I like ordering a la carte. The French expression means you can make your own meal combination from the individual items on the menu—“the card.” It’s like inventing your own Happy Meal and getting the one toy your collection still needs.

But sometimes there are good reasons why you can’t order a la carte.

In the debate about returning America and Canada to their founding Judeo-Christian principles, I sense we may be having an inappropriate theological a la carte moment.

Apparently a Christian utopia would have no abortion, gay marriage or euthanasia. Pornography would disappear and divorce laws would be tightened. The death penalty would certainly make a comeback.

Among the strange Levitical prohibitions made against mixed clothing and beard-cutting are a few texts from which we infer things about homosexuality, abortion and other hot topics. Strangely, these are dwarfed both in volume and clarity by passages that cry out about widows and orphans, the poor and the refugee and other awkward issues of social justice.

When secular historians mentioned the early Church, they weren’t struck by its political platform, holiness or theological stance on the hot issues of the day. They describe a culture-clashing place where widows and orphans were protected, the old and sick were cared for, the poor were fed and outsiders were welcomed. Sounds like the Jesus menu.

The reason the evangelical Church’s message on hot issues is not getting through isn’t because we need to turn up the volume. The world knows where we stand on gay marriage, abortion, the death penalty...they’ve heard us. They just don’t believe us.

Our fight against aborting unwanted children won’t be credible until we are as loud and indignant about the number of Canadian children who are born, but into poverty.

Our struggle against euthanasia will mean something when we shudder at the amount of elderly and dying in Canada who have to choose between medication and food.

Our trips to city hall shouldn’t only focus on rezoning for bigger and better church buildings. Instead, we should be there to support the pleas of the poor being edged out of affordable housing by the condo-fication of our downtown cores.

Our evangelistic efforts at breaking into new communities will never be more successful than the passion with which we welcome refugees, newcomers and the excluded into our own existing communities.

Until our determination to care for gays and lesbians is unmistakable, our self-righteous proclamations will be nothing but clanging cymbals.

The problem with the Jesus menu is that it doesn’t work a la carte. The heavy theology to extract prohibitions from obscure passages might be the rich chocolate dessert we really like, but the meal comes with salad, broccoli and whole wheat bread. You don’t get to rant until your hands are dirty, so put down the loudspeaker, grab the shovel, drop the placard and pick up those bandages!