Pete and I had a night away from the kids and spent it up at Timberline Lodge (highly recommend!!!) which enabled hours of uninterrupted “adult conversation”. You remember, full sentences, complete thoughts, whole paragraphs eve! Non-truncated by the doing or responding or caring for wee ones! It was lovely.
Pete is “in” real estate which currently means he is buying and selling apartments. Prior to purchasing an apartment complex you have to walk through every single unit to do an “inspection” – checking for any expensive repairs. I knew this but didn’t really grasp that this means that you have to go into some 100 plus people homes and poke around their stuff – or their lack of stuff.
You can imagine some of the stuff he sees. Mostly it’s not very pleasant and sometimes its really sad. He told me about it at dinner and what stuck with me the most wasn’t the odd pets or bizarre living habits or nasty posters, but his description of how many people had so very little. A single mother with kids with one or two toys; an elderly couple with about 8 items each hung neatly in a closet; a 20 year tenant with one or two pieces of furniture and a single photograph on the wall. Suddenly the vast excess in my life was glaringly apparent. The bulging drawers, boxed storage bins and overflowing closets took on a rather grotesque quality. The verse in Proverbs (3:27-28) compelling one to not hold back any good from another in need reverberated in my head and I was very sad.
Social Justice is en vogue these days – and that’s a good thing. People, Christians and non-Christians alike are all becoming more socially conscious, more globally aware, more informed of the problems that exist both locally and abroad, but with all that information and consciousness, are we actually doing anything different? Has my life changed? Mostly I’d say no, but I’m not sure it’s because of a hardened heart nearly as much as it is from a lack of empowerment combined with busy distracting lives. I’m a mom of 2 young kids and a full schedule, what could I possibly do to meet the needs of the world? I can tithe and I do, I can sponsor a child or two, participate in food drives, get impassioned and angry about the state of society… all good things… but only a drop in the bucket. And a drop, I’m realizing, can be very de-motivating!
So, why the de-motivation? Is it the size of the drop or the size of the ocean that seems to be the problem? Serving on a Board of a Foundation that has invested some 20 million “drops” into the ocean, I realize that I don’t think it’s the size of the drop that de-motivates. Once can invest $15 or $1.5 million and still be aghast at the overwhelming size of the problem at hand. As many “yes’s” one is able to make, there are still a multiplicity of “no’s” that have to be made. One can’t fund every good idea or join every worthy cause. However, I don’t think it’s the size of the Ocean that is the problem either. Jesus essentially told us this when he said in Matthew 26:11 that the poor will always be with us. Only Jesus could say this and not be accused of promoting or having a lack of “social awareness”, love or concern for the poor. So why did He say it? Perhaps to point out that if the drops you are dripping are motivated by a desire to eradicate the ocean – you’ll be thwarted and end up… de-motivated and frustrated.
So I kept going with this train of thought. What if, instead, my motivation came from another source? A desire not to “make a difference” (which, I’m realizing is more about me and my sense of self worth than it is about the difference being made) but to simply be obedient to the nature that is – supposedly – within me. If I’m dead to self and alive in Christ is not my nature to be one of likeness to Christ? And if Christ’s nature was not one of compassion, then what was it? The Holy Spirit within me is what compels me to compassion – however again and again no action is taken, or at least the action taken costs me nothing. And therefore gives me nothing.
