rich’s blog

New Message 2/2:

 

Recap from last week: 

So we’re continuing from last week’s message, which introduced the series we’re rolling with right now, called “A Wider Embrace.”

 

And there are a few hopes I have for this series:

 

The biggest hope I have is that we can challenge that narrow focus we Christians can sometimes have when it comes to what world problems and social issues we think we should given our attention to.

 

I hope that we can begin to take what can be a narrow embrace, and open not only our arms wider–but our hearts, by practicing a deeper compassion than we now have.  I hope we can begin to open our minds wider, too: thinking more critically and fully about topics that are simply not easy ones. And it wouldn’t be bad if we opened our calendars and our banking accounts a little wider now and then, too.

 

But last week we discussed how we are constantly flooded with a whole world’s worth of information.  We are given dozens of messages a day about things going on in the world, that we Christians should reasonably have some sort of Jesus-like response to.

 

Homework: 

And at the end of last week I suggested we try a little exercise, a little home work.

 

I asked us to try and notice the messages that are sent our way about pains & troubles in the world, be surprised at how many there really are, and figure out how to care about these messages by asking God a couple of things, in the moment:

 

“What’s a Christian response to this? This message that I’m receiving?”  And “What should be my response to this?”

 

And what I want to know is if any moment this week slapped us in the face, surprise us with itself, and all of a sudden we realized: I am being told, informed, about so much.  I am aware of so much that goes on the world.  Events of all sorts, problems & troubles, wars & rumors of wars, impersonal statistics–what we called “numbers without tears,” last week.

 

I pray to God that we had a moment similar to the prodigal son, who “all of a sudden woke up to himself,” in a mucky pig yard.

 

Pray with me:

 

Prayer: 

Lord, continue to work on us.  Right now do claim our attention, King of our Hearts–its your royal right.  Focus our minds, and give us strength to explore the depths of our souls and fight & face whatever we see there.  But Lord, make us a people who responds with your Spirit.

 

Responses:

I’m going to go ahead and do something foolish, which is assume that we have two–yes, only two–responses to the flood of information that comes our way.

 

Response One: We’re Indifferent. There are so many troubles & needs we’re aware of in this world of ours that we have simply become indifferent to most of the information that comes our way, even when we invite it into our lives & position ourselves to learn it.

 

From a Sunday morning Sermon, to a news feed, to a facebook update; it has all just turned into a sort of white noise that hums into our head but rarely breaks into our conscious.

 

Indifference: 

And when I suggested last week that we try and pay attention to all the information & messages that were sent our way, I was rolling with the assumption that this is where many of us are.  Simply indifferent to the news we hear.

 

And it’s been said that indifference really is the opposite of love; in the Good Samaritan story that Jeff walked us through last year, it was indifference that was condemned, not hate, not actions against the nearly-dead traveller.  Jesus contrasted the indifference of believing religious folk, with the engagement of the Samaritan.

 

Indifference is one of the most unChristian things there is.

 

But not all of us struggle with–struggle with may not fit here, but: struggle with indifference.

 

Some of us struggle with–Let me interrupt myself.

 

We’re mature people, aren’t we?  We are.  We’re adults, by and large.  Is this true?

 

Great.

 

Some of us don’t struggle with indifference, we struggle with impotency.

 

Impotency:  

You know potency, right?  The ability to act effectively, decisively.

 

But some of us receive this information that comes our way–these snapshots of troubles in the world, news from tv, the internet, friends, family, facebook, whatever: and it’s not simply in one ear and out the other.

 

It does cut our hearts.  We do want to do something, take some action.  We want to feed the hungry, heal the sick and sit beside the hopeless.  We want to make a difference, go to bed at night exhausted because we’ve done good with our hands & our muscles are tired.  We want to act.

 

But it’s too big, it’s too much.  The troubles overwhelm us, and even the small sliver of messages we actually hear and attend to are so big that we feel unable to make a difference.

 

We’ve tried, now and again, done little things, but they don’t satisfy this desire to effect change in the world, and we struggle with feeling impotent in the face of enormous problems.

 

And our impotency, our inability to do much of anything that seems to make a real difference, it leads to all sorts of emotions: guilt, frustrated anger.

