Thoughts on caring

Haiti...

It is a place I think I had heard of half a dozen times before an earthquake hit.
Not really big on my list. Maybe like Bermuda it is some place tropical I might visit one day, but definitely not on the radar. Now I can't turn on a TV, get on the internet, or pick up a newspaper without seeing, hearing, or reading about this country. I have some thoughts that have been fermenting for about a week, so here goes.

I find myself struggling to care. I didn't care two weeks ago when many people were starving and in poverty in Haiti, why should I now? Does it take a huge death toll and a crazy natural disaster to get me to care? What about everyone else? Are we all so calloused? It is not that helping isn't right and good (it is!) I just wonder if I am hopping on the band wagon because caring about Haiti is "cool" right now, and if I admit I don't care than I am an uncaring, unloving person. Two weeks ago if I said I didn't care about Haiti I probably would have had people agree with me that they didn't either. Now I feel like I am "forced" to care just because something bad happened. Good political cartoon that echos this thought.click here

I don't want to get scammed. How do I know that my "fill in dollar amount here" is going to be used properly? I would rather not support thieves, and it takes time and energy to find an organization that isn't going to abuse the funds I give them. Sometimes I am lazy and don't want to do the background checking I should before giving and don't want to get scammed, so I just don't give and rationalize it by calling it "being responsible".

I see a pattern in life that bothers me and I was happy to see something different in an e-mail from my church...

"But, I felt that our best hope was prayer and so thank you for interceding." Mark Driscoll.

Now that is faith in God. Not money, not our efforts, but prayer being our best hope. Wow. How can I serve the God this guy serves and not the God Pat Robertson serves? (see below)

Back to that pattern I see...something bad happens in the world, we feel emotionally moved even though we are safe comfortable and happy, we are asked to give money because we are American and rich, we give it under pressure with a side dish of guilt thrown in, our consciences are soothed and we remain calloused, cold, isolated people who can't talk to the guy next to us who can't eat. Now don't get me wrong everything people are doing for Haiti is great they really need it right now, I just wonder about my heart and how my motivations work. I wonder if other people's motivations work that way too. Often I give out of pressure and not because I care. I am looking at my life pretty carefully right now and I wonder what my life says I care about. Wallets and hearts are attached and I just want mine to reflect Christ, as if my wallet is the wallet of Christ. Working my job as if Christ works there. Did people see Jesus working in a hospital laboratory today? Because really I am not in Haiti I am in Seattle. I can't touch or feed a Haitian person at all today, but I can touch and help people in Seattle. Am I doing what I can where I can, or am I just being selfish? It is harder to care where you live because you have to give more and have more to lose. I find that scary sometimes...here's $20 for the Haitians now stop bugging me conscience. And we call that "caring". Ouch.

I really need God to help me love others. I really need God to help me care where I am at because right now I am doing a pretty poor job of reflecting his love.

Pat Robertson is wrong!
Top 8 Biblical reasons Pat is out to lunch
1. Jesus said He came to "Seek and save the lost" Luke 19:10
2. God always warns people using prophets about direct punishment before the hammer comes down. Usually to give people time to repent and turn to Him. God seems to be loving in this way. See the books of Jonah, Jeremiah, Isiah, Amos, etc.
3. Assumes that some sins (obviously that we Americans are not committing!) are worse than others and we can know exactly how God judges them. I mean it isn't like American's are sex obsessed, greedy, selfish, idol worshipers, right?! Also assumes God judges sin here and now instead of "being patient" 2 Peter 3:9
4. Pat Robertson is a false prophet because of his predictions (click here) and should not be listened to. Deuteronomy 18:22
5. Jesus's response to natural disaster (Luke 13:1-5) was not condemn people, but to remind people that we all die and to urge men to repent of sin and be reconciled to God. It is a message of hope since this world is broken and will never be perfect.
6. Pat never read the book of Job. Job a righteous man get everything stripped from him even though he really didn't do anything to deserve what happened to him. Pat sounds more like Job's friends who assumed that there was something wrong with Job to have experienced the calamity that he did. (They were wrong by the way.)
7. God is not a direct, cause = effect, God. His ways are higher than ours and sometimes...we don't know why things happen. Holy crap we aren't God?! Surprise!
8. Pat's God is unjust. If God only punishes sin once (Him being just) and there were Christians in Haiti, then according to Pat God has just punished them twice. Once when He punished Christ for the sins of the world, and then when He caused the earthquake. Pat's God has just punished someone twice for sin, is that just? I doubt it.

The Why

This is going to be a pretty raw blog post so I hope you are strapped in and ready to fly.

I have been in deep thought for about two weeks now. When I get this way it doesn't show on the outside, but there is an under current of primary thought that consumes me when I am alone. When things are quiet there are those moments when thoughts come out of the woodwork and I wonder, truly wonder about life.