Something I’ve been wrestling with for a long time, both as a steward of funds designated to promote the work of discipleship, and as a spouse, trying to help make responsible philanthropic decisions for our family, is the conundrum that Christian Buckley in his book The Humanitarian Jesus calls, the “sandwich tract debate". (Do you give a hungry man a sandwich and wrap it in a tract or give him a tract and wrap it in a sandwich? It’s essentially the same thing but your response demonstrates your philosophical or perhaps theological leaning). The question of whether you give a cup of cold water or the message of eternal life is an important one to answer because I think it can help give you feedback as to where you stand in relationship to the message of the Cross and your role, as you see it, in the work of the Great Commission. Ideally however it should never have to be an “either/or” sort of question. Without delving into the complexities of this issue I would just like to highlight the truth I’ve recently stumbled on for myself. I strongly believe it is important to wisely consider the ways in which one chooses to invest and support the work of social justice around the world, demonstrating “true religion” as it is put in James 1:27. And, yes, I believe the Great Commission and the realities of this temporal existence as compared to an eternal existence must be taken into consideration as one chooses what good works to support. However, I’ve found that this analysis, this search to support only the “best” work has rendered me an inactive observer as opposed to an involved participant within my own neighborhood. Why give money ot a homeless man feeding him for a single day when I can send that same money to a ministry oversees that does an excellent job teaching a man to fish – and shares the gospel within at the same time… for cheaper? Perhaps it is because this man is my neighbor.
I’m not advocating the handing out of cash to the homeless, but I am realizing that my lofty sense of wise investment has hardened me from the heart of compassion I ought to have. Maybe “charity begins at home” is more about the cultivation of the heart of the giver than it is about the geographical location of the receiver.
So, this entire preface brings me to the startling, humbling, surprising and rather pathetic revelation I had during my mountain top retreat with my hubby. He had just shared his day with me (his experiences in the apartments) and I was sharing my day, telling him how his 3 year old received the story of the Good Samaritan. I stopped suddenly and started at him with what I’m guessing was a rather blank and then sheepish look on my face. “Oh my gosh, Pete, I’m the Pharisee.” I said. Somehow-how narcissistic of me- I’ve always identified with the Samaritan in the story, vilifying the Pharisee as a pious hypocrite who would leave a man to die on the road in order to get to church on time. It’s not like I pass by like he did… I’m just so distracted by my own life that I forget to notice. So, I’m back to my life’s theme of, in T.S. Eliot’s words, “Distracted by Distraction from Distraction.” It’s not some big sin that’s keeping me from the cross… It’s just my many distractions. I’m the Pharisee. And it’s humiliating to have to come to this revelation after so many years of reading that story. And it’s terrifying to think, that even after coming to this revelation, nothing in my life might change.
So, to my not-so-profound, but utterly-significant-to-me conclusion: the reason I care about my neighbor and my neighborhood, is not because my drop matters (though it may matter to that one on that day), or because my drop will impact the tide of the ocean, but because my drop changes me. The action I take in obedience to the Spirit of Christ within transforms me more into the likeness of who Christ created me to be – and THAT – Christ more fully alive in me- might someday make a difference.
Post Script: Immediate follow up actions to please hold me to. (1) Hosting a Table at local ministry Compassion Connect dinner, need to fill that table, would you be interested in joining us?? (2) Going through my closets and giving away what I am not using. (3) Linking up with the manager in the apartments my husband’s company owns and trying to give directly in anonymous ways that will meet tenant needs (as opposed to giving to Good Will which I find to be incredibly de-motivating as I know that though a non-profit their CEO and upper echelon directors are making upwards of the high6 figure salaries…) Let me know if you want to be kept abreast of their needs. (4) Connecting with local Crisis Pregnancy centers to get them needed items like toys, maternity and baby clothes. Do you have any you would like to give me?
Post Script (2): As to this question of who is my neighbor and what is my responsiblity to him, I like what Henri Nouwen has to say in The Living Reminder, reminding us that it is only through God and His strength that we are to serve anyone at all and that it is ultimately not about service to anyone other than service/servitude to God: “It is this unconditional and unreserved love for God that leads to the care for our neighbor, not as an activity which distracts us from God or competes with our attention to God, but as an expression of our love for God who reveals himself to us as the God of all people. It is in God that we find our neighbors and discover our responsibility to them. We might even say that only in God does our neighbor become a neighbor rather than an infringement upon our autonomy, and that only in and through God does service become possible.”
