimacy.

The second objection is that there is risk of creating dependencies and eliminating or reversing incentives for productivity (known as perverse incentives). This is definitely an important and worthwhile objection. Certainly programs should be aware of these risks and be tempered when necessary. However, we need to keep a few things in mind with this objection:

First, this danger is not specific to government assistance, some of the most egregious acts of dependence creation have been at the hands of private charities. Both public and private efforts have real dangers of dependence and both have demonstrated quality programs that can minimize these issues. While we should definitely work to identify and correct programs that create perverse incentives, we don’t need to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Second, it would be naive to think that assistance of poor has overall long-term perverse incentives. There are specific situations where perverse incentives occur, but in long-run, it is far more economically beneficial to be productive enough to not need assistance. But still, we should actively work to eliminate perverse incentives, and root out causes of unhealthy dependencies. But doing this is not easy. It’s not simply a matter of making budget cuts or being stingy. In fact, wisely pursing the best types of assistance often requires more investment, both with time and finances, to research the effects of different interventions and respond appropriately.

I am most familiar with foreign development aid as a form of government funded assistance. Foreign development aid is less than one percent of the US budget. There are hazards of dependency, but there has been a strong focus of late in investing in health and microfinance that enable healthy productive individuals and thriving businesses to actually reduce dependencies. The benefits: without even mentioning all the economic development, the health services alone are estimated to save several millions lives a year. To consider these saved lives not worth the cost would represent horrific devaluing of human life. It’s hard to imagine that the alternative, millions of dead, would somehow represent less dependent and more empowered people. The dead are not empowered.

Another objection is that some level of help for the poor is appropriate and reasonable, but there is a fear that increasingly levels of help will lead to a socialistic welfare society that goes to far. This is a classic slippery slope fallacy. The reason this is a fallacy is because simply asserting the possibility of a slope does nothing create logical or verifiable foundation that the slippery slope actually exists. This is a fear-based argument instead of a rational argument. We should never avoid doing the right thing for fear of being closer to one of the wrong ways.

The fourth objection is that the Bible never says that the poor should be helped through governments. It is true that the Bible never explicitly says this. However, there are significant number of passages about the poor that are addressed to societies, communities, particularly in the minor prophets. These passages seem directed at systematic injustices, which suggest a systematic corrections.

More importantly though, not helping the poor through public policy would be an exception from the commands of the Bible, and this exception simply does not exist. The Bible has hundreds of passages telling us to protect and help the weak, poor, and ill without any exceptions being stated for how to go about it.

A helpful analogy would be if we heard the commandment to love our neighbor (as our self), but then decided that since the Bible never actually explicitly says that we have to love our neighbor on Wednesdays, we can have that day off. Creating such an exception is of course absurd, and it is equally erroneous to drum up exceptions to helping the poor with an excuse of it not being explicated.

A final objection is that public-driven assistance precludes the joy of giving for individuals. However, there is no reason that the joy of giving needs only belong to individuals, but rather communities and even whole countries can collectively enter into the joy of helping others, and my research suggests there is evidence to support that idea. More importantly though, the focus on giver’s joy represents a distortion of the purpose of giving. Giving is not for the sake of the giver, it is for the recipient. Giving is supposed to be driven by love for others, not a self-centered emotional satisfaction.

Simply put, private and public aid do not exclude each other, and a total commitment to obey the Biblical mandate to help the least of these should be pursued with nothing less than a willingness to use every means, public and private, to achieve this end. In fact, these are not only compatible, but can even be complimentary. Public assistance can provide verifiable forms of help with tremendous benefits and return on investment in terms of real human lives and critical development that can address important health and economic issues, while private assistance can often make higher-impact investments with less-verifiable results.

I suspect that most Christians are actually smart enough that they don’t really fall for the logical fallacies of the objections above. While these objections may be offered by many, I think that there is a deeper theological issue that drives these ideas.

In the last century American Evangelicalism has been characterized by an unorthodox perspective on evangelism and spiritual growth. Evangelicals have tended towards a view that our physical efforts are simply finite activities that exist solely for the purpose of evangelism (or personal discipleship). A deeper examination of this theology deserves its own blog post, but briefly, this belief is at odds with orthodox Biblical Christianity that regards obedience and submission to God in every teaching, and seeking redemption in all things in life as of intrinsic value to God, and not merely a means to an end of conversion.

