A few months ago, I started reading the blog of Zsuzsanna Anderson, the wife of a pastor of an Independent Baptist church in Arizona.  As I’ve read her posts, I’ve agreed with a lot of her points, I’ve disagreed with some, and I’ve laughed at others.

I found her blog after researching the preacher (who turned out to be her husband) in this video to see if the video was a joke or not.  The video is of a pastor telling his congregation that it is against Scripture for a man to pee while seated.  I’m not making this up.  Watch the video if you don’t believe me.

It turns out that it wasn’t a joke (at least not as far as I can tell), and the church is a real church (Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, AZ).  The church’s web site had a link to Zsuzsanna’s blog, and I subscribed to it, mostly out of curiosity.

Zsuzsanna is an amazing person.  She’s the mother of 4 children; she homeschools the ones old enough for school; she works hard to be thrifty; she supports a husband pastor who works a secular job through the week so he can be financially able to be the church’s pastor; and she still finds time to post all sorts of information that could be useful to her blog readers.

Most of the time when I disagree with her, it’s a matter of opinion: women shouldn’t be police officers; it’s wrong to send your children to any (public, private, or Christian) school because homeschooling is the only way Christian families should educate their children; male gynecologists are all perverts who chose their field to be able to take advantage of women; the 1611 King James Version of the Bible is the only real Bible.  The list could go on, and it does.  But it’s all opinion, and I’m happy to let her have her own.

Then today, I read the following on her blog (from this post):

…a derelict and his girlfriend stopped me in their big SUV outside church to ask if the church offered financial assistance to families, and cursed me out when I told them it only helped people who actually CAME to our church.

There!  What’s wrong with Christians…it’s in that paragraph…did you see it?  Christians today are so full of themselves that we’re not willing to help people who come to a church looking for help.

When we are approached by someone who knows we are Christians, we are given an amazing opportunity to practice obedience to Scripture.  Matthew 25 talks about when Jesus returns, and how he will explain to the righteous ones that the little things they had done for “the least of these” had been done as if they were done to Him.

While there was obviously a physical need in this situation, it is likely that there was also a spiritual need.  When we refuse to help meet a physical need, we ruin any future opportunity to meet a spiritual need.  The people asking for help aren’t immediately concerned with (or may not be aware of) their spiritual needs; they’re focused on the immediate physical need, and anyone who helps meet the physical need has an opportunity to move on to the spiritual need.

Should we give money to any person asking for it?  I don’t think so.  Should we blindly overlook people living a lifestyle that obviously goes against Scripture? No.  There must be some discernment, but turning people away because they are not part of your church is wrong.

It is the responsibility of the local church to help people in need.  The needy people know this, but somehow we Christians can’t wrap our brains around the concept of helping people that don’t dress or act like we do.  We get so wrapped up in stupid stuff that we fail to realize that meeting a physical need opens a door to meeting those spiritual needs.

It’s hard to speculate on what she should have done; she didn’t say what their specific need was.  Maybe she turned them away without asking.  Maybe they needed $20 for gas.  Maybe they needed a meal or a shower.  Maybe they were trying to keep their electricity from being turned off.  Maybe they needed a Savior.  Since they were blindly turned away because they weren’t church members, they didn’t get the help they needed.

I hope they found someone to help them, because even if they get the gas, food, shower, or money for the electricity, they’ll still need a Savior.  And I hope they find Him, but I’m guessing they won’t find Him at Zsuzsanna’s church.