The Social Gospel or "The" Gospel

I was shortly engaged in a conversation with a seminary student a while back about the past elections and my choice for president (if you want to know, just ask me).  After a long, in-depth conversation, this person proceeded to insinuate that I was promoting a social gospel and not THE gospel.  By that, I mean he seemed to insinuate that I was promoting more of a need to meet people's physical, mental and emotional needs and not their spiritual needs.  When he confronted me with that part of it, I was honestly confused by what he was saying because this person seemed to insinuate that in a ways, God only cares about our spiritual well-being and not about the whole person.  I am sure he didn't mean to come across this way, but he nevertheless did.

Anyways, it got me thinking about the gospel in and of itself.  Is the gospel really just about caring about souls being saved?  While I can't answer this question, I do believe that he does want us to live our lives the way Christ intended for us to live it and to actively share our faith in the process.  This, to me, means that while sharing our faith, we should fight poverty, abortion, the death penalty, white collar crime, genocide, and other injustices against humanity or things that God frowns upon.  It seems that in the United States, we have people either sharing their faith and not being active in standing up for truth and justice or people standing up for truth and justice and not sharing their faith.

The great thing that I see is that is quickly changing.  We're quickly finding a generation of believers that have character and actively share their faith while standing up for what's right and against injustice.  THAT, to me, IS the gospel.  Call it a social gospel if you want, but that to me is The gospel of Christ.  After all, didn't God turn water into wine to keep the party going?  Didn't he feed the five thousand and preach?  Didn't he break bread and pass the cup in the last supper?  Didn't he heal those that needed healing while teaching them?  Didn't Christ, in a sense, teach, preach, and live what the gospel is?  And isn't the gospel not only the way Christ lived, but also Christ in and of itself?

Your thoughts are appreciated....

Forgive me for this, but since I've been back from Spain, I find that I am not the most patriotic person anymore.  Please don't misunderstand that as I don't like or that I hate America.  I actually think America has a lot of good things about it, but there are many things about American culture I find really odd and even really wrong.

I began to realize this while I was sitting in church this past sunday and I watched a video talking about things that we as believers should stand up for when voting tomorrow.  Instead of raising the cross in the video, they raised the American flag.  Instead of raising God's word, they raised the red, white and blue.

Does anybody else find something wrong with this?  Doesn't it bother anyone else that we almost place Country over Christ?  A president over an everlasting king?  Democracy over the kingdom?  God bless America over "In God We Trust?"