 

And it will inevitably, I think, give way to indifference.  This is self-protective.  I mean, on some level we think something is wrong with a person if they continue after a few years to care passionately about some world problem.  They’re obsessive or dogmatic or unrealistic if they care too much for too long.  It’s only natural that zealousy to act should give way to indifference.

 

Of course, nothing about someone who is a temple of the Living God, the Holy Spirit, should be considered only natural.  But whatev.

 

Recap: 

So: Indifference, and Impotency.  Our hearts don’t become hardened so much as slick, so that worries & concerns slide right by them.  Or we are emotionally engaged, but frustratedly so, because we’re aware of our limitations to really help meet such far away needs.

 

And as I said, I think those feelings of impotency give way to indifference over time. Unfortunately, since we do have the Holy Spirit nagging at us to be like Jesus, we may even find ourselves cycling through these seasons of indifference & impotency.

 

So what, though.  All I’ve done is describe something.  What do we do about this.

 

Avoiding Indifference:

Here’s the bummer about avoiding indifference.  By and large, you simply have to deal with it.  This is the hard, personal responsibility piece.  Look.  Indifference is not good.  Last week I asked that we just pay attention, just notice how many messages are sent our way, that we invite into our lives, that we’re supposed to somehow act upon.

 

Sometimes, we’ll hear about some great world problem, some big statistic that is related to our own lives: say we grew up poor, we may be a little more attentive to stats about poverty, some story about starvation.  Say we grew up being abused, we’ll be more attentive about some bit of information we hear regarding a similar abuse that another person is undergoing.

 

This is good, frankly.  This is God wanting us to take our experiences and allow them to be the source of strength out of which we act on behalf of good.  Our troubles, when they are really brought into conversation with God’s redeeming love, because sources of strength in our own attempts to act on behalf of similar hurts. This mimics Jesus “Out of his wounds we were healed,” out of our own wounds, we become agents of God’s healing power for others.

 

So: we may find ourselves more sensitive to certain informative messages than others because of what we’ve been through or someone we love has been through.  Ideally, of course, in the church, we realize that we’re connected to a bunch of people with all sorts of hurts, and our compassionate sensitivity to similar pains spreads out until it reaches the whole world, until every message that comes our way is one we can’t help but notice.

 

But then we cycle into impotency, right? How can we help? What can we do?  The whole world is a stage, waiting for us to act as healers in it: but we have stage fright.

 

So indifference should give way to engagement, to concern, but concern can really leave us feeling unable to do anything.  The answer to the question “What should be my response to this?” is not an easy answer.

 

 

Putting This Moment Off: 

And to be honest, I’ve sort of been putting of the whole “How now should we live?” question.

 

Because I don’t have a prescription that transforms us from passive databases, that just receive and log information about problems into active agents of Christ’s care & love in the world.

 

I don’t think there’s a switch, a button we can push.

 

 

I have ideas that I’ve been thinking about; some of them for quite a while.  But I don’t know if they’ll help.

 

We could try this, though: Why don’t I suggest some things, some partial answers to our problem, and maybe we can try them out, and then maybe we can talk about them with one another.  I would love it if what I suggest this morning becomes part of our regular conversation when we talk about the world & it’s problems.  It’s a hope.

 

Want me to make some suggestions?  You can do whatever you want with them.

 

Here’s what we’ll title this section:

 

Possible answers to the question of how to deal with the fact that we are overly informed about world problems that rightly deserve our attention, and as a result struggle with indifference or impotency: 

 

That’s a lot, though.  We’ll shorten it.

 

PAQHDFOIWPRDARSII: 

PAQHDFOIWPRDARSII: Unplug

Let me just ruin my credibility now, okay.

 

May as well do it at the start, right?

 

One thing we could do is simply limit our exposure to all the messages that come our way.  Limit our exposure to information about the world & it’s troubles.

 

In a scenario where the information that we receive doesn’t matter, that is, in no way do we act on the information we receive, maybe we just shouldn’t pay attention.  If we watch the news but do nothing about the terrible stories we hear except, maybe, complain about how bad the world has gotten, maybe we shouldn’t watch the news.  If we follow a dozen rss feeds or a hundred twitter updates, and don’t actually do anything about the information we get from all the messages that pour our way, maybe we should turn off the tap.

