Micro or Macro?

More free time than usual and two 15 hour car rides led to a good amount of reading in the last week and a half. Two books stand out as reflective of a tension I often feel. Jeffrey Sachs' "The End of Poverty;" I finally finished Jonathan's copy of it, and "Finding Calcutta," a quick read about a woman's experience wtih Mother Teresa in Calcutta and what she learned about work and service while there (a Christmas gift from a friend). While the tension is personally relevant, I believe it is one that also inhibits much collaboration and potential for good work in the world.

Jeffrey Sachs is a macro, or big picture, kind of guy. He thinks and talks in terms of systems, structures, societies, markets, and global communities. Yes, he can identify value in one-on-one interactions and even talks about how it is important for policy makers to have face-to-face encounters with the people the policies are for. Still, his mindset is always one of "big picture" work, and clearly, he is pretty great at what he does. (side note- the book was great. Agreed with most of it, and looking forward to reading his next one...ie. Jonathan, hurry up and finish it).

Mother Teresa is very different. She is a micro person. She never (and made a point not to) involve herself in politics and policies, or social systems and structures. She is known for calling herself and her work "a drop in the ocean" or a "little pencil in the hand of a writing God." Momma T writes about herself that she "doesn't agree with the big way of doing things. To us what matters is an individual. To get to love the person we must come in close contact with him. If we wait until we get the numbers, then we will be lost in the numbers. And we will never be able to show that love and respect for the person. I believe in person to person; every person is Christ for me, and since there is only one Jesus, that person is only one person in the world for me at that moment."

Politically minded intellectuals often criticized Mother Teresa for not getting involved in the politics of poverty, for speaking out against abortion and for feeding the poor directly rather than "teaching them to fish." Her response was: "If there are people who feel God wants them to change the structures of society, that is something between them and God. We must serve Him in whatever way we are called. I am called to help the individual; to love each poor person. Not to deal with institutions. I am in no position to judge...All of us are but His instruments, who do our little bit and pass by."

I don't think Jeffrey Sachs and Mother Teresa are complete opposites. They are/were clearly gifted in their respective types of work. Jeffrey Sachs does see value in the individual and reminds his readers that the market/community is made of individual people and it is their interactions, in homes, shops, fields, and street corners, that reflect the effects of policy. Similarly, Mother Teresa certainly had an impact on many people she never met. While she didn't advize any policy or network organizations, her work is known world-wide- it is quoted in speeches and books, and inspires (though often cliched and skin deep) world leaders and common folk alike.

I am tempted to ask the question: which is better? Big picture or little picture thought and work. I can make cases, even biblical cases, for both, and in the end I do think both are necessary and it is unfair to rank them. I don't think the work of big picture policy people lacks emotion, heart, and genuine care for the people they are writing policy for (though this, of course, is not universally true). And I don't think that "little picture" work always makes you more aware of real issues and genuine in heart and care.

So which am I wired for? I am not as extreme as either Jeffrey Sachs or Mother Teresa. Do I have to pick? Can I do both? Am I allowed to want to do some kind of great work in the world?*

The tension between the two brings up a fear of mine. I am afraid of forgetting the personal, intimate, and unique person-to-person value when I think/work in a "big picture" setting. And I am afriad of not having any kind of sustainable or lasting impact through my work if I work for and serve only on a person-to-person level.

The first fear seems pretty legitimate; the second, untrusting of God and prideful. I have certainly seen how very small words or actions have made large impacts on people and even whole communities and I believe that God magifies our feeblest attempts at serving others. I'm comforted by the fact that we are saved by grace through faith, and not by works, and yet I easily become frustrated when I feel like what I do or say doesn't have any or a big enough impact.

Like with so many questions and tensions, I end up with a need for greater trust and humility. Wanting me/my work to be more than a "drop in the ocean" diminishes the size of the ocean. To do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly, that is the call.

It is a New Year, and so these verses from Psalm 7 come to mind as I think back on the year and as I think more about what it looks like to have humility as I ponder the tension between big picture and little picture. **

3O LORD my God, if I have done this, if there is wrong in my hands,4if I have repaid my friend with evil or plundered my enemy without cause,5let the enemy pursue my soul and overtake it, and let him trample my life to the ground and lay my glory in the dust.

6Arise, O LORD, in your anger; lift yourself up against the fury of my enemies; awake for me; you have appointed a judgment.7Let the assembly of the peoples be gathered about you; over it return on high.

8The LORD judges the peoples; judge me, O LORD, according to my righteousness and according to the integrity that is in me.9Oh, let the evil of the wicked come to an end, and may you establish the righteous—you who test the minds and hearts, O righteous God!10My shield is with God, who saves the upright in heart.11God is a righteous judge, and a God who feels indignation every day.

*sorry friends, no straighforward answers to these. I do think God works through people to do great things, but it seems rarely seems to be the people you would expect, and often the 'great work' isn't what you would expect either. We are saints, not saviors.

**by little picture, I don't mean "little" as inconsequential or un-important

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.