Where did this theological fallacy originate? Tim Keller points to the Pietist movement, led by John Wesley and George Whitefield, as leading to this distorted thinking. Others like Darrow Miller suggest that dualist philosophies of Greek and Gnostic movements be at fault. Overreaction to social gospel teachings may also be at play. Either way, this theology has had a tremendous impact on the church.

The implication of this theology is unavoidable. If helping others is merely a means to conversion, there is no point in helping others if there is not a possibility of conversion. Working through secular organizations or through the government to bring relief and justice is pointless if we are only interested in conversion or spiritual impact. And evangelicals who have accepted this idea have invariably taken a negative attitude towards the public role in fighting poverty. Simply put, theology matters, and when we embrace unbiblical theology, it ultimately detracts from our pursuit of God’s mission (and again, later I will try to do a post considering this in more detail.)

Let us take God’s call to help the poor seriously, loving Him with all our heart, soul, and might, and embrace every means possible to be obedient, not just the ways that fit with the prevailing attitude of our Christian culture.

Deu 6:5 You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.

Generous people tend to be joyful people, and I think there is good evidence that the same is true of countries.

I wanted to test this idea, so I created this graph of countries by their giving percentage and their happiness index (based on a number of measures of satisfaction). Further right are more generous countries, and higher up are happier countries. This isn’t a perfect correlation, the surveys for giving (based on development assistance) and happiness (based on a UN survey/research project) are certainly not perfectly precise or complete, and correlation doesn’t prove causation. But still, this does seem to show that more generous countries are generally more joyful.

To note some of the significant countries on this graph, on the upper right, Scandinavian countries (Denmark, Norway, and Sweden) are distinctly the most generous countries in the world with aid, and also top the list of the happiest, most satisfied countries. On the bottom left there are some countries that still are struggling with developing, but there are also a few nations that stand out as being rather stingy despite being wealthy: Japan, Russia, South Korea, and Greece. And these countries have relatively low life satisfaction/happiness ratings (particularly in comparison to nations of similar wealth). It is also worth noting that the United States tends to have higher levels of private giving that aren’t recorded in this graph. While the US totals would still probably fall far short of the total giving of Scandinavians, it probably is closer to the middle-to-right in terms of giving than it appears on the graph (and more in line with our mid-to-upper level happiness).

Here are the some books I read or am reading this year, roughly in order of my preference or importance:

Half the Sky – This is a powerful, shocking, yet hopeful book exposing the perhaps the greatest atrocity of our time, the global violence, prejudice, neglect, and oppression against women. Author, Nicholas Kristof says that more women have died precisely because they are women in the last half century, than men in all wars in the last century. This is one of the most important books recently published, spawned a PBS documentary, and resulted in tremendous amount of interest in the subject of misogyny. We have talked a lot about this book, so you have probably already heard this from me, but this is my number one pick for a must read book. Here is the review I wrote on it.

Poor Economics – This was probably my favorite book to read this year. I am a rather scientifically oriented person, as well as very interested in fighting poverty, so the brilliant approach of doing in-depth studies and trials on various different approaches to dealing with poverty was fascinating to me. This book pushes beyond simple theories and ideologies to understand in detail what really works and what doesn’t. The results are intriguing, often surprising, and always very insightful. If you work with the poor, or interested in understanding what types of projects really can help them, this is a fantastic book, accessible for an economics book, and fun to read. I loved it.

I Told Me So – This book provides an insightful look at our psychology and how we constantly work to subconsciously deceive ourselves to feel better about ourselves. This is specifically intended to challenge Christians to be alert to how our subconscious works, and steps we can take to avoid self-deception and discern truth. The book abounds with great stories and analogies, and really helps you to think about how you process information and form your opionions and ideas. I would highly recommend this for general spiritual and mental growth. Here is my review of this book.

Center Church – I have not finished this book yet, but so far I think this great. Tim Keller is quickly becoming one of the most widely read and important Christian authors of our time, and the attention is well-deserved. He presents intelligent, well-reasoned material based on a balanced, comprehensive view of scripture. Center Church is a rather large book, but for those interested in pursuing a healthy church that engages cultural in a Biblical way, this is a great book. Last year, I read his book Generous Justice, which is another great read (and much shorter).

