Helping others by focusing less on myself.
Recently there has been some discussion around me of where our focus lies on helping others. There is a new program out that is called “one laptop one child” and for a limited amount of time you can buy a laptop for $400 and one will be given away to a child in an impoverished country for your efforts. Now this is certainly a commendable thing to do, children who are given a tool to help them embrace learning or are given an opportunity to learn at all will indeed have a better chance to succeed. Ultimately this success would allow them to prosper and possibly continue to help others from their home area lifting the whole region from the bottom up, rather than the top down.
I would certainly not argue that there is any flaw in that assumption, helping people help themselves through education should work and be less prone to influence from potentially corrupt officials who might choose to not distribute raw funds. But what I don’t understand is why we choose to not pay attention to the millions of children here in our own neighborhoods that could benefit from some form of assistance in this regard as well.
This notion of programs that exist to assist others in a far off location brings me back to my opening comment. A friend of mine is a youth minister (Jason over at talkinthewalk.com)and has discussed on his site the issues of youth missions and the perceived need to have their missions in some remote location. The further the better it would seem if you talk tot he right people, and I have often thought it was easier to minister to those in far off regions where I am certainly the outsider or foreigner. I felt it would be easier to be like Jesus if I already didn’t fit in, that the difference between how I treated others and he way they were would be more obvious.
The embarrassing truth is I should have that same advantage here. Even though everyone (surely not so) seems to have what they need (materially at best) and I have plenty myself there are tremendous opportunities here locally. You don’t even have drive downtown, there are people living around me on all sides. I know I am speaking about getting to know the folks that live right next door to us, and they may even already be church attending individuals, but they may not. Within our own church itself why are we not thinking of spending our efforts to improve the lot of those we purport to love and care about. Most likely because we do not.
We are a nation of weekend warriors for christ. It is like we have formed a national guard unit that we hope will only be deployed once or twice a year in the battle to save the planet. We are in the front lines and don’t even realize it. The only reason I can see in myself as to why I don’t do more is selfishness. It sounds so harsh, and I don’t want to believe it, but it must be true. I care about me more than I care about you. That certainly isn’t Christ like, now if there were only one soda left on the counter I would let you have it. If you needed a ride to the airport at 11pm or even midnight I am your man, but that’s because I know you probably. We are going to have decide if we really want to be full-time Christians or just weekend warriors. And if I want to be a full-time Christian then I am going to have to start thinking about those that are around me that I don’t know and those I do know more than myself.
I am reminded of a song that says “more of you and less of me”, if we can just get that straightened out in our lives we won’t need to go out of town to make a difference. We will be making a difference year round everywhere we are, with or without a programed effort from our church to accomplish it. A small plug for a ministry at my church that I hope could be a part of this solution, small groups.
In a small group you can get to know people in a more personal and intimate way, but no program will substitute for the fact the answer lies in our own decision to become like Christ and place ourselves behind others. It is not an easy answer, but it is the one he gave me. First to Love him and his father will all my heart, no mention of me there. And then to Love others like I love myself. If that were true the local churches would be bursting with programs that went beyond the superficial. The momentum would be again like that of the early church bowling over governments, changing lives, and bringing the lost to the father.
Pray for our own selflessness.
