In my review of Ken Wytsma‘s book Pursuing Justice, I talk about how after a zealous start of caring about social justice issues, I went through a period of burnout. Burnout that was due to the overwhelming number of different types of horrible things in the world, the overwhelming reach each of these issues had, and the overwhelming severity of evil each of those bad things represented. This then joined with the feeling that the little I could do wasn’t going to make much of a difference led to despair, which led to paralysis. So after burning up a lot of fuel, raising a small amount of money, and still having every single social justice issue out there as strong as ever, I had to stop.
Consider this ad in the recent edition of Relevant Magazine: ALL of me to…eradicate slavery, stop human trafficking…
I’m not trying to be cynical here, and I do understand the heart behind this ad and the good intentions, but we have to realize what this is actually communicating at face value. I am going to eradicate all of slavery and completely stop all of human trafficking??? Where did I get these God-like powers from all of a sudden? Powers that Jesus didn’t even have (or at least didn’t use) when he walked the earth.
Taking these goals on as a personal mission statement for life will lead a person to only one end: guilt, burnout, despair, and paralysis. Failure.
We cannot change the entire world. We will fail.
But whoever said that was our job?????
(Side note, how did they land James Franco to model for their ad???)
We need to realize it is not our job to change the entire world and rid it of all sin and evil. That is Jesus’ job and it will never truly be accomplished until he returns.
Micah Bournes says this so well at the end of his “Sure Win” poem from his Man Without a Name album. It’s not in the lyrics of the poem itself (which you can view at the end of this post), but he speaks these words at the end of the album track, following the poem: And I think it’s important that as believers…as we work for justice…that we remember our aim…our aim is not to put an end to all darkness, the Lord Christ Jesus himself will do that one day, but our aim is to be a light in the darkness. And to let people who are hurting and who are in pain know that God is real and he loves them…when our aim is to love people our efforts cannot fail…
It’s the difference between being in a pitch black cave and trying to transform the entire cave into a beacon of light versus being in a pitch black cave and steadily and faithfully holding our one lit candle. One of these is overwhelming and impossible. The other will change the world.
Have you realized you don’t have to change the whole world to change the world? If you help someone, you’ve changed their world, and that is definitely changing the world. My review of Pursing Justice highlights how Ken does a great job of showing this in his book. He also writes on this topic specifically in this blog post. A great quote from Ken in this article is: Although we cannot fix the world, we can certainly change it.
I would take this a step further even and say that no matter what we do, we are changing the world one way or another. We are either changing it for good, or we are changing it for evil. By doing nothing, we are changing the world for evil by continuing to let people die lonely and needlessly. By doing something, we are changing the world by showing that people still care about people the way God cares about people. We are changing world and after world after world every time we show this type of love to someone.
In conclusion, I’m reminded of the first World Relief conference I attended back in 2008. Each area of the globe that World Relief works in was highlighted throughout the conference. Scott Arbeiter, lead pastor at Elmbrook Church and chairman of World Relief’s Board of Directors, asked me how I was feeling about the conference. I told him it was inspiring and life-changing, but also quite overwhelming. So many needs. What could a pastor of such a small church actually accomplish? Scott shared Jesus’ words from Matthew 25:40 to me:
“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for ONE of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’
“Our aim is not to put an end to all darkness, the Lord Christ Jesus himself will do that one day, but our aim is to be a light in the darkness”. –Micah Bournes.
I can do that.
And so can you.
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He is:
Author of Beyond the Battle: A man's guide to his identity in Christ in an oversexualized world
Host of the The Flip Side Podcast
Join an online men's small group led by Noah and team at BeyondTheBattle.net
Thanks for the reminder Noah! As a Social Work major and a follower of Christ, I have to remind myself of this daily, that it’s only through the Holy Spirit that I am capable to connect with people to partner with them to change their life hoping that they can experience God’s love. I have to remember that there’s only so much I can do for a person and trust that God will take care of the rest, and being okay with that. That they’re not MY clients but God’s people who He’s graciously put in my path for a reason relying on the Spirit to use me in a way that will show them God’s love and help them to realize that they, will God’s power, can make a difference for themselves and that He has a better life planned for them.
It’s like the Starfish story goes: Along the shore there’s millions of starfish who have got caught on the beach. One day a boy came along and started to pick them up to throw them back in the ocean. An old man spotted him and said “Don’t you know you can’t make a difference to all these dying starfish?” The boy looked up as he threw another starfish in and said, “I just made a difference to that one…”
Thanks to Ken Wytsma for tweeting this post. I need constant reminders of this message. It’s time to commit Matt 25:40 to my heart.
Greetings! This is my 1st comment here so I just wanted to give a quick shout out
and say I truly enjoy reading through your articles.
Can you suggest any other blogs/websites/forums that deal with the same topics?
Many thanks!
Hi there! Thanks for that encouragement and thanks for reading. Are you asking about all of my topics are specific ones? I blog on big range as you’ve probably seen. Let me know and I can probably give you some recommendations. My book, Beyond the Battle: a man’s guide to his identity in Christ in an oversexualized world is coming out this October, you can keep up with launch details at http://www.atacrossroads.net/beyond-the-battle and I’ll have a similar book for women out next year.