Abraham Kuyper: A Short and Personal Introduction – Abraham Kuyper was an important dutch theologian (and politician) that has a tremendous influence on modern Christian thinkers. This is a great (and succinct) introduction to his ideas. His major concepts include the idea of spheres of influence (different spheres should be as autonomous as possible). This book covers a lot of concepts quickly, which I really appreciated.

Fast Living – This book is by Todd Scott who started Live 58, an organization focused on living out the fast as described in Isaiah 58 (letting the oppressed go free, sharing food with the poor, etc.). This book is focused on the Biblical call to fight poverty, and work towards the elimination of absolute poverty by raising awareness. This is a great book, although some of the best material was quotes from Scot McKnight on fasting, and for the same topic, I would probably recommend “The Whole in Our Gospel” over this book.

Why Nations Fail – This book provides a compelling case for the root cause of how countries often diverge towards prosperity and failure. The main premise is that countries or states where the majority of people can participate in and benefit from innovation and economic advances will succeed and those where an elite few extract all the benefits will fail. The bulk of this book is reinforcing this point by looking at the history of numerous countries’ development. If you like history you may enjoy this, but I found these repetitive examples boring, and was disappointed that they were not followed by more suggestions for how we can help. This book is certainly an important contribution to understanding developing economies, but likely overestimates the impact of this single cause, and I found the ensuing debates on blogs and twitter more interesting than the book itself.

Fair Trade for All: How Trade Can Promote Development – I have been reading this book (not finished yet) as part of my effort to understand international trade better. This is a pretty technical book and goes into very extensive detail on the different World Trade Organization meetings and the policy decisions that resulted, making it rather difficult to wade through. However, the author, Joseph Stiglitz is a brilliant economist, and has approached economics with a pursuit of ethics and justice for poor countries like few others. The basic summary: while more open trade is supposed to help everyone, rich countries have leveraged their power and negotiation capabilities to create unequal trade agreements and gain far more advantages from global trade than developing countries, such that often times globalization has actually harmed third world countries instead of giving them greater economic opportunities as promised. Here is my blog post about trade injustice.

Fair Trade? Its Prospects as a Poverty Solution – I also read this book as I have been researching international trade. This book is a very short and easy read, and makes it clear in simple terms how fair trade largely fails to provide much benefit to those in poverty, whom it is supposed to help. This demonstrates some important economic concepts, and is a good read if you are wondering about fair trade. I am sure there are other books that speak more positively about fair trade, but this book definitely shows some of the critical shortcomings of this movement.

In the Hands of the Redeemer – This is a solid book on discipleship and the importance of seeing believers utilize their giftings to serve each other. A fine book, but I don’t really recall any significant new insights or encouragements that I didn’t already agree with.

Redeeming Church Conflicts – I haven’t finished this book yet either. This book has some good suggestions on the types of questions to ask people to work towards the resolution of conflicts. Admittedly, I am just not that pastorally oriented, so counseling-focused books aren’t that exciting to me.

Yesterday we talked about how to prioritize which political issues to advocate. Today I promised to share my list with you.

Again, I recognize the limitations of my approach. There is still a lot of subjective analysis. Feel free to apply these in your own ways if you disagree with my assessment, I’d love to hear how you would assess them. Still I’d hope that it gives an insight in to how to prioritize. I have used this approach as a way to assess and prioritize what I want to invest in, since I believe it is a good guide to where I can most effectively bring real change aligned with God’s vision. This list is ordered from highest to lowest priority (so if you quit reading half way through, at least you will have read the highest).

High Priority

Global Poverty Reduction Efforts

1. Globally 1.7 billion are destitute; in absolute poverty, about 18 million die each year
2. Crippling impact on life and opportunities, many die
3. Large opportunity for impact. American spends about $25 billion on total development assistance, a subset of that is specifically for those in absolute poverty (a tiny portion of the federal budget), not a strong partisan issue, both conservatives and liberals have championed this. There are numerous well-understood proven efforts that we know can save lives, and do save millions of lives each year. Groups that are advocating in this area have had very significant influence on policies.

Global Human Rights Protection
This encompasses human trafficking, religious persecution, and gender inequality.