 

Here’s my warrant, my assumption: if we aren’t going to act on what we learn, we may as well not learn it.

 

Now, I am not so naive to believe that we’ll actually do this. It flies in the face of everything our society stands for: be better informed, right? We rejoice at how informed a nation we are, at how informed America’s children are, at how informed consumers we are.

 

Unfortunately, being informed consumers has turned into being overconsumptive of information, fat on it, and lazy.  IMHO!

 

We know a lot, more all the time, we’re aware of what’s going on throughout the world, and we don’t do anything about it.  So I really would suggest–again I may be just destroying my credibility–that there is no point in knowing all the stuff we know.  We may as well not know about typhoons & flooding, about wars & rumors of wars, may as well not know all the numbers without tears that are “way out there in the ends of the earth” if we’re not going to do anything about them.

 

I think if each of us examined all the sources of information that we expose ourselves too, and judiciously cut out one or two or 50 of them, if we have too, narrowed the gate that information has to pass through to reach us, we would be better positioned to actually act on the information that does “shine upon us like sunlight.”

 

Here’s what I know: I am overexposed. I don’t know if I can help but be indifferent to problems when there are so many.  And indifference breeds indifference, it becomes habit: I worry that if I grow anymore used to not caring about problems out there, I’m sooner or later not going to care about Columbus’s, much less yours.

 

So what I’m suggesting is that we effectively choose to become less informed.  Talk about non-conformity with the world, right?  I suggest we choose to become less informed if the information that we do receive we never act on in Jesus’s name.

 

Maybe we unclog other people’s lives by sending out less “did you hear about this’ bits of information, messages that we don’t expect them to act on in anyway.  Terrible world problems shouldn’t become internet memes. 

 

And my guess is, if we try this, it would mess us up.  We’d realize how deeply we like being distracted by messages, we’d realize how addicted we are to being informed, and I think we’d find ourselves over time much more responsive to those problems & needs we do hear about.  We’d notice more even as we hear less.

 

So. Now that your fears that I’m crazy are confirmed, let’s keep rolling.

 

PAQHDFOIWPRDARSII: Prayer

Look, if we’re not at least praying about the information that we receive, it’s a problem.

 

And I think we’d quickly find, again, that even if we were to try and pray for each need-wrapped message that comes our way, we’d be overwhelmed.  So another little vote for limiting what messages we do receive.

 

But Jesus tells a parable about a widow who is a super nagging person.  We call her “persistent.”  Isn’t that nice?  She nags and nags and nags this judge who she needs help from; she’s banging on his door in the middle of the night!  Right?  Calling his cell phone at all hours, same question every time, he’s wishing his number was unlisted.

 

But the judge acts on her behalf.

 

This is a parable about prayer, about the way we’re supposed to persist in it, nag the Lord with our needs–a God who isn’t like a judge trying to get his sleep, but someone who answers before we call, who runs to us when he sees us from far away, who really, really enjoys helping us out.  Weirdo!  You know!

 

But after Jesus tells this parable, he muses, “But will the Son of Man find faith on earth.”

 

Will the Son of Man find faith on earth?  Will any of us seek the Lord with our needs, through our prayers, the way the widow of the story nags at the sleepy judge.

 

When it comes to the world needs we are aware of, the problems that seem so big and so far away that we hear about, I don’t think the Son of Man, if he glanced our way, would find much faith on earth.

 

I’m not out to guilt trip us, and I want us to remember that there is faith in Heaven; Jesus prays on our behalf, and God is aware of the needs of the world, and meets them.  But I want to point out that sometimes we are not even stepping over the lowest bar when it comes to this stuff.  I mean, like, a bar that’s lying on the floor.

 

This is a bummer.  Easy change, though: Message comes in, prayer goes out.  Message in, prayer out, message in, prayer out. Like spiritual breathing; something comes to our attention, hits our minds, our heart sends out a prayer.  And we keep on living.

