both and

In response to vast and pervasive social injustice, moral disintegration, violence, greed, war, selfishness and inequality…

I know that we can’t just change everything over night. And while there are changes that we can make in our own lives, I also know it is complicated and even the smallest change is costly. It is hard. I am dependent on things; oil, food, clothes and I don’t always know where those things come from and how they got to me. When it comes down to it we still have to get to work, we still have to eat, and we still have to dress ourselves.

In thinking about all of the evil (known, unknown and ignored) part of me wants to just run. Run from this place, from the greed, from the privilege, the convenience. The reality of the cost of those things has become too great. Cheap gas, cheap clothes, cheap food…none of it is worth the lives it costs. Real people die so that my exceedingly high standard of living can be maintained. Those people have families, their mothers’ cry just like ours. They have birthdays and first dates. They are not nameless. Our country contribute to their fate. I participate in it and it makes me sick.

As much as I want to get away from this place and this lifestyle another part of me knows that nothing will change if we walk away from the problem. But where does this leave us? Do we sulk all day about the effects of our lifestyle on the rest of the world? Do we send money and let the suffering remain distant and faceless? Do we stay home and pray about it? Don’t get me wrong, the last thing I want to due is heap on the guilt. No one needs that. But little of what we (I) am doing is working. I know there is more. So where does this leave me? I think it leaves me where I started…in the middle of a life with Christ. When I grow to know God more deeply my life becomes conformed to His and I learn to more faithfully love my neighbor as myself (and everyone is my neighbor). We all know what the Biblical description of love is, but these days I can’t help but think what love is not. Love is not torture, love is not human trafficking, it is not 20 hour work days, or sex slaves, it is not dirty drinking water, ethnic cleansing, or exploitation. It is not idle and it certainly doesn’t pretend that it is separate from the suffering. So here I am in the middle of a life with Christ…how is that the answer.

The Christian life is at once focused inward and outward. We seek our Creator individually (and corporately) and we live our lives outwardly as He has told us to. The mystery, for me, has been that when my individual seeking turns from an intellectual pursuit to a subscription of the heart (a true belief) then the life I know I am called to live comes more naturally, and the more time I spend time with the One I believe in, the more natural it becomes. True belief is more than agreeing that God is who He says He is. It is living like that is true. A re-orientation of my life.

The great thing is that this way of thinking does not require a mature, time-tested relationship with God before outward living can and should take place. This life is both and. Both personal seeking and outward action in obedience. So where do we start when it comes to living justly? I won’t pretend that I know the conclusive answer but I think I have a start. It’s not one or the other because life with God causes action. So, we start on the streets, looking after the widow and the orphan and we start talking to God about who He is and how he feels about us. And it’s one step at a time, where He wants to go, and as fast or as slow as He chooses.

…Your Kingdom come. Your will be done in my life, in all lives and in all the earth, as it is in heaven. Amen.