Article

America

Creed

Justice

5 November 2024

6 min read

Is it okay to be mean as long as you are mean and right?

Here's what a mean street preacher really taught me.

Nathan Betts

Nathan is a speaker and writer on topics related to faith, life and God. He lives near Seattle, Washington. His writing is featured frequently in The Seattle Times. nathanbetts.com

Behind a passer by a street peacher holds up a large yellow sign with a message on it.

Street preachers on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

LaTerrian McIntosh on Unsplash.

A few months ago, my cousin was visiting my hometown of Seattle for work. We planned to meet one evening for a Mariners baseball game during her visit. I suggested that we meet near the wonderful Ken Griffey Jr. statue near the stadium gates. What I hadn’t realized was that this was the precise spot a street evangelist had also decided to station himself in order to share (mostly shout) his message of judgement and destruction the same evening. Kind of like a pre-game verbal hors d'oeuvres. I arrived at the meeting point a few minutes before my cousin, giving me ample time to hear the preacher preach.

Now, I grew up in church, and, in fact, am myself a speaker and writer on topics involving faith and God. In other words, I’ve had over 40 years to experience the church’s, umm, “quirks”. I’d like to think that very little coming from the mouths of faith preachers could shock me. Alas, I was wrong.

As I began to listen to the preacher, lines like “weeping and gnashing of teeth” scorched through the preacher’s megaphone. Yep, nothing new there. The preacher used the word “judgment” a lot. Actually, impressively a lot. I’ve never before heard the words “God” and “judgment” used in conjunction more times within a two-minute span. There was a raging intensity to the sermon, but still in the range of normal for street preaching.

Then, my cousin texted me that she was outside the ballpark but might have gotten the location wrong. I realized she and I were at two different locations. While I texted my cousin back, I tuned out the preacher’s message. That is until I heard him shout through his megaphone, “He hates you.” I stopped texting. I looked up at the preacher. Did he just say that God the Almighty hated all of us outside the ballpark? Families, little boys and girls, and elderly? Did God hate all of us lining up for the game? It was “bark at the park” night so even the dogs were casualties in the preacher’s line of fire. If nothing else was gleaned from the man’s message, it seemed, we were all to understand that God hates us.

Minutes later, when my cousin and I finally found each other, I told her that she had had the good fortune of missing out on the street preacher informing her that God hates her. She replied, “Oh, I have plenty of others who tell me that!”

Sadly, many of us have received that negative message from different sources in our world and too often from people sharing some association with God.

In America, as election season comes to the boil, I’ve noticed (and maybe you have too) the not-so-subtle attitude that it’s okay to say mean things about another person as long as that person is on “the other side”. A verbal dig here, an eyeroll there, name-calling and slanderous nick-naming the enemy for the sake of ridicule have become all too common, if not a soft virtue in political discourse. It has become hard to discern where the moral line is, or if such a thing still exists within political dialogue.

Conversations like the following happen so frequently following a political debate or interview, they’ve become cliché: “I almost cannot believe he said that!” Response: “Well, yes, that was pretty bad. But he’s right, isn’t he?” Translation: it’s okay to be mean as long as you are mean and right.

Evangelicalism has gained a hard edge with little resemblance of the good news from which it has its very name.

The meaning of the word ‘evangelical’ here in America is a complex thing, to be sure. But perhaps one of the reasons it is understood as a political word more than a religious one is because the combative and rude nature of discourse seen in politics has become increasingly acceptable even in Christian settings. As a friend of mine said to me years ago, “It feels as though Christians have turned rudeness into a spiritual gift.”

The thing is, you probably don’t know the preacher I heard in downtown Seattle, but you’ve probably heard or know a person who makes Christian claims in the same kind of rude ways. The result is that evangelicalism has gained a hard edge with little resemblance of the good news from which it has its very name.

I’ve had the privilege of speaking to audiences on topics of faith and God for around 20 years now and I’ve lost count of the number of people I’ve met who feel unlovable, already hated, and unforgivable for the decisions they’ve made in life.

So when I hear a preacher shouting a message through a bullhorn in the name of God and I hear not words of hope, peace, grace, love, and forgiveness, but strictly judgement and burning, I fail to see how this God can be the one who came to earth out of love for people in the person of Jesus Christ.

It’s true that the Bible does depict God enacting justice and judgement. But equally true is that the Bible not only displays, but out-and-out defines God as being love. My concern with the street preacher’s message is that although he might have communicated the justice of God (albeit in a warped way that would make old-time revivalists look tame), his message left little room for hearing about and feeling the love of God.

If there is anything we need to hear today, it is the message that God, in his very nature, is love. One particular writer of antiquity, and a close friend of Jesus Christ, once penned a letter to first century churches. In attempting to explain what God is like and what people of faith should be like he wrote: “Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.”

For those of us who have never been to a church, we only need to watch or attend an American football game to see a sign with the words John 3:16. That reference, taken from one of Christ’s biographies states that, “This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life.”

This is a message we need to hear. It’s something we need to let into our bones—that those of us who feel beyond the reach of love, are in fact loved by God.

In a strange way, I can’t help but admire the guts those street preachers have, banging out an unpopular message to strangers in crowds. The problem lies in the fact that often their message, so boldly proclaimed, is God’s disappointment, disapproval, or outright hate for people.

Because this is the truth and too important to miss: God doesn’t hate you. He loves you. He always has and he always will.

Explainer

Creed

Development

8 March 2024

6 min read

Flourishing a way out of poverty

Is it just for rich people who have nothing to worry about other than feeling a bit happier?

Jane Cacouris

Jane Cacouris is a writer and consultant working in international development on environment, poverty and livelihood issues.

Beside a shack in a rubbish dump, a man wearing a black shirt and bare foot sits on a stool and looks around.

