Wednesday, February 22, 2006
Do You Care?
Jollyblogger quoted Eugene Peterson the other day.
The second is that when we do seek to help, we need to ask God for discernment in how best to do so. The most immediate response, particuarly in terms of relieving the pain is not always the best.
A surgeon inflicts harm for a greater benefit. A parent may let a child make a bad decision so the child may gain the wisdom only negative consequences can impart.
The caring through sin to manipulation cycle is only worsened when we prevent the "sufferer" from understanding their own role in their suffering.
We live in an age with little understanding of sin. That may, in part, be due to the fact that people often never have to bear the consequence of their sin. Parents support children that are lazy in school through their 20's. Sleep with the wrong person? - No problem, we have morning-after pills. Are you such a jerk, you have no friends? - You can always pretend to be someone else on the Interent.
Have you ever thought about that -- sin is pleasurable -- its the aftermath that let's us know it's sin. Doesn't that tell us that the most compassionate thing to do, at least in some circumstances, is to let someone experience that aftermath? Then they will come to understand their need for Christ.
I cannot think of a greater gift.
Related Tags: caring, sin, consequences, Jollyblogger, the gospel
So, "Teach us to care." We begin with a realization of our poverty: We do not know how to care. What we have been prayerlessly engaged in and glibly calling care, is not care. It is pity, it is sentimentality, it is do-goodism, it is ecclesiastical colonialism, it is religious imperialism. Caring, noble and commendable as it seems, is initiated by a condition that can and often does, twist it into something ugly and destructive.Two comments strike me. Firstly, isn't it amazing how sin turns even our noble impulses ugly.
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But there is another element in this scenario that is frequently missed and when missed, silently and invisibly squeezes all the cure out of care. The element is sin. The child with a bruised knee is a sinner.
[...]
The urgency and innocence of the care-evoking situation obscures the element of the condition that we must not leave in obscurity and that is this: we human beings learn early and quickly to acquire our expertise in using our pliight, whatever it is, to get those around us to do far more than get us through or over the conditions. We learn how to use the conditions of need as leverage in getting our own way. Not our health, not our maturity, not our peace, not justice, not our salvation, but our way, our willful way.
The second is that when we do seek to help, we need to ask God for discernment in how best to do so. The most immediate response, particuarly in terms of relieving the pain is not always the best.
A surgeon inflicts harm for a greater benefit. A parent may let a child make a bad decision so the child may gain the wisdom only negative consequences can impart.
The caring through sin to manipulation cycle is only worsened when we prevent the "sufferer" from understanding their own role in their suffering.
We live in an age with little understanding of sin. That may, in part, be due to the fact that people often never have to bear the consequence of their sin. Parents support children that are lazy in school through their 20's. Sleep with the wrong person? - No problem, we have morning-after pills. Are you such a jerk, you have no friends? - You can always pretend to be someone else on the Interent.
Have you ever thought about that -- sin is pleasurable -- its the aftermath that let's us know it's sin. Doesn't that tell us that the most compassionate thing to do, at least in some circumstances, is to let someone experience that aftermath? Then they will come to understand their need for Christ.
I cannot think of a greater gift.
Related Tags: caring, sin, consequences, Jollyblogger, the gospel
