Opening Our Eyes to Human Suffering

The Challenge of Luke’s Message

• Luke’s gospel is clear that you cannot look away and ignore human suffering. You cannot hide behind class status like the rich man in Luke 16 or religion like the priest/Levite in Luke 10. • The challenge and scandalous nature of the gospel is this: our salvation is tied up with the people who are naked, hungry, in prison, and sitting in our streets (Matthew 25). • This means that one of the things the gospel of Jesus Christ challenges us to do is to open our eyes to human suffering. But doing this goes against social conditioning. The truth is, we are conditioned not to see human suffering because we are so busy with the daily affairs of life. • The scandal of American Christianity is our blindness to human suffering.