 

And let me say this: any of us who struggle with impotency with regard to the problems we’re aware of, if we’re not at least praying for them, then we have no right to feel frustrated, because we’re not doing the simplest thing.  This is like being frustrated that someone has given you a big present, when you’re unwilling to untie the bow.  I think if we begin to do this simplest thing, the Lord will offer us ways to do more.  I’m convinced of it, actually.

 

PAQHDFOIWPRDARSII: Acting Locally

Let me just toss out here a conclusion that I’ve come to after reflecting on some of these things for a while.

 

It seems to me that the best way to positively affect global issues is to act locally with an eye to the bigger issue.  It’s to act locally while keeping in mind the bigger world issue that started us acting in the first place.

 

It doesn’t seem to me that a person starts taking on world poverty unless they are first able to take on local poverty.  Domination Systems–we talked about these last week, these political and economic and other systems in the world that some people really do benefit from, but many more people are crippled by.  Domination Systems aren’t simply tossed aside; but their foundations can be chipped down through local action.

 

PAQ: Acting Locally: How-To

And what we’d want to do, I think is take some large problem that we’ve heard of–some big thing:

 

contemporary slavery, indentured servitude & the like

global food or water or health care shortages

domestic violence & child abuse

armed invasions & wars & terror

genocide & the displacement of people groups

ecological plundering & abuses of creation

disease outbreaks

 

Maybe these issues prick our heart; maybe we dream a dream from the Lord, have a vision, but we realize that we need to act on this message we are hearing.  We need to do something.

 

PAQ: Acting Locally: Education

 

And so we begin to educate ourselves about this issue.  We begin to seek out information, narrowing our focus of concern on this area of interest we now have, praying about it and gnawing at it like a dog gnaws at a bone.

 

We do research.  We read.  We dialogue with people who are better informed than us.  We find international organizations who care deeply about these same things we’re discovering that we care about.

 

I don’t need to tell us how to get informed, right?  We know all about seeking information.

 

But there is one thing that’s important.  We need to do what we can, during this information gathering stage, to  seek out particularly those perspectives that differ from ours.

 

We aren’t good at this in America especially.  We tend to think that our systems are the best systems, our perspective is the right perspective, and that other countries, and people from them, are backwards, uninformed, and really should just listen to us.

 

I’m making a generalization.  But we need to be cautious as we gather information that we get it from as many different perspectives as possible.

 

You wouldn’t get one estimate to remodel your house, right? We’re talking about remodeling how we engage with the world’s problems; we need as many different people’s estimation about the situation as we can get.

 

PAQ: Acting Locally: Community

And so we’ve got this thing from the Lord that we’re praying about, this concern that we just can’t get out of our heads, and we bring it to the church excited, with pamphlets, you know, wanting to talk about ways we all can make a difference…and everyone yawns.

 

or: one or two people say, “Yeah, that’s cool! I’ve been thinking about that too!” And we gather together & begin to explore how we can engage with this thing.

 

Both of these things are likely to happen when we present the needs of the world that we’re passionate about to them.  We should accept this; we’re different people, with different gifts, unique calls from the Lord, different histories & sensitivities.

 

But the reality is that we need a community of people to act with real power in the world. God has given us the church for a reason, and it’s because our efforts expand exponentially when we join together to see them through.

 

This means we need to yawn a little less, I think, when any one of us begins to explore world needs.  We need to support & nurture one another, and do what we can to create an environment where it is permissible to be passionate about something, where it is expected that each of us will be exploring some need of the world, and

where each of us invites the idea-sharpening input of others.

 

Practically, this support might take the form of hosting movie & discussion nights, book discussion groups, or concern updates shared in the bulletin.

 

 

PAQ: Acting Locally: Making Connections & trying. 

But the goal is that this big problem that we start with tumbles around in our heads until it’s smoothed down into a small pebble of action, with which we can kill the giants of indifference and inaction.

 

One critical thing, then, is to make connections between the problem “out there,” and how we can engage “right here.” And then trying to act on the connections we make.

 

Let me say this again:

 

We could make connections between the problem “out there,” and how we can engage “right here.” And then trying to act on the connections we make.

 

These might be obvious connections & less obvious connections.