I realized recently that no matter what we do, good or evil, it just falls apart. There is so much insane attention in the media to people's plights, but is anything really accomplished besides a gut reaction and good entertainment? I mean really what good does knowing about something do if you can do nothing about it? Go deeper. What have I accomplished in life? What has anyone accomplished in life? Even if you are the wisest or richest person all your actions, all your living...fades. Can anyone tell me who the ruler of England was 300 years ago? Even if you could what difference does it make? Kingdoms rise, kingdoms fall. Go deeper. Of all the action I have taken some are good and some are evil. All have an affect on someone else, but I can't say what or how far reaching those effects of action go. If perfection is what is required then even if I am Mother Teresa, it still isn't enough. Go deeper. What is the point of life? Everything I do no matter how noble, no matter how selfless is tainted. Nothing I ever do will escape some sort of human failing or taint. Chew on that for a moment. It really breaks things down. If you are a legalist you are really screwed, if you are religious you should really question why you do all the things you do. If you are irreligious and don't care then you are just making things worse.

Now as a caveat I will say that no matter how much I question I still believe what I believe. None of my questions are really going to change that. I just constantly need to know why. It is just who I am.

Christians (of which I would say I am one) believe in a eternal, all present, all knowing, all controlling God who is good. Now in some sense what should someone with all the power in the world do? Shouldn't those with the most power take care of those without it? This levels quite a responsibility on God, but lets flip it around. If I created a robot (or animate thinking thing) shouldn't that robot be subservient to me? Do I really owe that robot anything, or rather does not the created thing owe everything to the creator? Although this rubs against our human pride if God is who Christians say He is then these posits are well posed. What does God owe me as a created being and what do I owe Him? If God is really big and I am really tiny then doesn't He have a responsibility to help me out? Is God really loving? What is the ultimate good? These are things I think about all the time.

For all you creative people out there do you realize you have actually never created anything? Do you realize that none of our thoughts are original? Everything we think of is just a copy, or an improvement on something. We cannot conceptualize something that we have not already seen. We just run around like children doing our best to copy something and make it look alive. We cannot make something live. Our closest attempt is procreation and even that is a process that has already been established.

For all you people that think you control something you should watch the Bourne trilogy and see how easy it is to kill people. (Ok I'll admit it's a pretend movie, but if a government thinks you are a big enough threat they will kill you, or at least make an attempt at hunting you down.) We control nothing. We can only destroy we cannot make something alive. Try making time stop, or changing a single hair from black to white. Our pitiful attempts at controlling even nature are laughable.

For all you techno geeks out there, it seems that the further we get in technology the more problems we have created for ourselves. From ethical dilemmas in health care, to the outstanding job we are doing polluting everything. Do we even know what a "clean" river is anymore? So all that silicon production for all those electronic toys that is never recycled what about that? Technology only seems to solve one problem to produce another greater and harder problem. Sorry no matter how cool things get we will still be wasteful, inefficient, organic creatures.

For all you green people out there. Stop whining about pollution and go live in the woods. What's that? Oh you don't want to give up your comfortable communications, heating, air conditioning, and modern convenience? Then shut it. Every internet blog about stopping pollution, being more "green", recycling, or any other of the silly things they have you believing is ridiculous. Wait how did you get that power? How did you get that computer? How did you get your food? Follow any process long enough and you will realize how "ungreen" every single thing you do is. If you are not living in the woods in a basic subsistence level lifestyle you are the biggest hypocrite I have ever seen. Trying to be "green" is pointless.

All this just to say if you pick a topic, point, or position what is the long term point of it all? Long term, like three million years after I die long term thinking. Too long you say? The how about three thousand? Three hundred? Thirty? Three? What affect can I have on any of it? What does any of this have to do with God?

What is God up to? From the creation of humans to where we are now what is the big picture? If Jesus Christ is the best God can think of what does that say about God? What does He want? If Jesus was God incarnate then feeding everyone in the word is not the point. He didn't do that even though he could have. Healing everyone of every disease is not the point either. He could have done that to and didn't. Sheltering everyone in the world is no the point either. He didn't do that (even though he was a carpenter). Christ said "I have come to seek and to save the lost." (Luke 19:10), "I have come that they may have life and have it to the full." (John 10:10) What was God doing in Christ? It is almost ridiculous in the very inception. God comes, lives a subsistence life. Builds tables and chairs for approximately 17 (Edit: I originally said 27 years! Sorry bad math skills late at night) years. Preaches and does miracles for three and then dies, rises again, and ascends to heaven. Huh? This is the greatest good from an all powerful God. I can't really wrap my mind around it. Why? Why, why, why? I don't get it. What is God after? What does he want?

This is where I live. Hope the discomfort is evident and shared.