The Temptation of Apathy
As with having a podcast, I’ve found that having this blog tends to change my perception of how I think I “need” to respond to any given situation. When I first learned that Donald would be following through with his threat of declaring a State of Emergency in a mad-dash and unconstitutional attempt to secure funds for his border Wall, I first sat down with the intent of responding specifically to this decision. “Idolatry” was the word that came to mind as I was reminded of how transfixed our public consciousness has been on the concept of border security and the Wall and how much we seem to have seemingly accepted a certain level of sacrifice in pursuit of such an illusion of security.
What do I say? The Wall is bad? I hope we can all determine that for ourselves. Declaring a fake State of Emergency to fund one’s vanity project in an attempt to sate the blood lust of a base is terrible? Hopefully, also self-evident. More and more as I attempted to find my angle I found myself just lacking the response as, at least for the moment, anything I tried to write simply felt forced; felt more like manufactured outrage when in all honesty all I can really feel at present is apathy.
And it holds true at present. The more I think of how to respond the more I realize that apathy is all I can really muster. Of course Donald declared a State of Emergency, we all knew as soon as it became evident that this was an option that he would likely follow through with it, after all it’s they only possible way to appease that radically possessed base led by such persons possessed by their own images like Sean Hannity or Ann Coulter, talking heads continuously spewing forth the blasphemies of the Conservatism and likewise the nation’s false promises of salvation.
Apathy is a product of life in babel. This is what the principalities do, they create apathy, they demoralize, they exhaust, they leave us absent any expectation for change or for a just and good society, the seek to convince us that the way it is is just the way it will be. Through the denial of truth, doublespeak, overtalk, rapid hyperbole, constant outrage, the promotion of outright lies and generalizations; all of which is coming to us from a constant and ever-connected stream from every news source, every Facebook post, every declaration of the State, every overheard conversation in public; amidst this one can’t help but feel the sense of demoralization and apathy slowly creep in.
Given the impending UMC General Conference next week in St Louis in which my denomination will be dealing with how to respond to our questions regarding inclusion of LGBTQ+ persons, the time of year, and the proximity of my birthday (a regular low-point for me) I shouldn’t really be surprised I feel this way. Given even that we have entered into the third straight year of an administration that daily presents a regular assault on truth it should come really as no surprise that any of us feel this way. We all seem to be prone to this sense of exhaustion.
The best response I can work with, one of the best encouragements I can find is that change and goodness does not purely rest on me. It doesn’t really rest on any one of us. Such is the corporate nature of the Church, we are the redeemed community alive and at work in the world, we are the living Body of Christ (1 Cor 12) proclaiming the abiding presence of the Kingdom of God (Matt 4:17–25; 5:20; 6:19–21). We are a people who resist Death’s hold on creation, but we are also a people given leave to rest.
“Resistance to death is the only way to live humanly in the midst of the Fall.”*
To live in the midst of babel, in the world of the Fall requires some degree of resistance, some degree of disruption (for which this blog is named), however we can recognize that this needn’t be a constant thing. While we can’t give up in our resistance, we can remember that self-care for which God lays out for us (Mk 2:27). Sabbath is vital, it is deeply important to our well-being. Perhaps the biggest struggle in our current culture is remembering that we don’t have to be constantly outraged. For sure, there are things that we ought to be outraged over, and even this claim is, I recognize, one rooted in some degree of privilege; but to be constantly outraged is, in essence, to be constantly exhausted, constantly beaten down.
Let’s be honest, there is time for words. There is time for outrage and anger and everything else; but for this moment at least, I’m choosing rest.
Disruption in the Detention Center
Twice a month or so I, along with several other Michigan JFON (Justice for Our Neighbors) volunteers go to the Monroe county jail to visit the undocumented men who are being held for deportation. Each visit is a wildly different experience, though nearly each time I find myself as the sole white man in the room. But in every visit we sing, we pray, we listen to the stories of the men- who they are, what brought them here, who they’re leaving behind, what they hope can come next.
It’s not much, but in a place of deep dehumanization where these men are reduced to case numbers and given a jumpsuit and pair of orange crocs while they await their plane ride “home,” I like to think that someone calling them by name, recognizing them as a brother, treating treating them as a person not a prisoner, someone looking them in the eye, taking their hand in friendship can at least make some small difference. Can at least disrupt something that is wrong.
What follows is the corporate prayer I wrote for these visits, which was likewise translated into Spanish by another volunteer:
Padre nuestro que nos liberas.
Nos encuentras y vives con nosotros;
Tú nos liberas de quienes buscan dañaros.
Tú nos llamas a amar.
A ser uno contigo.
Oramos por nuestras familias sea que estén
Oramos por nosotros mismos, mientras esperamos la liberación
Y como Tú nos enseñas, oramos por nuestros enemigos y por nuestros lideres,
viendo que algunas veces parecen ser los mismos.
Te rogamos que rompas nuestras cadenas y suavices los corazones de quienes deciden nuestro destino.
Y danos la fuerza para seguir
Incluso cuando los cosas parecen estar en su peor momento.
Amén.
God who liberates us.
You find us and dwell with us even in places of injustice and oppression.
You free us from those who seek our harm.
You call us to love.
To be one in you.
We pray for our families wherever they may be.
We pray for ourselves, as we await release.
And as you teach, we pray for our enemies and we pray for our leaders,
seeing that sometimes it feels like they are the same.
We pray you would break our chains and soften the hearts of those deciding our fate.
And give us the strength to go on,
even when things seem at their worst.
Amen
*Stringfellow, William. An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land. Eugene, Oregon: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 1973.
