On my walk this morning, I was thinking and praying about all the brokenness in and around me. Specifically, I think of all the injustice I encounter and how our culture condones and sometimes even promotes it. I started to build a list of some of the things in this category, but the point is not what is on the list, but that there is a list in the first place. Each of us can think of many injustices that we see daily.
Then to further complicate the matter and frustrate me in the process, the church sometimes contributes to the problem,
- We gossip and call it “asking for prayer”
- We shun those who fall into sin and call it discipline or the pursuit of holiness
- We put pastors under economic and psychological stress and then wonder why they burn out or fall into sin
- Sometimes we create a culture that promotes harmony to the point that we treat codependency as a fruit of the Spirit.
- At the other extreme, the church can create a culture where it is acceptable to be angry all the time.
While walking I was reminded that I am good at finding excuses to justify my sinful response to the injustice. I can become passive when I should be active. I can say things that are not helpful or uplifting (i.e. complaining). I can become part of the problem rather than part of the solution.
As I considered all this, a sonnet by John Donne came to mind:
Batter my heart, three-person’d God, for you
John Donne’s Holy Sonnet XIV
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp’d town to another due,
Labor to admit you, but oh, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captiv’d, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov’d fain,
But am betroth’d unto your enemy;
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.
Donne gets at the fact that the first thing that I need to do in response to the injustice around me is to seek God to replace the injustice and sin in my own heart with his love.
Rather than responding in anger and manipulation, I need to respond in love
Rather than responding in passivity, and hoping the problem disappears, I need to respond in love.
Rather than responding in numbing behaviors such as busyness, hobbies, and recreational activities, I need to respond in love.
The problem is that responding in love is so messy and often inconvenient.
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