Monday, April 16, 2007

GoodSearch

Social justice is a topic I've been pondering a lot recently. So often we hear the gospel getting confused with giving your money to the poor or feeding the hungry. My first reaction to people who mention the poor and such has been rather judgmental in that I instantly accuse them in my mind of compromising the gospel, which most certainly has nothing whatsoever to do with your quality of life right now, and everything to do with being reconciled to God through the atoning blood of Jesus Christ (Rom 5:9).

However, don't we also see that true religion is to visit orphans and widows (James 1:27) and that we should remember those who are in prison as though ourselves in prison (Heb 13:3)? The gospel is not supposed to save us and then disappear. It saves us and sanctifies us! This is manifested in concrete and purposeful acts of goodness and kindness toward other people, whether they are Christian or non-Christian.


What I am about to offer is just a small step in accomplishing this task. I wanted to let my readership know about a new search engine that I've been using for a little while now called GoodSearch. Every time you do an internet search with it, about 1 cent goes to the charity of your choice. I have chosen Prison Fellowship (as they were the ones to let me know about this in the first place) and thus far we have raised $600 for it since the start of 2007. Prison Fellowship is a prison reform ministry dedicated to giving the gospel to inmates and redeeming lost lives. They are also quite successful at reducing the recidivism rate of prisoners who graduate their program.

You may choose any charity on the list of which there are currently 34,000 and 100 joining daily. This site is powered by Yahoo! so the search result quality is not going to be diminished or anything like that.

The Word is clear that we are to help those in need. This is a great way to do that, while also supporting the spread of the gospel message (should you choose a ministry that does this). The spread of the gospel message should always be our #1 priority, because Christ commanded we do it, and because Hell is not made more pleasant by a full stomach and stable income. If anyone can come up with a good reason NOT to use this search engine, do let me know, because I certainly can't find any.

Happy searching.

1 comment:

Mickey Sheu said...

Hey Evan -

Thanks for letting us know about this.

The only reason I can come up with against something like this is that people might think that they are doing their share of "good works" by just using a search engine and not seek to continue to preach and proclaim the Gospel.

But the problem there isn't with the search engine or the concept, its with them. So it's really not a reason to not use it all. Just because something can be corrupted by sin doesn't mean it's a bad thing. Thanks!