Starving for Compassion

Right now I’m typing this blog up on my laptop computer, while sitting on the floor of my bedroom which is on the second floor of my apartment, and in my bedroom are beautiful things that I’ve collected over the years, and while I enjoy looking at my bookcases and art and pretty little things from here and there I sip on a sweet tea that I got with a Chicken Caesar Salad at Panera’s with a side of Baked Lay’s for about seven dollars and thirty five cents, and as I munch on the chips which are probably sold by the hundreds per week from this one Panera Bread, I’m thinking that if I don’t finish I’ll just throw them away in my trash can and tomorrow morning the dumpster truck will have collected the trash, but what I don’t really grasp…Is that over 4 million people will die this year from starvation, 1.3 billion people live on less than $1 a day, and that every 3.6 seconds, someone is dying because they have nothing to eat or because they can’t afford it.

And if given my trash, they would dig through it just to eat those chips I threw away.

And as a follower of Christ (the guy who gave to and healed the poor, who said, “go, sell all that you have and give to the poor , and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me”) I find it easy to wake up each day to granola bars and television, and somehow, my heart is so callused that I am capable of forgetting that human beings, some my own age, are dying because of selfishness.

I am selfish.

It’s just amazing that the habit of flipping past commercials for Feed the Children or watching it for five minutes, but then finding starving children not entertaining enough is not rare in our society…and even more horrible, in our churches. What happened to compassion for our brothers and sisters? What happened to loving people? What happened to giving of ourselves and our blessings?

What’s most disheartening is that I’m guilty. I’m so guilty. And knowing I’m guilty, I continue to cling to my things, and to my television, and to all of the comforts I possess, but something in me doesn’t want those things. Something in me just wants to give everything that I am, to God, to people, to those hurting…and still I find myself fighting my human nature to cling to the things that give me safety and a home. I cling to things that I do love dearly. I love my art and my cute dresses, and yes, I love even the furniture in my room. Furniture that’s been passed down from great grandmothers and aunts, things that were passed down for the very reason I shouldn’t cling to them; their owners came to the end of their life, and couldn’t take washstands or chests with them, and so, left them to the next generation…

“And Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, ‘ you lack one thing: go sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.’

“Disheartened by the saying, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.” Mark 10:21-22

That’s me. I’m the person Jesus loved enough to say, “get rid of your stuff. Because unknown to you, its worthless anyway. So get rid of it, give it to those who really need it…and follow me, because I’m all you really need.” And after he finished saying it, I laughed and said, “Psh. Like I can live without Ann Taylor or Cheez-its or my awesome bookcases.” What’s sad is that I read that make-believe conversation, but it’s the truth. I don’t really need new clothes. I don’t really need the furniture in my room. I don’t really need half the things in my home, they’re just space fillers, but I keep them because I have this weird emotional attachment to them, so much so, that I can look at the homeless and the starving, and clutch my things even tighter hoping they’ll back off because things are more important that human lives. And though I don’t mean to sound so heartless, is that not what I’m doing by the way I live my life? Is that not what we’re all doing every day when we chose to buy something for ourselves rather than consider those who need?

I don’t necessarily think that Jesus calls all Christians to sell EVERYTHING they own. But I definitely get the gist they we shouldn’t love our possessions so much that we would not be willing to sacrifice things for others. That we would choose to buy a new sofa over giving the money to someone in a third world country or down the street.

It’s just really disheartening when you honestly don’t know if you could sell your things to buy for others. Things. Things made from wood, and plastic, and metal. Things that will break and fall apart, things you might just forget about, and things that get left in a heap after you die.

We Christians talk about saving the poor and feeding the hungry and we talk about changing the world. But how are you supposed to change the world when you look just like it. When you love things and stuff just like it?

I think this is our generations biggest struggle. In the bible idols were statues and rituals and gods...but our idols are out things. We worship our stuff...we love our stuff...we choose stuff over people and God's will all the time, just like the man from Mark 10:22. He flat out chose his many possessions over following Jesus completely and with self-abandon, and he chose his stuff over those in need...

Being desensitized to cuss words, okay, whatever, that’s bad. Being desensitized to really horrible movies that people are
1. Capable of imagining
2. Capable of creating
Like Saw or Hostel, that’s pretty bad.

But being desensitized to suffering, and pain, and death in our own species, our own flesh and blood, and being capable of forgetting them altogether is a Tragedy.

Imagine you’re at a grocery store. And on each isle are 50 starving people reaching for food, but people stand there pushing them aside, shoving them out of the way, so they can fill their own carts with Lucky Charms and Little Debbie Cakes and heaps of food that they don’t really even need. And as they stock up, those small voices cry out because their stomachs are empty, their muscle is deteriorating in order to provide some kind of sustenance to their bodies, and their bones are near breaking because they’re the only source of calcium. Imagine their legs swelling with edema. Their faces sinking because they’re so emaciated that fat in their cheeks kept them alive a bit longer. And when their muscle is almost gone, and their skin grasps their bones, the only muscles left are their hearts and those making up their internal structures… until they’re heart wastes away or they die of dehydration or the complete shutdown of their organs… And we just shove them to the ground because their sitting in front of our Easy Mac.

Did I just make you really uncomfortable? I made myself uncomfortable..like I was being too graphic or something. But if anything, I wasn’t graphic enough. I don’t think we can imagine that happening, because we either don’t want to or because we’ve never seen someone starve to death like that before our very eyes. But children have seen their mothers and fathers die. Mothers and fathers have watched their children die. And though we know their dying, we shield our eyes from the ugly and convince ourselves that if we don’t see it, then it couldn't’t possibly exist.

And I can’t help but feel. To feel so much. I feel like this huge hole as been dug into my heart where compassion is supposed to be and I’v left it there all this time because I gave compassion up for what? Stuff? I dreamed of a beautiful house and wonderful job all these years, but now I’m dreaming of building homes for someone else and giving what I make at my job to someone else. It’s not in my nature to be selfless…because I’m human. But I if Christ could place his compassion in me for other people, and fill that hollow place in my heart with himself, I pray, really pray, that He’ll use me. Somehow.

Because it hurts too much to know that we as Christians have forgotten to give, to love, and to die to the world…and so we let those helpless in the world die instead.