From my journal on a Monday morning: A Chinese proverb: “Not the cry but the flight of the wild duck leads the flock to fly and follow.” My translation: talk is cheap and abundant, but courageous efforts are to be valued.
Challenging people to follow Jesus is important. But living like a Jesus-follower is equally significant. Rufus Jones describes some great Quaker saints as “invincibly fixed in purpose, genuinely heroic, ready for great deeds, possessed of infinite confidence in God, and withal tender in love and humility … they were triumphantly beautiful spirits … and the beautiful life in the long run is dynamic and does inherit the earth.” I pray to know people who fit this description; I pray to be one of them.
Now that the Lord’s day has ended and worship and preaching and Christian programming is over, a fresh question appears: “What is to be done?” Not: How good do I feel? Not: How much more do I know? Not: How much busier can I become? But: What is to be done? And I recall St. Francis’s words to his friends just before he died: “Brothers, we have not done enough; we must start all over again.”
Today the answer to that question depends on whether or not I’m willing to press my faith in Jesus into issues that have to do with economics, justice, war and peace, human suffering, the environment, work-ethics, loyalty and cooperation, and the proper stewardship of my assets. Lord, let me be a “duck” unafraid to fly out on the point. Rebuke me if all I do is squawk.
From Monday to Saturday life turns to things (to name a few) which center on work, economics, the social mobile, the environment, conflict and peace, and human suffering. What is to be done? I’m not smart enough to come up with any ground-breaking ideas about these things.
If I say I oppose war, someone reminds me that Saddam was a murderer of millions. Thus war is justified. If I say I’m concerned about the poor, someone says we can only do so much. If I say I grieve over the millions in our world who suffer from AIDS, someone will say that they all needed to be more careful in their sexual practices. Result: I end up saying nothing because I fear I’ll lose friends, opportunities to serve, and—oh, the humanity of it!—be called a fool.
Then it hits me: prophets were rarely practical. They had ideas but felt little obligation to come up with practical answers. When they smelled wrong, they said it.
I am not a prophet nor the son of prophet (this sounds familiar), but I smell wrong. I and the people among whom I dwell care little that Iraqis are dying as well as Americans. We say we’re concerned about AIDS but do little or demand little response from our national leaders. Poverty does not get heavy attention in our pulpits. The planet is being ravaged (seas, air, land) and the Christian movement is silent. The rich (and most of us are among them) are gobbling up resources at an obscene rate and denying them to the less-rich and, even more tragically, to our grandchildren. The nation is back in debt, and it’s OK to most Evangelicals because the President is a Republican and a professing Christian. I say it’s all wrong, and my only practical solution for the moment is to say that I think it’s wrong, do some creative voting, and try to make a little difference in my daily life.
How many friends do I lose by making this portion of my journal public?
You’re Probably Not Going to Like This Piece: Get on the net and find Nicholas D. Kristof’s column in the New York Times on August 15, 2003, entitled “Believe it, or Not.” “One of the most poisonous divides (in modern society) is the one between intellectual and religious America,” Kristof writes. “I do think that we’re in the middle of another religious Great Awakening, and that while this may bring spiritual comfort to many, it will also mean a growing polarization within our society.” There’s just enough in this column to make thinking Christ-followers, well, think.
Books that set the pace: When I used to run competitively, we often had a pacer who ran the first half of the race and set a rigorous pace for those bent on finishing the course in record time. Here are two books that set the pace intellectually and spiritually. Free Press has just published the fifth edition of Everett Rogers’s Diffusions of Innovation, the classic treatment on the subject of change. It’s costly (even in paperback), but it’s a worthy addition to a serious library. I am presently sweating my way through Shaping a Christian Worldview (David Dockery, ed., Broadman & Holman). Dare I be so crass as to liken it to the old fashioned laxative my mother used to prescribe for me the minute I sniffled? In other words, the book is cleaning out my thinking. And—chapter by chapter—I’m sniffling less.
I’m Sure There’s a Sermon Illustration Here Somewhere: “I could still be champ, but I’d feel bad taking it away from one of the younger guys.”—George Foreman
Gordon MacDonald chairs World Relief and is Leadership editor-at-large.
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