10 “One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much, and one who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much. 11 If then you have not been faithful in the unrighteous wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? 12 And if you have not been faithful in that which is another’s, who will give you that which is your own? 13 No servant can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other… -Jesus in Luke 16:10-13a
Tonight’s dispatch from discipleshipland is going to be shorter and more terse than my usual missive. Before I write anything else, I’d like to have you look at the following link, and let the raw data wash over you:
Before I explain why I’m having you look at that wall of data, there’s something else that needs to come first.
I raised a few eyebrows on my Facebook account a few months ago when friends started participating in the #KONY2012 viral movement. I cautioned my friends who would listen to try and measure their response to what the folks from Invisible Children were trying to do. This was not because I support Kony (does anyone?) or because I wanted people to do nothing. It was because the situation to which that video refers is an complicated and nuanced situation which requires a nuanced and cooperative response from a variety of people. Independently funding a single (illegal) military operation to kill a marginally influential man hiding who knows where is likely not the best response to that situation. I also cautioned my friends that if they still cared about it in a year, that they would be justified to act only if they had done some research to find out the real issues were. I was accused of being a bucket of cold water. I was (and am) completely guilty of the charge.
We live in a world of virtual emotion. Virtual outrage over a very real murderer in central Africa is just one example. Nearly everywhere you turn in our culture, someone is feigning emotion about something. Serious issues are abandoned when the sizzle wears out for the media outlets who report it. Tragedies are given clever graphics packages and tag phrases and the complete attention of our media…until people tire of it and want a new tragedy to emote about.
For every genuine emotion a human being can experience, there is at least one counterfeit. Some of the counterfeits are obviously labeled: lust, for example is the virtual analog to love. Some of the same external features, none of the soul or conviction or sacrifice which would prove the existence of the genuine article. Other counterfeits are not so obvious. For compassion, for example, there are competing virtual emotions covered up by tag phrases like “raising awareness” or “highlighting an issue.” Those tag phrases are a comfortable way for people who don’t really care one way or the other to check off their social activism box in the “being a good person” merit badge, just another one of the altars that people worship in service of civil, works-based, religion.
For real compassion–for real caring–there is no substitute.
The Apostle Paul understood this well. In the Greek world of his day, the seat of the emotions was thought to reside in the “guts.” In several places in the New Testament, he reports that he is in agony, or that he was torn in his guts about the situations that his fellow believers were dealing with in their contexts. What Paul is saying, in the most direct and straight ahead way, was that he actually cared for the people he ministered to–to those he labored with and shared the Gospel with and prayed for. There was nothing virtual about his affection.
Jesus, for his part, is more than happy to let false disciples part from him when they discover that there was real sacrifice involved with following him and that the road would be difficult. Jesus, over and over, makes it abundantly clear that following him carries a cost, and not just persecution of the body. In the garden of Gethsemane, shortly before his arrest, Jesus was not sweating blood because he was under physical strain–it was because his emotions were waging war within him–He cared! It mattered to Him! And that is why he took on the Cross–because His caring for a lost world was greater than his own personal physical, emotional and spiritual pain. And that is our example.
Sadly, it is an example that many Christians refuse to follow. Frankly, Christians in America are, in at least some cases, being outstripped in real caring by people who do not profess faith in Christ at all. That such a thing could happen affirms both that the image of God still resides in all people, and also that something has gone tragically wrong in some Christians.
You can’t fake caring. Either you do, or you don’t.
Look at that list of statistics again. Do any of them jump out at you? Grab you?
Do you care? Honestly? What do you care about?
On the average day, where is your emotional energy spent? Is it spent on the hurting people around you? On the orphan and the widow? On the lost and hopeless? Or is it on temporal things and the next possession you can acquire? Your answers are telling, and may be the important thing about your life in Christ after knowing Him as Savior and Lord.
It is widely acknowledged that God is love. If you don’t have love, something has gone tragically wrong in your walk. (Clanging symbols don’t care either.) It is only dead things that feel nothing, and if we are alive in the Holy Spirit, we shouldn’t be numb or unfeeling, even in a world that is filled with so much tragedy and pain. Being calloused or overwhelmed is not an excuse. If you find yourself in an honest place realizing that you honestly don’t care about other people, there are some steps you can take.
The first step is to repent and cry out to God. God wants you to care, and he will open up the portals for you to do just that.
The second step is to accept what you know you should expect. I know that part of the reason people fear honestly caring for others is because they fear being hurt. Let me spoil the suspense: if you really care about other people, you WILL, without any doubt, be hurt. The good news is, so was our Lord–you’ll be in good company. And, just in case you’ve forgotten, the power that overcame death is rolling all up in your business if you’re a believer–you have all the resources you require to survive earthly pain.
After you have acknowledged your deficiency, repented of your sin and expressed a desire to love the world as Jesus does, you need to pay attention to the Spirit’s guiding and to your feelings. If you feel a deep compassion welling up inside you for someone, go with that. Pray for them. Look for ways to do something about it that will glorify Jesus Christ.
Because in the Christian life, when it comes to love and compassion, either you do or you don’t. Jesus did, and He does. Do you?