“I think every conscious person, every person who is awake to the functioning principles within his reality, has a moment where he stops blaming the problems in the world on group think, on humanity and authority, and starts to face himself. I hate this more than anything. This is the hardest principle within Christian spirituality for me to deal with. The problem is not out there; the problem is the needy beast of a thing that lives in my chest.
The thing I realized on the day we protested, on the day I had beers with Tony, was that it did me no good to protest America’s responsibility in global poverty when I wasn’t even giving money to my church, which has a terrific homeless ministry. I started feeling very much like a hypocrite.
More than my questions about the efficacy of social action were my questions about my own motives. Do I want social justice for the oppressed, or do I just want to be known as a socially active person? I spend 95 percent of my time thinking about myself anyway. I don’t have to watch the evening news to see that the world is bad, I only have to look at myself. I am not browbeating myself here; I am only saying that true change, true life-giving, God-honoring change would have to start with the individual.
I was the very problem I had been protesting. I wanted to make a sign that read “I AM THE PROBLEM!”
That night, after Tony and I talked, I rode my motorcycle up to Mount Tabor, this dormant volcano just east of the Hawthorne District. There is a place near the top where you can sit and look at the city at night, smoldering like coals and ashes beneath the evergreens, laid out like jewels under the moon. It is really something beautiful. I went there to try to get my head around this idea, idea that the problem in the universe lives within me. I can’t think of anything more progressive than the embrace of this fundamental idea.
….I rage against American materialism in the name of altruism, but have I even controlled my own heart? The overwhelming majority of time I spend thinking about myself, pleasing myself, reassuring myself, and when I am done there is nothing to spare for the needy.
Six billion people live in this world, and I can only muster thoughts for one. Me.”
I have been reading Donald Miller’s “Blue Like Jazz” in the bathtub, in 15 minute early morning, quiet little intervals.
Regardless of your faith or lack thereof, the spirit of the book is, I think, universally applicable and he has a rough eloquence to him I (sorry) typically only associate with female writers. This passage isn’t necessarily indicative of that style, but the philosophy of it resonated with me and the circular battle it seems I can never conquer. Really enjoying the book…
3 months ago