1. There are currently between 10 and 27 million in slavery, millions have some religious persecution (some estimate roughly 100,000 – 200,000 a year killed for their faith), gender equality affects billions of women, about 1 million females die each year because of gender inequalities leading to neglect or direct abuse and death.
2. Huge life impact, slavery, particularly slavery, is tremendous violation of a person, near death.
3. Good opportunity for impact. Impact can be made through legislation, diplomatic efforts, and education ($60 million dollars is spent on the combating trafficking agency, a tiny line item on federal budget). This tends to be a non-partisan issue and some aspects haven’t received much attention. However, concrete steps to solving this problem can sometimes be elusive, we can only do so much to change laws in other countries, for example. Also fighting poverty is a key part of mitigating some of these issues.

International Economic Issues
This issue covers the various international policy injustices that keep developing countries trapped in poverty, including tax havens, trade injustice, and national debt. It is estimated that as much as $500 billion a year is lost from developing countries and transition economies due to tax avoidance.

Tax havens rob developing countries of tens of billions of dollars, and debt relief. The International Food Policy Research Institute estimates subsidies and protectionism costs $24 billion in lost agricultural income for developing countries, which is the primary income source for the poorest (here is my post on this subject). Sub-Saharan Africa pays almost $13 billion in debt service to the wealthy nations and institutions every year, undermining their ability to meet basic health care needs.

• Similar to global poverty in extent, over one billion affected
• Significantly impact on life and opportunities
• Somewhat limited opportunity for impact. These topics are rarely discussed, and advocacy can have a tremendous impact. But, our efforts can be somewhat limited due to the fact that these often involve international multi-lateral agreements to make a strong difference.

Medium Priority

Immigration
This is issue covers to what extent we are supportive of the immigrant population in America.

1. Immigration provides an amazing opportunity for someone to go from poverty to real success. However, perhaps one of the most compelling and telling metrics in the story of immigration is remittances. Remittances are monies sent from foreign workers to their home country. The self-sacrificial support that foreign workers provide families in their home countries is enormous and has tremendous benefits on the recipients well-being and economic development. There is about $60 billion sent from the US to Latin American countries alone, supporting probably 10 million families. This is vastly more than all international charitable contributions combined. Encouraging and supporting immigration has a tremendous benefit for these families, and crackdowns on immigration have vast implications on human suffering due to the loss of these remittances.
2. Those that have have immigrated are typically in desperate economic situations, and the employment and benefits are crucial for health, education, etc.
3. Limited opportunity for impact. Unfortunately this is a deeply partisan issue, and is quite difficult to change policies on this issue. However, the ramifications are relatively clear, and it should certainly be a consideration in voting though.

Environmental Protection

1. Everyone is affected by global warming to some degree, although it may be very slight for many, especially most Americans.
2. This is another issue where the affects are predominantly outside our borders. America’s economy is composed of industries that are less sensitive to climate change, many people have A/C, and thus far our climate has seen relatively small changes compared to the rest of the world (2012, notwithstanding). However, the World Health Organization estimates 150,000 deaths per year can be attributed to global warming, and that this could double by 2030. This has impact beyond the human toll if we consider God’s creation to be of intrinsic worth as well (a more philosophical question).
3. Limited opportunity for impact. Again, this is a deeply entrenched issue, but a consideration in voting.

Deficit Reduction

1. Currently we are accruing roughly $1 trillion (more during the recession, less in a normal economy) in debt a year, which has economic consequences that affect almost everyone.
2. The current deficit comes out to about $3,100 of financial burden per person per year. The current national debt is $16 trillion, which is about $51,000 of financial burden per person.
3. Very limited opportunity for impact. The goal of reducing the deficit is a bi-partisan goal, basically everyone wants to reduce it. Yet basically everyone has different objections to the means by which we might reduce it, making it very difficult to actually achieve. Simple partisan voting is generally fruitless here, since both sides want to reduce the deficit. But, we can be guided how to reduce the deficit in a just way, and who will bear the biggest impact for deficit reducing measures, the poor, the rich, the military, etc.?

Healthcare

1. Affects almost everyone to some degree, but biggest impact on uninsured.
2. One way to measure health would be to compare with health in other developed countries. Most highly developed countries have life expectancy of 2-4 years longer per person than America, and some have half the infant mortality rate. Achieving the efficacy and breadth of healthcare available in other nations could possibly add a total of nearly a billion extra years of life to those currently living, and save about 14,000 infants per year.
3. Limited opportunity for impact. Another highly visible, entrenched issue that is difficult to affect. Should be considered in voting though.

