mind in print

These photographs of albatross chicks were made in September 2009 on Midway Atoll, a tiny stretch of sand and coral near the middle of the North Pacific. The nesting babies are fed bellies-full of plastic by their parents, who soar out over the vast polluted ocean collecting what looks to them like food to bring back to their young. On this diet of human trash, every year tens of thousands of albatross chicks die on Midway from starvation, toxicity, and choking.

To document this phenomenon as faithfully as possible, not a single piece of plastic in any of these photographs was moved, placed, manipulated, arranged, or altered in any way. These images depict the actual stomach contents of baby birds in one of the world’s most remote marine sanctuaries, more than 2000 miles from the nearest continent.

~Chris Jordan
October 2009

http://www.chrisjordan.com/

My good friend Mackenzie Ervin contributed this piece in response to ‘On Doubt.’ I’m very grateful for her thoughts, and I know you will be too.

Blake wrote about doubt the other week, a doubt that I have become extremely familiar with in the past month. I have tasted cynicism and wrestled with faithlessness; I have ignored God’s gift of hope and love and comfort in times of loneliness and despair and bewilderment.

Throughout last semester, I struggled with weakness. Architecture studio overwhelmed me. I eventually got to the point where I had to lean on God just to wake up in the morning. But in my weakness, I found the strength of God. Despite how downtrodden I became in my stress, I still saw the joys of the Lord resonating all around me—that is, until the semester ended and I was able to stop and catch my breath. That was when I began to turn away from God.

No longer needing Him to carry me through the days of studio, I felt like I could manage just fine on my own. What a fool I was to think so! I’ve grown so far from my Savior that I am more miserable this winter break than I was all last semester. The more I look to the world to satisfy, the more empty and forsaken I feel. I have become a cynic, bewildered and unsure of anything.

Still, I remember days in the presence of God, filled with hope and companionship. I remember the fulfillment that I had always felt with God’s love in my heart.

I am torn between the pleasures of this world and the perfect peace of God. My soul knows only God fulfills, and my soul pants only for Him. Yet, my foolish, sinful desires argue contrarily. They try to convince me that the world will satisfy, if only I look harder for that satisfaction, if only I stray farther from God.

In juxtaposing the two different ways of living (with and without God), I can assuredly say that life with Christ is much more satisfying. While the things of this world never seem to complete me, I feel whole with God in my heart and His Word on my mind. I find reason for living beyond my selfish ambition.

Praise God that He is faithful even when we are not—He pursues us even when we run far from Him. Already God is using friends like Blake to bring me back into His presence and remind me of His fulfillment. Before composing these thoughts, I was almost sure I was done with God; only while dwelling on the differences between life with and without a Savior did I realize how wrong I have been.

All this to say, “Let us rejoice in our tribulations, for tribulation brings perseverance; and perseverance, proven character; and proven character, hope.” ( Romans 5 )

And, “Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? […] But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us.” ( Romans 8 )

-Mackenzie Ervin

Here is a short version of a long story:

This summer I was very far from the Spirit.  Very far.  I hated Him.

I perceived Him as a narcissistic entity that enjoyed sending people to hell and smirked as we suffered through the pain that He dished out to us.  My heart was as hard as a rock.  I was convinced of the existence of Him, but I hated what I saw to be His characteristics.  I thought that worshipping this Being that was responsible for inflicting so much pain on humanity was the dumbest thing I had ever heard.  Really?  God is good and God could have stopped that tsunami/genocide/cancer/earthquake that killed thousands and thousands of people?  I didn’t get it (and I still don’t).

I became cynical and bitter.  I was joyless and lonely.

Then He took my heart of stone and shattered it into a million pieces.

Recently I was reading  The Pugilist at Rest by Thom Jones.  It is a collection of short stories.  In one of these short stories, a character is describing the faith of another character.  He talks about how the other character describes his faith like this:

“My head doesn’t get it but my heart bleeds for Jesus.”

I think that is what I have realized over the past semester.  The Spirit hasn’t given me all of the answers to my questions and doubts, but He has shown me what it is like to have my heart softened and nurtured by Him.  When He is breathing peace into my lungs and I allow Him to hug my neck and hold me in His arms and sway with me as I want so badly to run away, I know that He is good.

I can tell you with full sincerity and truth that I have experienced first hand what life is like far from Christ and what life is like close to Him, and being close to Him is infinitely better.

I can’t tell you why shit happens under the watchful eye of a loving God.  I can’t.  But I am convinced of the goodness of God.  Sometimes I don’t even know why.  I just know that He is good.  I know that He loves us.  I know that He weeps when people die and when people are hurting.  I just know that He does.

Do I still doubt?  Of course I do.  I still get frustrated with the idea of hell and I want so badly to rationally understand everything that He is.

But my soul finds comfort and rest in His refuge and it finds emptiness and loneliness in my own logic.

What changed from this summer until now?  I stopped trying to get it with my head and started understanding with my heart.

As I close this post, I want to write a prayer from St. Francis of Assisi (from the original French version):

Translated, it is this:

I’m going to make a confession.  I tend to judge (who I consider to be) extremely wealthy people.  This is a sin that I struggle with a lot.  I like to blame other people for the problems in society, and take none of that blame myself.  Jesus speaks strongly against this when he says to “first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.”  I don’t do this well.  At all.

I look at mansions and I can’t believe how selfish they are for buying something so excessive.  I look at extravagant cars and I can’t believe they would have the nerve to spend money on something that trivial.  I look at someone who wears expensive clothes and I can’t believe that person would actually invest into something so temporary.  I look at people who eat ridiculously priced food and wonder how in the world they can justify such an act.

