Liberal churches are keen on promoting social justice. In practice, this means that they attempt to exert pressure on governments to adopt redistributionist policies in order, supposedly, to make poverty history and transform unjust structures of society. This mindless utopianism never works, of course, and, when applied with vigour, results in a cure that is much worse than the disease.

So what does social justice in a Christian context really look like?

Like this:

Thirty years ago, a wealthy Toronto doctor had a revelation: Money, he decided, was his to give away, not to keep.

It was a drastic change in attitude for Dr. Andrew Simone, a Harvard-educated skin care specialist, who was bringing home $100,000 a year in 1975.

“We didn’t have a clue what we were supposed to do,” recalled the now 66-year-old doctor who founded the Canadian Food for Children (CFFC) charity to help feed the world’s hungry.

Before taking on the monumental, Dr. Simone and his wife, Joan, started with the obvious.

They donated their savings and life insurance, worth more than $150,000, to charities like the Salvation Army and Oxfam. They stopped shopping for clothes and sold their fancy cars, furniture and electronics. They welcomed foster children into their home. They told their own kids that life would be simpler from then on, that they would be well cared for, but if they wanted extras they would have to work for them.

“We felt this call to be servants,” said Dr. Simone in a recent interview at the Mississauga warehouse where CFFC donations are stored. He wore a used Toronto Transit Commission jacket that a friend gave him, accessorized with a button that read: “Jesus is the reason for the season.”

Indeed, it is the Simones’ deep Catholic faith that bolsters their spirit and assures them they have found their path.