Biblical moral reasoning proceeds from the heart, not the head.
We live to reflect the glory of our Creator back at Him. Broadly speaking, human conduct glorifies Him by adhering to His revelation, both in the doing and in reaping the promised blessings. In parsing His promises to a different culture than His initial revelation, it would be fair to say that if we embrace with our heart-mind an unconditional desire to live this way, He will supply a moderated level of success. That is, the desire is more important than the human ability to carry it out, but He empowers a growing success rate over time as our desire grows. Absolutes as human minds imagine them are not in the picture. He makes note of our devotion, and works to improve our commitment.
Further parsing things He has said to His servants, we recognize that all Creation must be treated as a living thing in itself. Unlike us, Creation is not fallen, but suffers under the influence of our fallen nature. Obedience to His revelation sets Creation free from our sin. As we cling to His divine moral character in our heart-minds, Creation itself operates according to that character and on His behalf will touch us and enable us in ways entirely impossible for those whose conscious awareness remains in their heads. Creation will speak to us of His holiness and show us things from His written Word. Thus, obedience to the heart-led intent of His Law Covenants will result in a friendship and support from all Creation.
This living connection to Creation is shaped by our calling. Each of us will commune with Creation in our own unique way, same as we each commune with God individually. A major element in all of this glorious vision of power and purpose is that we foster a social stability that encourages people to engage in the same heart-led existence. As stated in the previous post (linked above) it is utterly impossible to grasp the moral nature of His Law Covenants without the supremacy of the heart over the mind, and a general broad focus on relating to other humans in terms of Hebrew feudal family structure. All the whole Law of God starts with that, and cannot be implemented without it.
So in the midst of a world that brutally suppresses His truth, by insisting we cannot live by the heart-mind, our world also insists that nobody in their right mind wants that ancient Hebrew feudal social structure. Even Jews don’t want it, but at most something with only a vaguely superficial resemblance to it. The main missing ingredient is that familial compassion we can see written into the Law of Moses, for example. It is our duty to find ways to slip His Laws of feudal relations into our existence any way we can.
God says all human need is summed up in that kind of human relations. The sum total of the gospel message is in there. The “good news” part of that is we no longer have to join ourselves to a covenant nation and study the Hebrew mystical intellectual traditions first. We can claim the open door to heart-led existence and then spend the rest of our lives studying how to live. Jesus taught us a return to that ancient Hebrew feudal social structure as the best way to handle human life. He also spent a lot of time correcting false notions about the Father and how He relates to us, but spreading the gospel message means learning to live by the moral heart-led intent of the Law Covenants.
Yes, it is inherently contextual in nature. So you cannot pretend to reason your way to some objective truth about basic human need. God says flat out that it changes with the context. The context is whatever you as moral kinsman have to offer. This is why we eschew the language of human rights, because that’s just a perverted construct of human imagination in rejection of God’s revelation. God says you shall strive to treat other humans as your kin. Granted, a great many will pull away from that and you won’t be able to serve their needs. That is, they will refuse to accept the terms God Himself declared for such human interaction. In order to be counted and treated as kin, and their needs assessed against what is available from this family, they must come under the dominion of the family head.
Context itself places limitations on that dominion, but the ancient Hebrew feudal structure is God’s own standard for as long as men breathe air in this fallen world. This is the core measure of His hand of redemption to pull us out of Satan’s slavery. We are fallen; we will serve someone. If not God through His appointed shepherds, then you will serve Satan. But it’s not as if you are doomed to a life under the dominion of your natural parents. That would be ideal, but is simply not the point after the Resurrection. That part of the curse is broken. You can at some point hear the call of the Spirit to join yourself to a spiritual family. You come under the dominion of the elder and pastor (each in their own sphere; joining the two roles is actually supposed to be rare). Your church senior elder is the “king” or chief of your spiritual clan. The pastor is your priestly guide in rituals and worship. Both should be able to teach in some way, but the pastor in particular must carry that mission for sure.
Human need is not measured merely in terms of survival and material prosperity, though those things are a symbolic target. Sometimes obeying God means you approach a certain death, or any number of discomforts short of death. At the other extreme it could mean you have every reason to expect some help getting a cellphone, for example, if such is part of how your spiritual family does things. Obviously your church family has no duty to offer the same treatment to strangers who refuse the Creator’s command by remaining outside the family domain. There will be some effort to meet the human needs of strangers as a means to showing that compassion, but God alone is the source of calculus working through the leadership of that church family.
Again, the whole question of human need is contextual. The minimum to sustain life or to participate meaningfully in the prevailing culture (common standards in secular discussion) bears little relation to what God demands His churches offer; only by accident do they bear any superficial resemblance. Sometimes the prevailing culture is the last thing you want to get involved with. We who live by the heart-mind will pay little heed to what man’s reason and the secular society considers the needs of humans. They cannot know because they do not live by the heart and are surely living in sin because of it.
Just as evil are those who imagine that the greatest human need is some memorized sales pitch to provoke a psychological conversion to a particular set of intellectual assumptions. Emotional manipulation is not the work of God’s grace. The greatest human need is being courted with compassion and offered a chance to join the Family of God on God’s terms. Human need is answered supremely by embracing the Covenant of Christ, which in itself requires shifting the focus of awareness from the head to the heart, and coming into the dominion of some spiritual family. The word “evangelism” is just a label describing everyone in the family doing whatever it is that God called them to do toward putting on display the divine moral compassion of ancient Hebrew feudal relations. Evangelism includes letting people see how you reap the blessings of God through your close fellowship with His Creation.
For you as an individual servant of God, serving human need is whatever your heart tells you.
As an addendum at the end here, we note the prophetic element is not simple. We know we can condemn the local electric monopoly for rapacious rates and practices, but even most Western Christians are going to misinterpret what we might say. For example, the electric utility has the same cosmic moral obligation to treat rate-payers as family that your local pastor has with his parishioners, though just what it is they are responsible for in that care differs by context. That failure of familial compassion is the grounds for almost all of our prophetic warnings to those outside our religion. It’s not so much the mechanics of delivery, and it is most certainly not an issue of economic and political theories, but it rests on the fundamental obligation to God to treat those under our dominion as family, and to share our resources on that basis.
So the electric company is under God’s wrath already as part of a damned civilization, but we condemn evil practices on the basis that they don’t care about their customers, and they are willing to gouge and live high on the hog. It’s not communism; it’s loving feudalism that we promote. We want everything to change and become consistent with God’s revelation, but we are willing to start with the issue at hand. We have no problem recognizing a highly limited dominion and duty from service providers, and we run a very high risk of being misunderstood and lumped in with certain activist groups, but castigating corruption and any dehumanizing abuse is simply part of the gospel message.
