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I won’t pile on another boo-hoo essay about how the average American is suffocating under the avalanche of information that gets dumped on him every day. (That would be ironic since my blog would likely be just another pebble that lands with a rattle and a puff of dust near your SOS signal.) But I will offer a different angle, more like an aha moment than an oh crap moment. It goes like this: the same technology that brings me useless status updates and viral cat footage also exposes me to an enormous amount of human suffering in the world. When both types of information travel the same information highway, it blunts my compassion reflexes over time. Does simply knowing about a cause make me noble? If so, then sign me up for sainthood. The ubiquity of lower-case causes is making it worse for upper-case Causes. I grew up during a time when causes were laid out one at a time. It was the era of Jerry Lewis Telethons, Amnesty International concerts, and Live Aid. Everybody knew about them, and everyone’s mercy was highly concentrated. It is different today when our mercy reservoir is taxed by relentless daily information, a constant digital draw on our spiritual compassion. In the past two days only, I’ve taken note of the following demands on my mercy quotient. If I would have responded to each one, the result would have been:
Two days. In one year, my crude math tells me that I would’ve had nearly two hundred opportunities to serve, and your list probably looks similar. Every fundraising expert will tell you that there is a stubbornly wide gap between knowledge and action, and perhaps it is made ever wider by this generation’s flood of information. For example, my own efforts last year to spark a mini-virus at my public school to combat prom-centered materialism was in theory praised to the heavens . . . but how many students actually showed up with cash? Maybe one percent of those who heard my plea. And maybe that’s the niche-driven world in which we live, one that fires a dirty bomb into a crowd, hoping that at least a small percentage of those who are hit will actually bleed. The dilemma is that now you must create an advertisement for your cause worth lingering over. Now it feels less like a matter of the spirit and more a matter of slick marketing. Did your 2.0 charity website massage my emotions with its progressive design? Did your documentary edge out my church’s boring photocopied bulletin insert? What was Jesus’ marketing plan? The faulty question implies that 1) the spirit reacts like the body, and 2) that God gives me compassion like he gives me allowance: if I spend it in the wrong places, I won’t have enough left for the important stuff. Neither one is true. God’s mercy is quite different. Jesus faced the same problem with overload while he lived among us. In Luke 4, the people wanted him to linger with them, wanted him to devote his energies exclusively to their personal causes and yet Jesus answered with, “I must proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God to the other towns also, because that is why I was sent.” Now I know this verse refers to spreading the gospel and not social justice, but Jesus’ ministry was both narrow and wide at the same time. His compassion, like mine, should be chronic and personal. While he lived as a man, he focused on one need at a time, making eye contact with one beautiful leper, one grief-stricken sinner at a time. It is a good model of compassion. Most Christians’ problem is that while seeing an avalanche of needs, they bulldoze it all and end up choosing none. A heart inclined toward God’s mercy will not finally throw up his hands and say I can’t fix this, but instead will see people rather than causes. And people are what Jesus himself specialized in. I can’t find one example of a charity that Jesus backed, but I find human beings that he loved without prejudice or even a tithing budget pie chart. So this summer, I will have to choose where I spend my mercy. If I’m living under the sway of the Holy Spirit, I don’t think I’ll make a mistake. Neither will you. |
Comments
Caroline, you raise a point I was just discussing with a friend this past week. In our world of non-stop opportunity and donor fatigue (here, I am counting all the appeals for natural disasters as well), I am beginning to think seriously about what are the things I will truly invest in, rather than 'volunteer' or sporadically show up for...investment seems the term I can't get out of my head (until something better comes along).
I like your term "investment." God can certainly use sporadic, knee-jerk reactions to needs, but I do think we must think seriously about which causes and ministries are closest to our spiritual gifts. (I mean, I might really like the idea of traveling long distances or romanticize the idea of adopting a Korean orphan or want to help a medical staff in an inner city, but has God equipped me for it?) Maybe the idea here is that depth trumps breadth? Hmm . . . thanks for helping me flesh this out a little more, Bo.
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