Good question. That is definitely the one we need to try to answer. The answer is probably not just find someone with power and compel them to help. But to say that much is still not to answer. Your question deserves a lot of contemplation.

During a recession, calls to suicide crisis lines go through the roof, but the budgets for mental health services are some of the first ones on the chopping block. The question I think we should ask is how does the Bible inform principles of government in regards to providing for those that are truly powerless.

No doubt, if we as Christians were obedient in giving of our time and money, the issue of government funding would be less of an issue. But as is, we are not doing our part. I think that if we are serious about faith in public life, we have to examine what it means to be “pro-life.” It means not only pushing for laws outlawing abortion, but also being willing to adopt children, and adequately funding the agencies that employee civil servants who look after the widows and orphans.

We social workers just want you fiscal conservatives to know that we are the “someone else” that gets sent when others don’t go. We are the innkeepers in the Good Samaritan parable: http://relateinfaith.com/archives/245

You are right “we may end up giving more than we really want to give.” For some of us this is money. For others it is time, or the safety of our own social circles and neighborhoods, or anything that “exalts itself against the knowledge of God.” I like the way Derek Webb puts it in his song “The Rich Young Ruler” when he has God saying, “I want the things you just can’t give me.”

Tozer’s second chapter in “The Pursuit of God” is entitled “The Blessedness of Possessing Nothing” and has challenged me in so many ways. I reluctantly reread that chapter often knowing that each time it may require of me something new. Our Lord asks us to do things that seems scary to us. Just look what he asked of Abraham re Isaac. As Mr. Beaver says in Narnia, “…he isn’t safe. but he’s good.”

To which TUAD responded, #14 above,
‘I’m not even saying that.
I just want to know if whether declining to share the Gospel to someone you think/judge knows the Gospel and has rejected it is a special case which merits an exemption to the “Here am I. Send someone else.”’

TUAD brings up a good question worthy of further discussion. Has it been answered yet?

Is this the hypocrisy that I speak about in #32 above? Not at all. TUAD rightly points out a dilemma that we all face, and is seeking clarification. Mr. Baker, what say you?

The “Here I am, Send Someone Else’ is indeed a poignant example of the hypocrisy that beseeches us all, the author of the post, I’m sure he would agree, not excluded.

When hypocrisy raises it’s ugly head, we, as Christians, should be duly ashamed and chastised for our sin, and repent, from whatever corner it may arise. Some here, have pointed out that hypocrisy. If it was through a lack of grace that this was communicated, the message is no less diminished. Was Luther’s posting of his 95 theses on the Wittenburg door considered a lack of grace? By some, I’m sure it was, but we as Evangelicals need a reminder from time to time, that our sanctimonious ‘lives’ are weighed in the balance and found wanting.

There’s no history here (between Hunter Baker and myself) that I’m aware of.

I just discovered this blog and I’m really confused by the other conversation that happened in these comments… ?

Given this admission, I still have hopes for what you’ve written recently: “We expect that people will be honest about who they are and their motives.”

And since you wrote this: “Individuals will expose themselves, often with a radical lack of grace” I hope that when you expose the method to your madness that you don’t do it with a “radical lack of grace” as you put it.