Good news

Scappleface (of all people) has the final word on the political restraints on faith based aid workers...

However, those who bring aid only to preach are wrong.

You send aid because God has given you so much, and your heart overflows with thanks... so you give back out of a grateful heart. Some care for families and give back this way, some run businesses, and some have the privelege of giving back by missionary service.

However, when feeding and caring for those who are shellshocked and mourning, you don't go around shoving religion down their throats (and most aid groups don't do this, you know). Conditional aid mocks those you are helping as "objects" to be manipulated, not brothers to be loved.

But when, in the midst of sorrow, someone asks "why" this happens, or why you are there, there is often a quiet time to give hope: God cares, God loves us so much he sent his son to show us how to live, and when we come ten thousand miles to help, it is because we love both him and others...and you are our brother, who needed help, so we came...

The short term conversions under stress may or may not hold. What is actually happening is tilling the soil, preparing hearts. In the long run, it is the local churches, who show how God's good news fits into our daily lives, and into our own culture, which will water and harvest the seeds sown by compassion.

You know, for 100 years, missionaries in Africa taught, treated the sick, and preached. Few converts were made. But after colonialism ceased, and the churces began to be run by locals, and when people saw how Christianity gave hope and human dignity into daily life, that conversions became widespread.

And now they are sending us missionaries to remind those in Europe and in the USA the good news of God...