Programs for Domestic Poverty

This covers programs like food stamps, WIC, unemployment benefits, and EIC.

1. About 46 million use food stamps, about 4.5 million on non-social security benefits
2. Financial benefits that can be important for adequate nutrition and shelter.
3. Limited opportunity for impact. Another issue that is difficult to affect. Should be considered in voting though.

Low Priority

Again, many of these are important and symbolic issues, but due to their limited scope or limited opportunity for impact, are characterized lower in my focus on quantified measurements.

Unemployment/Domestic Economics

1. 12 million unemployed, 300 million people affected by the economy
2. Economics impacts peoples’ finances to some degree. Those that are unemployed are financially impacted deeply, although it rarely leads to death in America.
3. Extremely limited opportunity for impact. Everyone already wants a better economy and lower unemployment, and economic ideologies are deeply entrenched, and many economic issues are highly technical. Political rhetoric has lead many to believe that one party can fix the economy, but such claims ridiculously overstated, and any given policy makers influence on the economy is very limited, even the executive branch, and only one of thousands of factors that affect our economy. Again, partisan votes shouldn’t expect much better results from any one party.

There are numerous other issues that I would categorize as lower priority. Remember these may still be very important issues, but I am suggesting that they are relatively lower priority than the issues at the top. Issues like gay rights/marriage definition are important, but the breadth and severity of their impact is far less than the issues above (denying or allowing marriage licenses doesn’t result in death). Abortion receives a huge amount of attention from the right, even though it is largely a judicial or state issue, not something decided by elected federal leaders. Domestic religious protection is important as well, but the types of issues we debate in America (contraceptive mandates, school prayer, etc) are trivial in comparison to the types of religious persecutions mentioned in the global human rights issue.

Also, while I have certainly given lower priority to issues that I see as deeply entrenched, we must still remember faith in God’s often leads us to work for the impossible. While I believe that we should be strategic in recognizing potential for success, we also must reject apathy and discouragement that may come from not looking up to God who can ultimately accomplish anything.

Using Prioritization

With prioritization in mind, hopefully we can then proceed to channel our efforts and even assess candidates with much greater focus and clarity. I know that there are numerous other issues that could be assessed with this approach, as well as limitless ways of categorizing. This list is merely an example based on my perspective, and I would love to hear how you would measure other issues, or how you would assign different priorities to the issues I listed. Again, I hope it is clear that prioritization is not based on what is best for me. It is based on how we can be an effective instrument for bringing relief and support for those who are disadvantaged. I hope and pray that in stepping back and prioritizing, we may fully engage in pursuing God’s vision, a vision of a people glorifying Him as they defend the cause of the poor, feed the hungry, and welcome the stranger, both here and abroad.

This series continues our discussion from my last two posts on Biblical principle for politics. Now, I want to try to take these principles and see how they shape a mission-driven perspective on political advocacy.

Christianity at its shallowest looks to the Bible as merely a reference guide, treating God as a life consultant, providing some sustenance and assistance here and there. It it’s truest form, God is not supposed to be a small addition, but He is to be the center and the Bible is intended to be transformative, not merely providing some small adjustments to our life. It is supposed to be the starting point, pulling our entire self into the mission of God. As we fully commit to God, we can properly read the Bible. Any other motivation can lead us to diminished or false understanding of God and, as a result our proper response to him.

Unfortunately in politics, Christians have often settled for the consultant God. Rather than letting God’s mission be the driving force, the priorities have been reversed. Whenever a topic receives a lot of attention in the media, we find a verse that might be vaguely applicable, and offer our opinions, just as we fashion our God to do. Gay marriage? We can find a verse on that. School prayer? Got one that is related.

It should not be surprising that an upside down view of God leads to an upside down view in Christian politics.

To truly follow Christ demands an entirely different perspective. Our singular aim is God’s mission. Involvement in politics is not an axiom of Christianity, instead political advocacy is something to be employed when it is a tactically productive tool as a part of the mission. This means that we only engage in advocacy when our activity can legitimately result in fruit  for our Christ-ward pursuit.

