Election and Serving (part 1)

Yo, this is a good link. http://www.joemartino.name/ if that doesn't work just go to the comments on my post about clicks and go click on the name of the last comment left. Then read his post (it should be the second one listed) called "Saved to do Good Works." The question I'll be asking has to do with that post.

The key part of his post (which was about election and service) were the popular "election" scriptures in Ephesians. "8 for it is by grace that you are saved, through faith - and this is not from yourselves but a gift from God - 9 not by works so that no one can boast. (and then his (mr martino's) key verse, if you will) 10 for are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works."

His point was, so far as I can tell, that the church, or at least Reformed church's who believe in the doctrine of Election, are very strong on verses 8 and 9 and are constantly preaching about those two verses and count them as very important. But those same churches tend to forget about verse 10 and everything that goes along with it (caring for the poor, loving your neighbor, anything to help out socially.) His question was why are we, as the Bride of Christ, so "afriad" if that's even the right word, to help out AIDS victims, to give to the poor, to serve non-Christians etc.

Although I agree with him that many church's don't do enough in the area of serving the poor and the needy, my disagreement with him (and feel free to defend yourself if you find this blog again Mr. Martino) is that it has something to do with Election. Election can and often does serve as an excuse for people to not preach the Gospel (if God elected them, they'll be saved, I don't need to preach.) That will be part 2, by the way. I don't know how someone can ignore God's commands to "love one another" to "Serve the poor" to "do good works" or anything else and use the doctrine of election as an excuse. If someone lacks love for someone for the simple reason that they're not saved, then they are sinning but does it really have anything to do with election?

Anyways, that's not even really my question. My questions is the following: (this of course is assuming that you accept the premise that the church is not active enough in social issues the involve serving other Christians and non-Christians alike)

Is the government so out of control with their welfare programs, their distribution of wealth, their "helping the needy" programs that are clear in Scripture to be the job of the church b/c the church has, as a whole, failed at it? Or is the Church not as socially active as it should be b/c the government has, in effect, taken it's job (in this one area) away from it? Whose fault is it?

Joey should have a sweet opinion about it cause we touched on this subject in class last night, but obviously I want everyone's opinion. (even Melinda's :-)