I was walking the dog with the kids in a beautiful park near where I live this afternoon. It was a sunny fall day that can really only be described as perfect. We had gotten past the complaining and had swung on some vines and now the kids were walking close to one another sharing some deep conversation (probably about flatulence). I was struck simultaneously by a deep feeling of gratitude and a profound sense of guilt. Now guilt is generally something that doesn't trouble me very much. After all, I'm a good reformed Christian, Presbyterian type, I know I'm a sinner and I also know I'm forgiven, and I believe, to paraphrase John Calvin: God wants us to accept forgiveness, stop whining and get on with life.
But this was a different kind of guilt. This wasn't guilt because of something I did wrong, or something I should have done differently, or even something I didn't do at all. This was guilt about how I, as a fairly affluent American, am tacitly complicit in a system of massive injustice, and there's not a whole lot I can do about it. Maybe it was because of the typhoon that hit the Philippines, maybe it's because I was thinking about all the homeless people who are staying at GSPC this week for the local Safe Nights program. Maybe it's because I knew that, even as I walked free and peaceful on a beautiful afternoon with my kids who are content and well cared for to the point of being spoiled rotten, there are people in the world being tortured, children being used and abused, bombs falling on families, people being impoverished, enslaved, incarcerated and otherwise broken on the wheel of modern "society."
Maybe it wasn't actually guilt that I was feeling at all, maybe it was helplessness...
Actually it was definitely helplessness, which I think is actually much worse than guilt.
I know that if I gave up everything I have, all I would really do is impoverish four more people, I would subject those two little people who were walking along so carefree in the afternoon sun, to the same kind of desperation that I wish didn't exist in the world. I can really only protect those two, I don't have the resources or the gifts to take on any more.
I generally do the good that God puts in front of my nose. Like now, I'm spending the night in my office so that a local charity can use our church building to house about 30 folks. Our church has this week, other churches have weeks and together we get through the cold months. Various congregation members are preparing meals or taking a shift sleeping on air mattresses in a Sunday School room. It's really not much of a sacrifice, but you see all these people, some of them little kids, who have food and a warm place to sleep through the winter and you feel like you might actually be doing some good. But you also feel really sad that they need this in the first place.
But it's not a solution to the problem of poverty, it's just treating a symptom. What I really wish I could do is make it so people don't need to sleep on cots in church basements in order to make it through the winter. I really wish I could make it so people would no longer need to think of church as a place to come for help with an electric bill. I really wish we didn't need food pantries, and social services offices. I really wish that we would just learn how to initiate a truly just society where people had what they needed, and everyone could just enjoy a beautiful afternoon walk with their spoiled kids.
I choose to believe that God wants that for us too.
It's not logical, and it's not realistic. It's a matter of faith.
If you want to know why I'm a Christian that's all there is to it. I think Jesus shows us who God is, and of all the options out there, I like what he shows me the best. A God who turns away the angry mob of people holding stones, a God who shames the religious hypocrites, a God who shares meals with really messed up people and crowds of random strangers, a God who heals the sick and casts out demons. A God who generally does the good thing that is right in front of his nose, and a God who feels those pangs of helpless sadness at all the suffering that comes from human sin.
So I'm sleeping in my office, as an exercise in incarnational ministry. It's not as big a deal as it sounds, it's just a presence that means the doors are open and the heat is on, and someone is here doing the good that is front of their nose.
Lovely thoughts, Mark.
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