***This article was originally published online at www.pickafightcampaign.com***
5 days a week, at 8 in the morning, Jackie shows up at 340 Dominion Street and cooks lunch for 50-100 people who might not even know her name. On any given day, she can have as many as 14 or as few as 4 volunteers to help make soup, prepare lunch, set up the tables, serve lunch, tear down the tables, wash the dishes, and gather enough sanity to return the following day. This madness happens at the Ray of Hope soup kitchen, housed in the basement of St Augustine's Church, right here in our very own Moncton, New Brunswick. I've had her food, by the way. It's quite good. I'd recommend the shepherd's pie. I have never asked Jackie what she believes about eternal security or if she's spoken in tongues, but I believe that Jackie is like Jesus.
When I was in junior high, my youth group always took March Break and went to some far-off place where we could really make a difference, like NYC, or Washington DC, or Charlotte NC. Capital 'C' Cities meant there would be poverty there, and we could really help by cleaning their church pews, or support their economy by shopping and going to Six Flags amusement parks. In all honesty, we did some good things, but it always felt so remote and isolated, like a trip to the moon. One year, however, we decided to stay home and invest in our lower-case city by volunteering at food banks and soup kitchens during the day, and holding worship services at night. I spent one of the days with a few friends at the Ray of Hope soup kitchen. It was the first time that I realized that my town wasn't exempt from need. It took me 12 more years to realize that I wasn't exempt from responsibility.
Over the last several years, I've noticed a significant paradigm shift. I think it may have sprouted from our generation, but it's migrated. It isn't isolated to any age group or religious affiliation. It's on TV. It's hip.
People wanna save the world.
The superficial seems less selfish. Live 8, Live Earth and live chat about debt relief, AIDS medication funding, and peace-keeping troops to prevent genocide. Al Gore could be president. Heck...Bono could be president! People want to save the world (a world that seems to be shrinking by the minute). I think Christians want to do it 'cause they feel like Jesus wants them to. I'm not quite sure what makes everyone else so benevolent, but this desire to change the course of history is definitely not exclusive to the church. In fact, many would say that we are following rather than leading, but that can change. I have confidence that the church will eventually take the front lines in the battle. The question I have is this: What exactly IS the battle? Are we fighting ignorance or malevolence? Are we fighting hunger or greed? Are we fighting Africa or America? One thing I've noticed in myself recently is that I've been fighting the battle as though it were the Second World War; from a distance. I believed that to save the world we had to go overseas and fight there. We seemed so safe here, but I knew that somewhere in a country whose name I could barely pronounce, the threat loomed large, and the enemy was as real Hitler on a bad day. But Hitler doesn't live here.
People wanna save the world.
The world? What's our definition of "the world"? If I think of the world as a series of urban areas with varying socio-economic classes, I'm in trouble. If I think of the world as 7 continents full of rainforests and skyscrapers, I'm doomed. In the scope of such grandeur, what can a man do? But the world isn't made of buildings or trees or castes any more than the human body is made of the clothes it wears. Our "world" isn't our planet. Our world is made of people. Now, this is not exactly a comforting thought when you realize that there are about 6 billion of us roaming around this off-blue marble. Saving the world now becomes a daunting, if not impossible task. Again, what is our definition of "saving"? We know that we can't save someone's soul. We can possibly save them money, save them time, save their health, but not their souls. Only Christ can do that. In reality, it seems that the only thing I can really save the world from is myself.
Before you give up on me and my incoherent rambling, just give me 3 more paragraphs. I promise I'm wrapping up.
So, (by my arguable calculations) we can't save the world. This may seem depressing, but only if we feel we're somehow called to do so. If anyone can find a verse in the Bible commanding us to save the world, please let me know. We're called to take care of the earth in the Adam & Eve-ian sense. We're called to love our neighbor in the Good Samaritan-ian sense. We're called to go to all nations and teach them about new life in the Great Commission-ian sense. But in all circumstances, we can only be held responsible for our actions, not for their results. We're called to be salt and light. But if people close their mouths or eyes, it doesn't make us less salty or bright. We can't save the world, but we can change the world. The world changes when people change. We can change ourselves.
I know that, ultimately, the theological jury's out on whether we change ourselves or the Holy Spirit does it for us. Bottom line: the actions we take are still ours to make. Over the last few months, I've decided to start loving Jesus. I mean, I've felt affection for Jesus for years, but I John 5:3 (claiming that loving God is comprised of following His commands) always seemed to elude me. I sang my lungs out in church but avoided His teaching on evangelism, social justice, and true worship. This was largely due to the fact that I could too easily disassociate my world from the world where these things happened. Evangelism was done in Azerbaijan. We fed the poor in Brooklyn. All the sick moved to Calcutta, so Mother Theresa could take care of them. I worshiped God on Sunday morning. It wasn't until I realized that I can and should fulfill all these requirements here, now, at home, that I felt like my Sunday morning lyrics could make sense on Monday morning. I'm starting to see people/the world differently. Whenever I cut someone off in traffic, I'm not just aggravating an individual...I'm aggravating the world, and in a sense, Jesus. "Whatsoever ye do to the least of these" and all that stuff, right? Slowly but surely, this little thought is revolutionizing my life. I decided to start volunteering at the Ray Of Hope kitchen 1 day a week. I'm afraid of knives, but I usually end up cutting 50 lbs of turnip or something with a blade sharp enough to cut through bone. I'm getting over that fear. I look forward smelling what Jackie's cooking, or to hearing another of John's predictable and almost-off-color jokes. I'm starting to see Jesus in the faces of those on both sides of the serving line.
This may have been the long way 'round to make a point, but I have difficulty with "as the crow flies" reasoning. Living a fully socially responsible life is complicated. It encompasses how we spend our money and time, how we vote, how we pray. We can no longer afford to ignore what our personal and governmental spending habits do to third-world countries. Teenagers should still take trips to the inner-city. We need to pray for funds and guidance and people to relieve the bonfire that is AIDS in Africa. How can we ignore the Cambodian slave trade any more? Being the "kingdom come" can seem overwhelming, and I've got miles of narrow road to travel. But all of these complications and speculations boil down to the simplest of statements: To love Jesus, to change the world, we need to serve people. No one is exempt from this. This starts at home. This starts now.