Building a large military, fighting for religious favor, regulating behavior won’t ever bring us more of the Kingdom, because the Kingdom of God isn’t about doing what makes our life easier and safer, or grabbing more power.

Our call is to be and to make obedient disciples, those who follow in producing the same fruit as Jesus. Jesus’ summarized the fruit of His mission at the outset of his ministry:

 ”The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed,“ Luke 4:18

Followers of Christ have brought truly substantive benefits to the poor, the captives, the sick, and the oppressed throughout the world as part of their mission, partly through their influence and advocacy to the government. When we focus on real opportunities for affecting change, subservient to our singular focus on God’s mission, only then can we have a proper perspective on politics.

Prioritization

When someone is driven by a singular goal, they quickly start prioritizing. One who is highly motivated towards their mission quickly begins to look at things in life in terms of what will be likely to bring me closer to the goal and what won’t. We must remember that we are people of limited time and money. We only have so many challenges that we can effectively engage in. If we really care about the achieving meaningful goals, it requires that we prioritize. When politics is not serving such purposes, it quickly devolves into ideological battles that accomplish little to nothing. Consequently I would suggest that even more important than trying to always be “right”, is prioritization, understanding where we can really make a difference. Decisions on public policy are really about priorities as well, virtually every policy decision comes down to weighing one priority vs another (for example, many are a question of monetary cost vs group benefit). If you care more about winning arguments than prioritizing isn’t important. But if you care about really benefiting people, we need to know on what issues we can make a difference and focus on them.

With a properly pragmatic perspective on public policy driven by the fruit of the Christ’s Kingdom and His intolerance for injustice, along with humility and meekness we can begin to approach politics with a better foundation. Biblically motivated involvement in politics isn’t a pursuit of making life easy as possible for us, for Christians, nor is it a battle for our moral ideology or being right. It is a pursuit of Biblical justice and compassion, and involvement in politics when (and only when) it serves that purpose. We are not called to some abstract theoretical notion of how the government should behave, we are called to make a difference.

While many are focused on the upcoming elections, I would suggest voting is one of the least of the political advocacy methods at our disposal. When we consider the large number of people that vote compared to those that actually engage in issues throughout the rest of the year, it demonstrates the relative influence our actions have. Votes go into a large pool, but relatively speaking, writing a letter to, or calling your congressman on a particular issue is a part of such a small pool of voices that it often has the weight, influence, and representation equal to thousands of citizens. Elections are primarily a consequence of the efforts of those who make their voices heard throughout the year, shaping and influencing opinions and perspectives, both of citizens and the leaders. Many of these priorities below are based on the potential we have to make a difference through all advocacy efforts, not just at the polls. But still, the elections are coming up, and so voting decisions are an important topic right now.

Based on the concept of being mission driven, I want to suggest some guidelines for trying to focus on priorities with a reasonably objective set of measurements. Now I know that the reality of justice and politics is far too complicated to really be reduced to number (and some may justifiably chuckle at my oversimplifications and mathematical/utilitarianism perspective). But, I believe that these guidelines can at least help us to measure our opportunity to have an impact through our political advocacy and voting. This guidance can help us focus on what can have the greatest positive impact. Here are three criteria for determining our potential for impact, and for prioritizing our efforts on any given policy or issue:

1. How many people are affected by a policy?
2. How extensively does a policy affect those people? This may be a dollar amount, quality of life, or it may be as large as a life and death impact (which surely would be the greatest impact).
3. How much potential is there for change? Is the policy deeply entrenched or a lightly considered issue? It is very difficult to have much of an impact on a highly visible, deeply entrenched issue (although it may be an important voting consideration). Advocacy for issues that are not well-understood and rarely discussed can go a long ways in changing policy. When voting for a candidate, consider whether the issue is one that they will have a say in (for example local leaders don’t have much influence on international issues).

The product of these three measures gives you an estimate of the potential for changing lives. To be high priority issue, an issue must impact many people, impact them deeply, and have a reasonable potential for change. Some of issues may impact many people, but if there is little opportunity change, I may still rank them as lower priority. From these metrics, I have tried to prioritize some important issues which I will share with you tomorrow. In the meantime, I suggest you mentally begin to prioritize the issues for yourself.

Thanks for reading.