to care? or not to care?

One of the significant differences between my time in San Diego and time at school over the last few years is my exposure to what is going on in the world in a more global sense. Hopefully this will change next year. I really hate reading the news online...just a personal pet peeve...and I know that there are free newspapers available all over campus so I don't really have any excuses. But there is something so much more appealing at home to sit in the morning in the kitchen with a cup of coffee, bowl of mango crisp cereal, and read the newspaper. Or sit with my dad and watch the news at night, or turn it on while doing the dishes or cooking.

Needless to say, at school if I was knowledgeable about something going on in the world, it was largely because I had made some kind of specific effort to learn about it. Thus, I really got to filter what kinds of world events I heard about and let myself care about. I've found watching the news/reading the paper over the last two weeks kind of like a continual punch in the face in terms of all the crappy stuff that goes on in the world. In no way do the uplifting news stories balance out the tragic ones. hmm...uplifting news story...that's almost an oxymoron.

Natural disasters, environmental concerns, deadly diseases, freak tragic accidents, border trouble, global poverty, kidnappings, sex scandals...the list could go on forever. So the question I end up asking myself is, to what degree to I try to care about all of these things? What level of responsibility do I have to care about them? What is the ultimate purpose of reading or listening to the news?

Some obvious answers are: on practical level, no, I can't actively care for all of these things. In fact, I'll be lucky if I can wrap my mind fully around one of them. So my next thought then turns to, well, if I pour lots of energy into caring about one of those news items...say...healthcare [and by caring about in this case I also mean actively pursuing some way of working to better the situation], and a community exists in which each person cares in that active way about the causes they gravitate most towards, well that would seem to solves things. I do think that that is the kind of community we are called to be, and that peace-making and shalom-bringing is always a communal event [modeled after the ultimate community: Father-Son-Spirit], but easier said than done.

I then run into the question/tension that has been brought up for me in college more than any other: how to pursue the peace-making/shalom-bringing works of God while recognizing that we (individually and communally) are most definitely not God? How to pursue the process of becoming perfect, as our heavenly father is perfect, and living knowing that we are created in his image? How to have our power perfect in our weakness, and what kind of power does that create? Ecc 8:8-10, Psalm 90, and Luke 12:25 are examples of the kinds of power we don't have. There is lots more to be said about power, but I think that my original question is answered largely by Micah 6:8. He has told you, oh man, what is good: and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?

That last one, walk humbly, is key. The first two are easy to understand and are seen as generally good things in the eyes of most people. So really, what the reading and hearing the news ends up doing for me, after the repeated punches in the face because of the crappy condition of so many peoples' lives, is that much softer but strongly persistent reminder that we're not asked to take on the burdens of the world. That was done. It is amazing how difficult it is sometimes for the good news of that statement to overpower my attitude of hopelessness for the conditions of the world. And while it is easy to think that I'm a good person for wanting to care and act on all these different issues, it is also really prideful to think that I can take any of them on as my burdens, let alone all of them. Yes, we are told to bear one another's burdens to to care for others, but never without first having humility, and acknowledging who the real yoke-carrier is.