Bill Wegener on Unsplash.

Humankind stands at a crossroads today. Still emerging from the aftermath of a global pandemic, the world is faced by monumental environmental, social and political challenges. Extreme weather events, floods and food poverty are no longer only on our screens affecting poor people in countries far away; screens that we in the global North were able to switch off after a momentary sigh of compassion before getting on with our lives. Some of us are starting to feel the impacts of planetary change and have financial struggles too. But they haven’t really affected us that much yet. We still have the time, space and luxury to ponder how we can improve our emotional and mental wellbeing – perhaps carve out some more “me time” or go on more walks in nature or keep a daily journal.

The shift from considering poverty and wellbeing simply in monetary terms to a broader, multi-dimensional understanding of these terms is not new. It began at the turn of the twenty-first century with the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) which aimed to tackle material poverty but also access to health, education and water and sanitation - the first united global effort to eradicate world poverty. In 2015 the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) replaced them, going further and also recognising the importance of environmental sustainability in realising poverty goals, as well as their interconnectedness.

In theory this all made perfect sense and since the MDGs were established in 2000, global poverty was on a declining trajectory for a number of years. However, progress towards eliminating world poverty has been slowing down since 2013. And since Covid in 2020, progress towards the SDGs has stalled with most recent reports showing a rise in the number of people living in extreme poverty for the first time since records began. If present trends persist, by 2030, a staggering 575 million people will remain in extreme poverty and 84 million children will be uneducated.

A bleak picture. With the global machinery signed up to reduce world poverty (and that’s not even bringing the COP Climate Change talks into the mix), how have we got to this point? By diversifying our attempts to improve human wellbeing, have we taken our focus off eliminating basic, grinding economic hardship? Or conversely, is it too little too late? Did our historic focus on economic development rather than equitable human wellbeing sow the seeds of inequality and planetary disruption that we are now reaping? Should we actually go further? And as the timeframe to achieve the SDGs narrows, there are calls for the next set of human development goals to be more overtly focussed on human flourishing.

When you are doing your best to survive, perhaps thriving isn’t top of the priority list.

Human flourishing is the state of optimal functioning and wellbeing across all aspects of an individual’s life and their community. We flourish when we live with purpose; when we practice gratitude, forgiveness, and open-mindedness.

A group of experts from Harvard have proposed five sets of Global Flourishing Goals to lead on from the SDGs, including striving for meaning, purpose and life satisfaction, ending economic hardship, social and political cohesion as well as protecting biodiversity. Likewise, the Christian aid and development agency, Tearfund, has long been a proponent of viewing human wellbeing holistically. The Light Wheel is a tool to guide practical action that promotes seven different areas of wellbeing – such as material assets and resources, emotional and mental wellbeing, living faith, personal relationships - that in turn lead to whole life transformation and flourishing communities.

But what do the world’s poorest people think about this emphasis on flourishing? When you are doing your best to survive, perhaps thriving isn’t top of the priority list. Who cares about life satisfaction and fulfilment when you are struggling to feed your children a daily meal of rice and beans? Is the concept of flourishing for rich people who have nothing to worry about other than feeling a bit happier? Is this the right track for global human Development?

“Poverty is lack of freedom, enslaved by crushing daily burden, by depression and fear of what the future will bring.”

“Poverty means working for more than 18 hours a day, but still not earning enough to feed myself, my husband, and two children.”

These are quotes from a landmark World Bank study, Voices of the Poor; an unprecedented millennial effort to gather the views, experiences, and aspirations of more than 60,000 poor men and women across sixty countries. The study presented the realities of poor people’s lives through their own voices. How do they view poverty and wellbeing? What are their problems and priorities?

Although poverty is rarely about one thing, for the world’s poorest, the bottom line was and always will be hunger - the lack of food. As expected, human wellbeing without the basic building blocks for survival - food and water – is impossible. Better health and access to education were also priorities. However, it seems that having enough materially for a good life is asking for relatively little. “But at least for each child to have a bed, a pair of shoes, a canopy over their heads, two sheets—not to sleep like we do on the ground.”

But the responses were much broader than a desire for material and basic needs to be met. Many of the expressions of wellbeing were about relationships; social and emotional wellbeing were acutely important. Harmony within the family unit and wider community, close and reliable friendships, helping one another. Wellbeing also had important psychological dimensions for those interviewed, such as the desire for dignity and respect, to feel better about oneself, to maintain a spiritual life.

When people were asked to rank the institutions most important in their daily lives, local churches scored well because they offer spiritual support as well as material assistance in times of need, also serving to strengthen communication between the various groups in the community. Community cohesion matters to the poorest. And relationships are at the heart of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

So can you flourish your way out of poverty? If we mean the UN definition of extreme poverty, and if flourishing means wellbeing in all aspects of life, then probably no. The poorest people in the world, like the rest of us, need the minimum building blocks of life to survive before they can thrive here on Earth.

But from a Christian perspective the new Development discourse around flourishing is moving in the right direction. In John’s Gospel in the Bible, Jesus is clear that he came “that we may have life, and have it to the full”. When Jesus refers to a full “life”, he means the assurance of eternal life that comes through a faith in Jesus Christ. To truly flourish in our Earthly life, the hope of eternal life with Jesus is the critical aspect of wellbeing – it is what sustains and strengthens us as humans as we live our life on Earth. This is the great equaliser between the rich and the poor. The poorest people often see this far more clearly than the rich who have less need for God and an eternal life where – as it says in the Bible - there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain and all will be new.

“We may be poor in material things, but we are rich in the eyes of God.”(Voices of the Poor, 2000)

Of course it depends what weight you put on the spiritual aspect of flourishing, but perhaps on balance, those we consider to be the poorest on Earth are actually far closer to human flourishing – to having a “full life” - than we are.