God makes it abundantly clear in the Bible that he cares deeply for the alien, the orphan and the widow. His love and zeal for the justice of those that live on the margins of society resonates throughout both the Old and the New Testament.
Unfortunately, many Christians today don’t look at the margins of society. The marginalized don’t go to their churches, they don’t work with them or play little league with their kids. To many Christians the least of these are unseen and unnoticed. Sure, when asked many Christians will say they are concerned for the poor and want them to be helped, but they just don’t know how they themselves can help.
This is the connection that Tom Davis seeks to make in his book The Fields of the Fatherless: Discover the Joy of Compassionate Living. Far from a scathing critique on the lack of social action in the church today Davis’ book is more a gentle introduction between one person who can help and another who needs it.
Davis begins by comparing concern for the poor (a.k.a. social justice) to discovering a hidden treasure that was right under your nose. He tells the reader to imagine that the book is “a treasure map that unlocks a marvelous treasure chest of truth about what matters most to God - and should matter most to us.”
He begins with showing the biblical mandates to care for the alien, the orphan and the widow and the Old Testament promise of blessing (not necessarily material blessing) that comes from it. He then shows us real life stories of the fatherless today. They are the single-mother next door working her hardest to make ends meet, the widow/widower at church who just lost her/his spouse of 40 years, the unruly boy in your child’s class who gets passed from one foster home to the next, the orphan in the orphanages around the world, the migrant worker looking for work at Home Depot or the lonely foreign exchange student looking for a taste of home. The fields of the fatherless are all around us, we just don’t know they are there.
Davis then gives some practical steps we can all take to reach out to the least of these that are in need of help. Steps like volunteering to be a foster parent, helping out at a soup kitchen, running errands for a single-mom or writing letters to orphans. He recommends a few ministries to get in touch with as a means of practicality. The rest of the book is filled in with principles for serving the poor and personal stories of heartache and hope to educate and inspire.
The writing style wasn’t superb and I was curious about the basis for some of his finer points about God’s promised blessings (I’ve been reading a lot of Larry Crabb recently so that might have influenced it). The book left me wanting for more; whether it was a simple challenge to do this, this and this or a notion that what he is positing is achievable.
Overall I would say it is worth the read. It’s not an exhaustive approach to social justice or a manifesto on how to save the world as Christians, nor is it about proper ethical positions toward the poor. It is a focused and compassionate appeal to Christians to look up and see that there is a harvest field of orphans waiting to be cared for and loved by those whom God has spiritually adopted himself. I was inspired by it and thought constantly throughout the book about what I could do and was encouraged and challenged towards the end to remember that I was spiritually an orphan and yet God took me in and loved me even though I seemed unloveable at first.
Recommendation: Read it.
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