 

If we’re concerned with world hunger, hey, let’s connect that with the hungry that are close by, and then start or help out with an existing local food pantry.  Just try it.

 

Less obviously, we might connect the way global hunger sometimes can be related to a lack of water for farming; and as we educate ourselves we learn that a huge amount of other people’s sources of water, all over the world, is used in the soda & drinking water industries.  And so we might decide to stop drinking soda & bottled water, not for health reasons, not for financial reasons, but because we want the water to stay where it is, so that people can grow food with it.

And so, this connection in mind, we try that out.

 

Neither of these are morally superior; what’s definitely best is if we can do both the obvious & the less obvious. But we need to educate ourselves in order to do so, we need the support of one another as we try to act in these local ways, and we need to be in prayer, which is the gas in our engine, baby.

 

I had other examples: but does this suffice:  We need to make connections between the problem “out there,” and our behaviors “right here,” and then try and act on those connections that we’ve made.

 

And some things would be very simple: If you’re really concerned with domestic violence in America, keep a shelter number in your cell phone.  If you’re concerned about the global arms race, don’t buy guns.  If you’re concerned about gender inequality, watch what you say. There are simple things we can do “right here” that connect to the problems “out there.”

 

We could spend hours daydreaming up local action that is connected to world problems.  And the best local action is informed, because we’ve educated ourselves & begun to dialogue with others, it’s supported, because we’ve gathered with one another in our attempts to act, and it’s also really deliberate.  It’s intentionally connected to some larger problem.  We act, mindfully, because we want to do something.

 

An action is the opposite of indifference and the opposite of impotency, and every single one of us can make a difference if we simply act creatively, in our neighborhoods, on behalf of some large world need.

 

In a few weeks we’ll talk specifically about how what we purchase, how we consume–which is nearly always a local act, unless we’re buying online–connects to larger world problems.

 

Summary: 

So I’ve suggested we consider putting some floodgates up against the overwhelming amount of information that comes our way, especially if we honestly just aren’t going to do anything about the messages we hear.

 

I sort of baldly stated that if we’re not praying about what we do here, we’re failing in one of our basic tasks as Christians.

 

I presented a model of response in which we act locally on behalf of some world trouble, and do what we’re able to connect that local action to the greater world situation.  We do this by educating ourselves, joining with others, and together making connections between the problems of the world and our local context, and just getting off our bottoms and trying to do things.

 

Conclusion: Does This Follow, Hago?

There’s a passage in Luke 19.  Jesus comes to Jerusalem and cries over the people there; it’s too late for them.  They rejected him.

 

But it breaks his heart. They are numbers with tears; they are people that are worth crying over.

 

When Christians don’t care, something is wrong with them.  Seriously; something is wrong.  And if we find ourselves not caring, indifferent to the troubles of the world, we need to spend time with the Lord asking why? And as God works in our hearts, battling indifference, we need to begin to pray.

 

Our embrace needs to be wide to the world; but we can’t carry it.

 

We can, though, while we watch the world, act locally, act in our neighborhoods on behalf of the great needs of the world, do things “right here,” that connect with things “out there.”

 

So what is the thing that you can’t shake?  What is the problem that keeps coming up, that you notice more than other problems?  What is the great wound of the world that you would love to see not bleed anymore?

 

How can the church help you explore this problem, how can we help you connect this problem to the mess of stuff going on in your cul de sac or your zip code?

 

And what are you going to do?  What are you going to try? How are we going to act locally, right now, soon?

 

I’m not being rhetorical.

 

Prayer:

Lord.  We know so much; help us to do something with it.  We’re aware of so many hurts “out there,” help us to act “right here” on their behalf, in efforts to care for them.

 

We need your Spirit to do this.  We need safe room around us, protection from evil, as we explore these problems and how best we can work against them.  We need sensitive eyes & ears, not ones deadened to the flow of troubles we’re made aware of.  And we need your courage to act in ways that do not conform to the pattern of this world, but conform to the pattern of living your son, our Savior, had and still has when we live out of your strength.

 

Guard ours who are far from us; send us out seeking to build your kingdom & your church.  Don’t let us waste our time.  In Jesus’ name.  Amen.