By Ray Comfort
from his book Someone Left the Cake Out in the Rain…the Darker Side of America, available from Living Waters Publications, Box 1172, Bellflower, CA 90706, (213) 920‑ 8431)
It was just another day in Downtown Los Angeles in the famed MacArthur Park, commonly known as the “armpit of L.A.”….One poor guy was stabbed to death and his body thrown in the lake. Another was fatally shot in the back in a fight over drugs….I have seen people weeping because they were so hungry, and pregnant women with undernourished babies, pleading for us to give them milk….
For over twelve years I preached the Gospel open‑air style almost every day at “Speaker’s Corner” in Christchurch New Zealand, but I’d never seen the sights I saw almost daily at the “Armpit.” According to the Drug Enforcement Agency, MacArthur Park is the major Columbian cocaine connection for the United States….
Most big cities have their own MacArthur Park ‑ their own “magneticus undesirable”; but how could such misery happen in such a prosperous country as the United States where…there are over 2 million millionaires and…55 billionaires? Simple. Lawlessness and suffering are the direct result of the Christian Church failing to be the influence it should be, one of being the “salt of the earth.”
The major property of salt in Biblical times was one of preservation. MacArthur Park is the fruit of a generation left without a preserved moral code. It is one of free sex, and not quite so free drugs. It’s a generation which has 1.2 million of its teenagers become pregnant each year, and over 33,000 teenagers getting some sort of sexually transmitted disease each day! It is the fruit of a society which has lost respect for all forms of authority, whether it be civil or moral, God or the flag. When that happens, it ultimately loses respect for itself, and is devoured by its own decay.
With a few faithful exceptions, the Church has also failed to feed the hungry, clothe the naked and heal the sick. Instead, we have become self‑indulgent, building big beautiful buildings, with cool clear acoustics and colorful carpets, where as cozy Christians we sit on padded pews while the world sinks further into suffering. Whether I am speaking in a university or on the street, the question on the lips of our young people is, “What about the double standard of the Church?” They seem to know more than the church does about Biblical priority when it comes to taking care of the poor. In the Book of Acts, Peter and John didn’t leave a poor beggar lying on the ground. Peter looked at the man and said, “Silver and gold have I none, but such as I have, give I thee…” (italics added). There is no way I can justify the riches of the contemporary Church. But what I can say to the youth of today is that if they were to make Saint Peter the treasurer of the Protestant, and the Catholic Church for that matter, for three minutes, he would write out checks so fast, to feed the hungry, clothe the naked and reach the lost, flames would leap off the paper!
I heard of a preacher who effectively ordered the priorities of a church. He stood in the pulpit and said, “Every day 10,000 people die of starvation, and many of you couldn’t give a damn! In fact, many of you are more concerned that I said the word “damn” from the pulpit than you are about 10,000 people a day dying of starvation!”
I am sure that if the church would order its priorities and empty its collection bags out for the MacArthur Parks of America, it may at the same time, even remove the stains of just cynicism and contempt it has brought upon itself in the past few years. And from there, who knows….the world may even take seriously what we have to say.