Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God

 

The Church of God has a horrible track record of not helping those in need outside the church when tragedy or sickness hits. The excuse the church has always used is that preaching about some "soon coming" kingdom that is going to correct all of the wrongs is far more important than feeding the poor, providing shelter to the homeless and the sick, and providing assistance during natural disasters. The biggest factor in why the COG has never helped these people are that it would take money away from the church mission or cause a money drain on financing personal jets' providing personal homes for the ministry, and funding extravagant headquarter campuses.

One of the Bible verses the church loved to use as a reason to NOT help others outside the chosen frozen was Luke 9:59–60:

59 To another he said, “Follow me.” But he said, “Lord, let me first go and bury my father.” 60 And Jesus7 said to him, “Leave tthe dead to bury their own dead. But as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.”

So people of the world are dead to Christ. They do not see His beauty, nor do they hear His voice or desire to follow Him. Only His “sheep” will do those things (John 10:27). The people of the world are those whom the Savior describes here as the (spiritually) dead who should bury the (physically) dead. Let people, He says, who are not interested in My work, and who are “dead in sin” (Ephesians 2:1), take care of the dead. Your duty is now to follow Me.

The problem in using this scripture to bolster their argument is that most of them have hardly anything to do with Jesus Christ. They worship Moses and the law while ignoring Jesus unless they have to reluctantly drag him out once a year at the local Masonic Hall or high school gym to crucify him all over again, and then leave him there for another year. 

Granted, there are some in the church, like Kubik's LifeNets who do help people but very few others ever lift a hand to do anything.

Contrast the lack of concern in the church to those around us in the "world" who see a need and step up to the plate and accomplish great things.

A reader here noted this article the other day and sent it in as a sharp contrast against the lack of COG concern compared to those in the world.

Paul Farmer Public-Health Pioneer Dies of Cardiac Event at 62: Partners in Health co-founder who called healthcare a human right brought modern medicine and treatment to Haiti, Rwanda, West Africa

"Paul Farmer, a Harvard University physician, anthropologist and global public-health leader, spent decades bringing first-rate medical care to people in the poorest corners of the world.

Dr. Farmer, who was 62, died on Monday of a sudden cardiac event while sleeping in his apartment on the campus of a university he had helped to establish in rural Butaro, Rwanda, said Sheila Davis, chief executive officer of the Partners in Health nonprofit he co-founded.

He had been in Rwanda for about a month, teaching Rwandan medical students at the University of Global Health Equity and caring for patients on rounds at a nearby Rwandan government hospital that Boston-based Partners in Health built, Dr. Davis said.

Training a new generation of medical professionals in countries with poor healthcare resources was the epitome of Dr. Farmer’s dream of bringing high-quality medicine to the world’s neediest, Dr. Davis said, a pursuit he started four decades ago in Haiti. The University of Global Health Equity was recently cited by Unesco as a model for global health education." 

 

"He worked directly with the governments and people he aimed to help, living for years with his family in Haiti and then Rwanda. He gave lifesaving AIDS drugs to HIV patients in Haiti in the 1990s, helping make the case for global programs like the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief that later spent billions of dollars on drugs for patients in African and other developing countries. He cured drug-resistant tuberculosis patients who others in the field said would be too difficult to treat." 

 

"In earthquake-battered Haiti, Partners in Health built a 300-bed solar-powered public teaching hospital at the request of the government in 2013, and it now trains medical residents. In Rwanda, scarred by genocide in the 1990s, Partners in Health constructed a hospital with a cancer-care center in Butaro in 2012 and founded the global health university in 2015."

Imagine what this world would be like if the Church of God actually believed so much in that kingdom that is constantly horizon, so close yet constantly moving in the other direction. Imagine if they believed it with such fervor and moved them so much that they wanted to give a foretaste of that kingdom to the world around them. Talk about a boom in membership for the church! People would see real Christianity in action and not some pipe dream of a maniacal COG leader who preaches endlessly about damnation, death, and destruction, which sadly is the focus of the COG instead of sharing a grace-filled world.