Book review: Compassion and the Mission of God: Revealing the Invisible Kingdom

Compassion and the Mission of God explores the biblical and theological basis of compassion in order to understand why God cares for the poor, and to argue that God calls Christians to bear witness to the Lord by engaging in the ministries of social justice, disaster relief and community development. Das, an expert with rich experience in non-governmental organizations as well as theological education, has successfully delineated the grand narrative of God’s redemptive work in Scripture and in the early church to clarify the relevance of ‘doing good to all’ (Galatians 6:9–10) in today’s broken world. The main argument in this book centres around how integral mission, that is, ‘the proclamation and demonstration of the gospel’ (p. 133; citing Micah Network, 2001), fits in the greater context of the mission of God, with a special reference to social responsibility for holistic transformation of the poor and oppressed. After tracing his personal journey in Chapter 1 to explain why he has written this book and offering in Chapter 2 his analytical framework for a contextual understanding of Scripture, Das examines, from Chapter 3 to 5, a coherent narrative in the Old and New Testaments that highlights the importance of bringing justice to the vulnerable. In Chapter 6, Das sheds light on the theological divide over the role of the church in serving the poor. He does so by revisiting definitions of the gospel, righteousness and multiple types of eschatology that have led the church to adopt different perspectives on whether it should be primarily responsible for poverty and injustice. The following three chapters, 7 to 9, delve into the historical development of modern missions towards the recent missiological approach of integral mission and the concept of transformation, while treating the roles of liberation theology, fundamentalist evangelical churches, the Lausanne Covenant and the Micah Declaration. Chapter 10 then discusses practical implications of why and how we live out God’s compassion by looking at three aspects: the need to become agents of blessings to all humanity, to become advocates for justice and to proclaim God as redeemer. The key contribution of this book lies in its all-encompassing survey of Scripture and its treatment of theological arguments over God’s compassion and concern for the poor. Through a compelling and well-structured argument drawing on different threads from the fields of theology and missiology, Das explains how God’s Kingdom becomes real on earth through acts of compassion for the poor, vulnerable and marginalized (hence the subtitle, ‘Revealing the Invisible Kingdom’). The tension of ‘already but not yet’ in the concept of the Kingdom of God is so vividly articulated and critically argued that professionals involved in social justice and development will be able to reflect on God’s calling to think and go beyond a dichotomized view of reality that divides the physical from the spiritual. 831851 TRN0010.1177/0265378819831851TransformationBook review book-review2019