Gary A. Haugen - Just Courage: Gods Great Expedition for the Restless Christian

Gary A. Haugen is president and CEO of International Justice Mission (IJM), a human rights organization based in Washington, D.C. Prior to founding IJM, he worked in the civil rights division of the U.S. Department of Justice and was director of the United Nations genocide investigation in Rwanda.

A year 2000 Finalist in the ECPA book competition!

Accounts of injustice from our own communities and from around the world often leave us feeling outraged and helpless. We wonder what we can possibly do in response. And we wonder where is the God of justice?

Jesus, however, said, "Take heart! I have overcome the world." Gary Haugen sees the truth of Jesus' claim vindicated throughout Scripture, which portrays a God who rises up against injustice.

He also sees this truth in the lives of sometimes little-known Christians who through the years have courageously confronted evil when they saw it. Here he tells stories of these witnesses of hope in a hurting world.

The good news about injustice is that God is against it. God is in the business of using the unlikely to perform the holy, Haugen contends. And in this book he not only offers stories of courageous witnesses past and present, he also calls the body of Christ to action. He offers concrete guidance on the ways and means its members can rise up to seek justice throughout the world.

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Seeking justice on behalf of the oppressed can seem overwhelming, even futile. What can be done in the face of horrific evils such as child prostitution, illegal imprisonment or bonded child labor? Yet Christians cannot view the pursuit of justice simply as an extra-credit option in our witness to the world because injustice often is at the root of human suffering. Injustice is an integral part of why so many are in need, why so many remain without adequate food, water, health and shelter.

This study guide is designed to help you process the challenging issues and confusing questions raised by the prevalence of injustice in our world today. It is also written to help you understand what others are doing about injustice and to discern what God might be calling you to do.

A four-week study that focuses on how God empowers his people to join in his work on behalf of the oppressed. This discussion-oriented study integrates reflections on portions of Good News About Injustice with opportunities to analyze biblical texts. Illustrated by both the companion video and stories from around the world, this study enables groups to address some of the tough questions raised by injustice and what we can do about it.

Dedicated to Bob Mosier,

who chose to be brave.

1

Going on the Journey but Missing the Adventure

Even though I read the words almost twenty-five years ago, I can still picture them upon the page. The words were and have remained so disturbing to me that I remember exactly where I was when I read them. I was a freshman in college sitting up late one night in the dorm laundry room waiting for my clothes to dry and reading John Stuart Mills essay On Liberty. Writing in 1859, Mill was trying to explain the process by which words lose their meaning, and he casually offered that the best example of this phenomenon was Christians. Christians, he observed, seem to have the amazing ability to say the most wonderful things without actually believing them.

What became more disturbing was his list of things that Christians, like me, actually saylike, blessed are the poor and humble; its better to give than receive; judge not, lest you be judged; love your neighbor as yourself, etc.and examining, one by one, how differently I would live my life if I actually believed such things. As Mill concluded, The sayings of Christ co-exist passively in their minds, producing hardly any effect beyond what is caused by mere listening to words so amiable and bland.

Christians, he observed, seem to have the amazing ability to say the most wonderful things without actually believing them.

Looking at each of the glorious declarations on the list and at the corresponding mediocrity of my own daily character, Mills observation seemed simply and clearly true. What ended up surprising me, however, was what followedwhich was not a rush of guilt or despair, but the opening of a fresh and unexpected window of hope. Perhaps my life need not be, in fact, so manifestly shriveled and mediocre if I began to act as if what Jesus said were actually true.

Sometimes the teachings of Jesus are hard to believe, and sometimes they are simply hard to understand. One of his teachings that has always been nice to read but difficult for me to understand is the sweet Gospel vignette of Jesus admonishing his disciples for failing to see the value of children, saying, Let the little children come to me, and declaring, the kingdom of God belongs to such as these (Luke 18:16).

If ever a teaching of Jesus qualified for the designation amiable and bland, and threatened to have no discernible effect upon me at all, perhaps this is it. On the other hand, over time, I have found Jesus saying something in this story that has the power to utterly change my life. That is, if I were to live as if what he said were actually true.

Here then is the story.

People were bringing little children to Jesus to have him touch them, but the disciples rebuked them. When Jesus saw this, he was indignant. He said to them, Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it (Luke 18:16-17). And he took the children in his arms, put his hands on them and blessed them.

What does Jesus mean when he says we will never enter the kingdom of God unless we receive it like a child? And how would it change our lives if we lived as if this were true?

First, lets establish what it does not mean. Receiving the kingdom of God in Jesus teachings does not mean simply receiving the salvation of the life hereafter. It certainly does include that, but it also means receiving and living in the kingdom and rule of God now. As Dallas Willard has described well:

New Testament passages make plain that this kingdom is not something to be accepted now and enjoyed later, but something to be entered now; it is something that already has flesh and blood citizens who have been transformed into it and are fellow workers in it.

The complete rule of Gods kingdom is, indeed, something yet to come, but Jesus continually beckoned his followers to enter daily into his rule and reign. And as earnest Christians, you and I are rightly yearning to walk in the way of Jesus, to experience the intimate presence of almighty God, to live daily in a completely different way because we know Jesus. In a word, we want to live alive to God.

This, I think, is what we all want. But how do we get to live like that? The answer, says Jesus, is by coming to him like a little child.

How does a child come to Jesus? To be straight and plain about ita child comes in weakness, vulnerability and neediness. You come to experience my rule, my presence, my power, my life, Jesus says, when you come in the weakness and vulnerability of a child. Jesus makes this more explicit in Matthew 18, where it says: