“Many Christians resist the idea that social systems need to be dealt with directly.  They prefer the idea that ‘society is changed one heart at a time,’ and so they concentrate on only evangelism and individual social work.

This is naïve.  One of the most poignant examples of this naivete I know is a story told my an urban pastor, Robert Linthicum.

As a student ministry intern he had been working among black teenagers in a government housing project in a US city.  A fourteen-year-old girl named Eva began to attend one of the Bible studies that he led in the project. 

At one point Eva came to him deeply troubled. 

‘Bob,’ she said, ‘I am under terrible pressure and I don’t know what to do.  There is a very large gang in this project that recruits girls to be prostitutes for wealthy white men in the suburbs.  They are trying to force me…’

He urged her not to give in to their demands and to stick with her Bible study group.  He then went home for his summer vacation.

‘Three months later I returned and Eva was nowhere to be found.  The other youth told me she had stopped coming about a month after I left.  I went to Eva’s apartment.  As soon as she saw me she burst into tears.

‘They got to me, Bob,’ she said. 

‘How could you give in like that?’ I unsympathetically responded.  ‘Why didn’t you resist?’

She told me a story of terror.  ‘First they told me they would beat my father…and they beat him bad.  I had no alternative.  So I gave in.’

‘But Eva,’ I said, ‘why didn’t you get some protection?  Why didn’t you go to the police?'”

Eva responded, ‘Who do you think they are?'”

– Generous Justice, Dr. Timothy Keller