I'm Tired

There is a battle raging in our nation. Surely not only our nation, but it's where I live and it's what I hear day in and day out. For years, I've avoided most of the discussions altogether, at least the ones that would be called political.

I told myself that there was no point in discussing those things. I told myself that nothing will ever change. I told myself that the only thing worth talking about was Jesus anyway.

But recently, I've come to realize that was limiting thinking. The reason it is limiting, is that it doesn't take into account the reality that the people we hope to reach, with all our talk of Jesus, are living in the middle of all the current events we aren't engaging with. If we don't engage with what people are facing, then they will see us as unable to relate to them and their very real concerns. Whatever we have to offer will appear irrelevant. Will actually be irrelevant.

This is at least a part of what James is referring to in this passage from James 2:14-17

What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them? Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.

We can tell people all day that Jesus loves them, but it we aren't engaged with overcoming the systems that oppress, then our words will appear, and will actually be, empty.

So I began entering in. Once I began exploring Egalitarian Theology, I began to realize that many current events issues are deeply knotted together with freedom from oppression. The number of items on this list seems endless. There are so many ways in which injustice shows it's snarling face. Human trafficking, misogyny, racism, privilege, inequity of every conceivable kind, drug abuse, hatred of those in the LBGTQ community, bullying, immigration. It's everywhere, and certainly in forms we've yet to recognize

I've been tempted to keep silent. After all, what do I know really? I am only one woman among a vast sea of humanity. My understanding is limited to my own experiences and exposure to literature, news, community, etc. 

Further, there are a number of people who've held influence over me who've urged me to keep silent. I've been told that speaking up about the things I'm engaging with is divisive, gives Christ a bad name, etc. If you think for a moment that such messages don't hit their mark, you are dead wrong. Each time someone tells me to stop, I am compelled to go again to the Lord in prayer.

But silence can never invite healing. In fact, it does the opposite. When good men and women stay silent, the oppressors are the loudest voices, they are the ones who keep power. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr said, from a Birmingham jail,"I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice.”

Dr. King was speaking about racism but his words apply well to all forms of oppression and injustice.

I admit, I am tired. I wrestle, asking myself 'which thing should I engage with today, when there are so many that matter?' 

I am tired. It is exhausting trying to defend again and again things which seem so clear to me, and that defending usually having to happen with my brothers and sisters in Christ. I've experienced demeaning words. I've experienced outright name-calling. I've been gas-lighted. I've been treated to a veritable smorgasbord of logical fallacy.

I am tired.

It is worth it, all the same. 

There is hope when we speak out. There is hope when we champion the cause of the oppressed because as followers of Christ, nothing is impossible when we act from the light.

Nothing is impossible.

Nothing.