mind in print

“everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself” -leo tolstoy

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.

Our country just decided to send 30,000 humans into a country across the ocean and all we care about is how a golfer got in a car accident.

Christmas. With Meaning.

I am working on an Archival Research Project for a class. Basically this means go through boxes of primary documents relating to a specific person or historical time and write about it.

My project is on Jack Jackson, an underground comix artist from the 60’s. That’s kind of besides the point, I guess.

The way archival research works at this particular library is that you ask for a box of primary things relating to a topic and they bring it to you.

I was sitting at a table and a librarian wheeled out a box containing everything worth keeping from the life of Jack Jackson. In this box were his letters and sketchbooks and manuscripts and photographs and journals, to name just a few things. I had no background on Jack Jackson before I opened this box, but now that I have I feel like I know what he was all about.

I wonder what would happen if someone took all of the important things from my life and put them into a box. I wonder what would happen if the librarian wheeled my box out to someone who had never met me. I wonder what kind of assumptions they would make about me by the things that I had created and treasured.

I think we should think about this more. Do the things we create and treasure reflect our souls? I think that they do. And even if you don’t think they do, if you are ever important enough to have your stuff in a box at the archival research library, that will reflect your soul to someone else.

Let’s live to create and treasure things that would make an outstanding box to look at.

I never grow weary of looking at the stars. Especially when there isn’t much artificial light around and the city is nowhere to be seen.

Two friends and I were looking at the stars on Saturday night and we were talking about the fact that some of the stars we see don’t exist anymore. The light takes so long to reach earth that by the time we see it, some of them have burnt out and disappeared. We don’t see stars as dead. We see them as alive.

I want to live my life like a star. I think we all do, really.

Let’s live lives that will shine brightly years after we take our last breaths. Light years down the road let’s have our legacies touch the hearts of people who never knew us. We can be perceived as living difference-makers even after we have no breaths in our lungs.

Let’s be so radical in our faithfulness and our compassion and our humbleness that we seek to live lives of greatness.

Live to die to shine like stars.

I ate dinner at Kerby Lane here in Austin.

It was sad, though. I was sitting with a friend by the window and directly in front of us was a billboard with the face of a starving American child. The billboard was designed to show how hunger is a legitimate problem in America.

I feel like I don’t give much thought to the idea of hunger being an issue in America because I am so focused on allowing the problem to be so far away from me (like Africa) that I don’t deeply think that it is an issue that could be affecting my immediate neighbors.

Food just doesn’t taste as good when I am stuffing my face full of pancakes and the image of someone who can’t eat is staring at me.

I wonder what would happen if I lived my life like billboards of people being affected by my consumption were staring at me all the time.

I don’t mean to be a downer. Really, I don’t.

I think there is a great deal of hope and freedom in living life constantly being stared down by metaphorical public service announcements. I know that it makes me more grateful.

I think I ate too many pancakes.

I was sitting on the bus recently when we were stopped at a bus stop.

The bus driver opened the front door to let new people on, but he had forgotten to open the back door and some trying to exit were gathered waiting to leave.

The bus driver didn’t immediately realize the mistake and someone from the back yelled, “Open the back door!”

He didn’t hear them.

Then everyone waiting to get off of the bus yelled in an angry and overly ferocious tone “THE BACK DOOR!”

It was like they were reprimanding a murderer.

I bet if there was just one person waiting to get off the bus they would have waited to let the driver realize his mistake or they would have been kind to him.

Humans feed off of each other. Emotional responses tend to be more extreme when we have people around us who feel the same way. I think we should channel that anger towards productive things like being angry with oppression and injustice.

We can either use our mob mentality anger for productively changing the world, or we can use it to be unnecessarily mean to the bus driver.