Last month I spent a day in New York City. As the
return train to Summit left Penn Station, I spotted a former neighbor walking
up the aisle, and I motioned to him to join me. My friend Tom and I had
first met years before in a Bible study class.
After a little catching up about our respective families, I
remembered that Tom had been an engineer, employed by a prominent internet
communications company. Predictably, we were soon asking each other how
our work was going. I proudly admitted that I had retired a few years
earlier, but I was keeping quite busy. Tom said he was now doing much of
his work in foreign countries, and that he had recently returned from
Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal. I remembered that a huge earthquake had
devastated that country last April. Tom said that it had killed nearly 9,000
people and had badly damaged the infra-structure of the country.
"It didn't help," Tom said, "that the country
is in the middle of the Himalayan Mountains, quite remotely placed between
India and China." Tom had seen widespread ruin across the country,
and many dead people and animals along the sides of roads, and bodies being
collected from collapsed buildings and houses.
"And it made me realize," Tom continued,
"that we are so lucky. We are so lucky to be living here and
not there." He had some tears in his eyes when he said that.
He said he was sort of overwhelmed with gratitude.
I listened quietly, and then said, "You have so much
gratitude, but then what?"
"We're just so lucky that we live here instead of
there," Tom said.
"Really? That's it?" I said to Tom.
I paused and then asked a question: "When you
witness suffering and then declare yourself to have achieved salvation in the
"religion of gratitude" for having good luck, do you think maybe you
have fallen short of what God would have you do?"
I paused to think about my next words. "While I
think God does want us to feel gratitude," I said, "I do not think
God particularly wants us to feel 'lucky'. I think God wants us to
witness pain and suffering and, rather than just feeling 'lucky', God wants us
to get angry and then want to do something about it."
I continued: "Feeling 'lucky' is like saying that
the gods pick one person to live in the suburbs of the richest nation on earth,
and another person to starve. In a worldview of 'luck,' any righteous
behavior by us is just not relevant. 'Luck' suggests that we are
powerless and unable to change anyone else's "bad luck".
Furthermore, at some point the worldview of 'luck' just doesn't pan out.
At some point one realizes that this religion of 'luck' isn't enough, and we
long for something as outrageous as a new heaven and a new earth."
"I think I hear what you are saying," Tom
responded. "What is missing from the "religion of 'luck' "
worldview is the perspective that we get in a Christian community, that would
take us from thinking ourselves merely 'lucky', to actually doing something
about the hardships of other peoples' lives. At some point, if one thinks
about it at all, the person with the self-made religion of 'luck', will use his
God-given brain and the wisdom of hard experience, and start to ask angry and
provocative questions, and see holes in the spirituality of status quo.
We were now approaching Summit station, so I needed to say
something that would wrap up our discussion: "The civil rights
movement didn't happen because people felt 'lucky'. The hungry don't get
fed, the homeless don't get sheltered, and the world doesn't change because
people who are doing okay feel 'lucky'. We need more. As Christians
we expect more, way more, like a new heaven and a new earth, and because we
follow Jesus, we had better expect to be involved in making it happen,
side-by-side with other people.
_______________________________________________________________________
These thoughts are brought to you by CPC's Adult
Spiritual Development Team, hoping to encourage you to pursue some personal
growth this summer at C.PC
_______________________________________________________________________
No comments:
Post a Comment