I am a complete fool.

My heart has built up plenty of idols that I have dedicated excessive amounts of time to.  I put much more of an emphasis than I should on my things.  I wear clothes so that people will perceive me a certain way and I care obsessively about my self-image.  I eat out too much and give much more of myself to myself than to others.  All of the things that I am critical about in other people exist in my own heart. To a much greater extent.

I had a reality check today.  I think that whenever I read the teachings of Jesus that warn about the rich having a difficult time entering the kingdom, I have the image of the mansion, nice car, expensive clothing, and the pricey food appear in my brain.  I don’t imagine Jesus talking to me.  I think of Him talking to everyone else.

The truth is, He is talking to me. I’m rich.  We’re rich.  Filthy rich.

The richest 25% of the world’s population receives 75% of the world’s income, even when adjusting for Purchasing Power Parity. The poorest 75% of the population share just 25% (http://ucatlas.ucsc.edu/income.php).

Most people in rural areas who live in extreme poverty actually survive on significantly less than $1.08 per day. Recent calculations by the World Bank show that the mean income of those living below the poverty line in rural areas throughout the world is just 77 cents per day (http://www.wri.org/chart/global-average-income-rural-poor).

I sold something on the internet for $525 recently.  In a single transaction, I made more than a large number of people in this world make in an entire year.

I think that Jesus is warning me with these passages about the dangers of seeing material wealth as security.  I think he is warning all of us with these passages.  He is serious about not letting our possessions own us.  He is also serious about us not judging others.  We must look at our own hearts and search for the selfishness that exists there so that we can eliminate it and live free and generously.

I feel that as Christians, we love to involve the life and teachings of Jesus into whatever political views that we hold.  We like to say that Jesus would vote a certain way or that Jesus would campaign for a certain person.  We use his words and we make them grounds for our personal political party (or non-party) allegiance, with the assumption that if Jesus was physically alive walking this earth today he would agree with our take on everything from whether we should be taxed a certain amount to how the government should regulate marriage and to whether ‘Under God’ should remain in the pledge.    A great deal of this was extremely evident a little over a year ago during election time, and it is evident now as well.

Personally, I think that most of my political views will stem from how I perceive the teachings of Jesus and the scriptures, but there is a danger in claiming that Jesus would agree whole-heartedly with my political beliefs.

I honestly don’t think Jesus cared about politics while He was on the earth.

I think He was strictly sold out to serving others.  He said it Himself when he stated “the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

Jesus came not to prove a political point or to preach how we should feel about government.  Jesus came to change the world from the bottom up.  No matter if we believe that the government should or shouldn’t tax us, He calls us to give all of ourselves to others.  No matter if we think that ‘Under God’ should or shouldn’t remain in the pledge, He calls us to pursue Him with all that we have.  No matter what kind of stance we take on how the government should regulate marriage, we are called to live a life free of judgmental spirits.

Don’t get me wrong, I think that Jesus calls us to stand hard against all types of injustice, including political wrong-doings. I believe that there are great deals of people in politics who are doing the will of God.  I also think that there are a great number of politically active citizens that are wholeheartedly sold out to the loving mission of the Spirit.

But ultimately, the mission and message of Jesus is so much bigger, so much better, and so much more revolutionary than the political system.  We aren’t called to be political people who happen to be Christians.  We also are not called to be Christians who happen to be political people.

We are called to simply be followers of Jesus and lovers of people.

Let me preface this piece by stating that there are followers of Jesus who are doing amazing things and living the gospel in accordance to how it is written.  These people are giving all of themselves to Christ, living generously, and caring selflessly for the oppressed.  I worry, however, that caring for the hurting is becoming just a trendy thing for Christians to be interested in and not participative in.

‘Justice’ is a buzzword in progressive Christian circles.  It is a term that is becoming stylized and not realized by a portion of the Christian community.  I worry that caring for the oppressed, the downtrodden, the widow, and the orphan is transforming into something that we like to talk about because of the good that it does for our personal brands, and not something that we fully participate in to bring about tangible change.  I struggle with the conflict of this daily.  I am much more prone to volunteer if I can tell people that I am doing so.  I am more willing to buy socially conscious products if they are branded as such.  I selfishly struggle with wanting people to know that I took a trip to serve the poor in Africa so that they will see me as a person who takes trips to Africa, and not so that they will want to go too.  I wear clothes that contain protest messages and desire tattoos that illustrate how much I care about socially relevant issues.  Bottom line is that I want people to perceive me as compassionate instead of me actually having to be compassionate.

Recently I walked into a popular department store and saw a shirt for sale that said ‘Poverty Sucks.’  I think we all agree with the message, but what does purchasing that shirt do to aid in making ‘poverty suck’ less?  I am worried that some of the Christian community is living with this type of t-shirt mentality.  We buy things to show that we care and we publish social justice related material to our social networking sites, but we let the extent of caring for our neighbors stop at this. I don’t mean to say that these things are inherently bad, but they aren’t the only steps in the call on our lives to be unquenchably compassionate. I believe that it is becoming trendy to care, and this has the potential to be counter-productive to tangible change.  Christ’s call on our lives is not to be fashionable but to be full of compassion.  It means giving our money, time, and voices whole-heartedly to the cause of a selfless Savior rather than using these things to further the fame of our own names.

In the gospel of Saint Matthew, Jesus says the following: “When you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing.”  By this He means that we are not to give ourselves to the hurting if we are doing so for the advancement of our own namesake. Do we care about people or do we care about what those people will do for how others perceive us?

I pray that we will strive to make compassion a lifestyle and not a fashion statement.