On to the more hidden, challenging issues. What I hear over and over again when I talk to people who lead churches and/or outreach programs is that they think it’s hard to get people to serve because people are afraid. One person told me he thinks people are afraid “of having their apple carts overturned.” In a similar vein, another said, “the poor pose a threat: economically, emotionally, politically (and sometimes physically).” Yet another told me she thinks people avoid serving because they’re afraid of “getting pulled into the suffering.” She expanded, saying, “A food drive is so much less threatening than actually having to serve food to someone who is missing teeth and smells rank.”

In my life, I’m blessed with many people I love whose opinions are quite different from mine, to say the least. So I said to one of those people, whom I trust to always tell me what he thinks, “what would stop a person from serving the poor?” His answer was really helpful. And disturbing. He said, “Why should I serve the poor? Why should I help the homeless? They made their own choices. They got themselves into that mess. They choose to live that way.” He’s never short for words and went on to say that he thinks it is a “disservice to society” to help the poor, that we create “entitlement” and “drain our resources.” There were also some comments that sounded very much like a “survival of the fittest” argument.

It was an interesting discussion.

It seems to me that despite wrapping it up in a quasi-intellectual argument, it is in fact, an argument based in fear. Fear that we don’t have enough resources for everyone. Fear that people might take advantage. Fear that people might become dependent. But I wonder if underneath those arguments is something in fact more serious. Like maybe fear of an overturned apple cart, a threat to our way of thinking or a breach of the emotional bubble wrap we encase ourselves in. Fear of being pulled into the suffering so much that you’d have to actually feel it and that once we feel someone else’s suffering, there’s no turning back.

It’s awful how fear governs our actions (or inaction). I think that must disappoint God quite a bit.

I understand the fear though. I feel it daily in our social transformation ministry. I fear feeling someone else’s pain and distress when my own has at times been more than I thought I could bear. I fear being sucked in, taken advantage of. I fear not having enough time and resources to do any good. I fear being inadequate and not having the answers.

But I look at that fear from the other side now, allowing myself to feel it and yet still serve. I can witness to you that the solution to that fear is prayer. Try it. Pray about it. Offer it up and let him handle it. I promise it works. Just lay it at the cross. Jesus understands both the fear and suffering. So let him handle that for you. I think he would be pleased to take that burden from you.

But I’ll tell you. There really is no turning back. Once you open yourself up to feeling someone else’s suffering — without judgment of how or why they are suffering — you can’t turn your back on it. You can’t turn your back because you see that it is indeed a real person who is suffering. No longer a distant, abstract “issue” on the news but an actual flesh and blood person. Suffering.

And you make time.

~dana