Last night I was in the Humble Bean(the on capus coffee shop) reading a book for one of my classes today. The jist of the book is all about poverty in America and couple chapters I was reading we addressing the issue of health insurence in the US. I was having a hard time reading cause I was often iterrupted by my brain trailing off and thinking about what I was reading. the chapter was giving statistics of how many people in the US do not have health insurence and reasons why. ON eof the guys in a couple of my classes is a strong supporter of writing letters to our senators about the injust happening in the world. He and I are both in a club of campus called Justice Matters which provides information about injustices in our world and also provides an opportunity and supplies to write letters to our senators about taking action. Last year we wrote letters concerning the issues in Darfur as well as the issues with sex trade and the kidnappings connected to that. All this to say that last night I struck up a conversation with this guy(Micah) about how I have a hard time not feeling fatalistic about all the problems and how it seems never ending. I asked him how the letters we write can make a difference. He responded with stating he understood where I was coming from, and that it is worth our time and to not feel like it is each individual's responsibility to address every injustice that plagues our world today.
After I left the coffee shop my mind was still cranking away at injustice. I was walking back to the other side of campus with a friend and starting discussing what I was thinking. We started talking about an assignment we have for "New Testament Prophets". We have discussed in class if there are modern day prophets and as and how the prophets we read about in the Bible were extremely bold, at times seemingly fearless, and they brought attention to the injustices of their time. So our prof is assigning us the task of finding a way that each of us in the class should look for a way that we can be a "prophetic voice" in our community. One of my fellow theology majors stated that he was going to have to grow some "prophetic balls" to pull this one off. Blunt but true that this could be a costly assginment that will need some boldness. So me and TIm, who I was walking back to the other side of capus with talked about some of the problems we see with our community within Dordt. I threw out the issue of our shallow and hanbitual way of living in relation to eachother. Who do we define as our friends and in relation to those people how well do we know them? A couple weeks ago the praise and worhsip team I am on played on a wednesday night and afterwards I was cleaning up the keyboard I used and someone I have known for the past 2 years here at Dordt came up to me and stated, "I didn't know you played piano you played really well!". My first thought was, "are you kidding me?". But this just further proved how much we are in the dark when it comes to how well we know eachother around here. Even the things we do know( where home is, favorite color and food and their current complaints about anything and everything) are nothing that falls in the category of meaningful.
So me and TIm continued our conversation in the stairway of the building he lives in for another 20 minutes and the only way I could describe how I felt towards this lack of compassion or caring, this fake genuity...I was hurt. I know many people feel this way. Yesterday I was walking past a couple people on the way to my apartment and said "hey" as I passed to at least accknoledge that they existed, and as I passed by one of them mumbled out "How's it going?". I didn't respond because by the time he had finished his question he was a couple feet behind me and walking in the other direction. It took me a second to realize what had just happened, but I stopped dead in my tracks and turned around. I watched as the 2 guy continued their conversation they had before I said "hey" a few seconds before. "How's it going?" he had no intention sticking around to show any interest in how I was doing. Now I don't blame him because this sort of passing greeting is something we all have filed into to our habitual responses along with fine, good, hey, yo, howdy and whatever else.
I wonder if the phrase "you don't know Jack" was a sort of response to this issue. Maybe somebody really didn't know Jack and a friend of Jack's spoke up about it. I think I am going to address this injustice in our community with a prophetic act of some sort, but I am not quite sure how yet. I might take a survey of random people walking by and ask them questions like what do they look for in their friendships, and maybe follow that up with asking who their best friend is and what their frined is passionate about. I don't really know yet, but something like that.
Another thing me and Tim talked about was as a result of this impersonal behavior that is so common, I then wondered what kinds of hurts are not being addressed in the lives of the individuals on this "Christian" campus because we do not have the slightest care about anything besides ourselves? There has got to be a lot of hurting people on this campus, and I don't think that Dordt is the only place this is true. Furthermore I think the church is doing a horrible job of addressing this issue, and this ball is totally in the church's court.
No wonder it's so easy to think fatalistically.
1 comment:
Wow, Joel. This is a great post -- lots to think about and lots of insight. I wanted to comment that although you're right that we need to be seeking others out, as individuals we need to be more transparent and willing to show who we are. Without both, we continue to be stranger with the people we encounger everyday.
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