Nothing More Than Apathy

“It’s coming down to nothing more than apathy
I’d rather run the other way than stay and see
The smoke and who’s still standing when it clears”

Over My Head–The Fray

Rather than hook with you an exciting introduction, allow me to start this post with a question: How many times have you seen Christians with this attitude? This attitude of total apathy, that someone else will take care of it, because I, I of course, am too busy and have already made my weekly offering to “the church” (which is, in fact, only a building, but that is a different topic, for a different day). The attitude of sadness and irritation over our moral decline, but hey, what can you do about it? All nations fall, right? They hear “Be the change you wish to see in this world”, say “Hey, great concept, really amazing thought”, and do what the next day? Go to work, keep your mouth shut about anything that goes against God, because “I’m not pushy”.

American Christians are in a total state of apathy. The ones that aren’t are called radicals. “Hurrah!” we say, “Good for them! But that life is not for me, oh no, I can’t do that.” What would you say if I said this life was not about you? What really matters at the end of your life? For God to say to you, “Well, congratulation, I’m so proud of you, you never stepped outside your comfort zone”? Or for Him to say to you, “You fell crazily in love with Me and did all you could. You lived for Me, you died for Me. Everything you did was for Me. Well done, My good and faithful servant.”

As a Christian, Christ is within you. Anything you say about yourself, you are saying about Christ. Replace “I” with “Christ” every time you make an excuse. “Christ can’t afford to make that sort of donation to World Vision. Christ doesn’t have the time to go on a missions trip. Christ doesn’t have the interest in traveling to that conference, He’d much rather focus on buying a house.” Would you ever say that about Christ? Would you ever say that Christ didn’t have the patience to work with misbehaving inner-city kids? Would you ever say that Christ didn’t have the optimistic spirit of others and couldn’t help but spread doom-and-gloom everywhere He went?

Perhaps I am a little zealous at this point because of the past few chapters I’ve read in Crazy Love by Francis Chan. Perhaps it is only a stage. But I pray, I pray with my whole heart that it’s not a stage. My life was made by God, for God. If I can’t live for Him, what is the sense in wearing Christ’s name? One cannot call themselves an engineer, then commit 30 minutes a day to being an engineer and spend the rest of the day being a zookeeper. One cannot call themselves a Christian, then commit only 30 minutes a day to being one. In a way, this is a bad example, because being an engineer would not be your identity; however, being a Christian is. Christian is what you are. You are not who you want to be, because in the end, you don’t matter. To borrow a comparison from Crazy Love, you are only an extra. People don’t watch the movie to see you, they watch it to see God, the main character. There are several other characters in the movie, but in the end, what do we really care about? That we were happy? Or that others saw that we loved God with all and every fiber of our being?

I understand that much of this is probably gibberish. They’re only thoughts flowing from my brain to my fingers in an unorganized and quite confusing fashion. It’s likely I’ll sit down soon and convert it into something more structured. But until then, I want you to think about it. Are you apathetic? Or are you in love — and showing it.