A New Year for A New World

I always looked forward to the start of a new school year when I was a kid. To me, being in a new grade, in a new classroom, with a different set of kids than I was with the year before was a chance for a "new start". I remember thinking, "Maybe this year will be different than last year." I don't know exactly what difference I was looking for, but a fresh page of life seems to brim with possibilities.

That's kind of how we feel at the start of a new year, isn't it? Some of us will arrive at the end of 2012 and be sorry to see it go. Others of us have been ready to put this particular year behind us for some time. Whatever the case, this January 1 like every January 1 will carry a sense of "new beginnings" with it.

And then? Haha - after a few weeks, the joke's on us! Once we discover that a new year hasn't magically strengthened our willpower, that we still have the same bad habits and hindrances and burdens and tendencies (because wherever you go, there you are - still) and the year may be new, but much remains the same.

That's because many of us live life as if it were luck: "Maybe I'll win the lottery", "Maybe I'll meet the love of my life", "Maybe I'll land the perfect job/buy the perfect house/discover the secret to happiness" and we ignore the fact that Christians, of all people, should not be creatures of fate.

Christians do stuff. (I know, profound.) Sin and heartache and exploitation and destructiveness are on the move, so we need to be on the move against it. And what did Jesus say? That the gates of hell would not prevail against His church.

I've been thinking a lot about efforts to change the world lately, as we gear up for a first-time event with our 4th-6th graders called "A New Year for a New World" on New Year's Eve. Is there something distinctive about Christian efforts at world change? Is there something that makes Christ necessary in all of it? Or can any well-intentioned person make the same impact? After all, it's the Holiday Season, and for every recent story of tragedy or of a family who can't afford Christmas, we're bound to hear one about someone who stepped up to make things happy for them.

But that's the problem with these headline-grabbing relief efforts - they're short-term, and they're focused on restoring happiness. Sometimes I wonder if it's our happiness that's really in view. As in, "Oh, I can't bear to see those poor people suffering...let me do something for them," and then we pitch in until our own feelings of discomfort go away. Don't get me wrong. People were wonderfully generous after Hurricane Katrina, and Sandy, and the earthquake in Haiti and the Tsunami in Japan. But those natural disasters have become so common (to say nothing of man-made tragedies like school shootings) we can barely keep them straight. (Remember what happened in Joplin? I didn't. Look it up.) And the Red Cross, among other organizations, does wonderful long-term recovery work at disaster sites.

But I think back to benefit dinners or concerts that have been held for people I know who got sick or injured, all the time and money and attention that got poured into a single event, and then I reflect on the fact that that person is still sick. No one gets out of the woods because of one benefit event. Meanwhile, our collective consciousness has moved on, in part because we can't stand to dwell on suffering, in part because our brains can only remember so much.

I think what God furnishes to these efforts to help the world is this. First, he elevates and has elevated and will continue to elevate the status of human beings so that we bother to notice suffering and want to help at all. Christianity (and yes, I'm partisan) really doesn't get enough credit for the impact it has had historically on human rights and dignity. The influence of Christianity helped end two particularly heinous practices that had become accepted in the Roman Empire - infanticide and child sexual abuse, established the first orphanages and hospitals, advocated for the end of slavery and more humane treatment of the mentally ill, and promoted widespread education of the populace at government expense. We take these things for granted now. Then articles like this one jolt me back into consciousness and remind me we have a long way to go.

And then, after we've convinced that we should care, he gives us the resources to care. It's one thing to drop a quarter into a panhandler's cup. It's another thing to take the time to get to know them. It's still another thing to have the perseverance and the resourcefulness and the patience to walk alongside him to better his life. A few people I know seem to have what it takes. Most of us don't.

And so what God can furnish to us (can furnish) is the promise to make us like him. And the benefit of that is that God is a giving God. He gave us the world - he didn't have to. He gave you your life - but he didn't have to. He made the earth habitable, with just the right mixture of gases in the air and tolerable temperature extremes. When we mistreated each other, he gave us another chance. When he came to earth as a person himself, we mistreated him. Again, he gave us mercy. When the power of death was dismantled, he then gave us an invitation. And he gives his Spirit, his power and nature, to those who believe in him. He gives and gives and gives. We just give - and then we need a break. A one-time act of kindness is good, and I'll take it; but a revolution of kindness is built by faithfulness, one brick at a time.

On New Year's Eve, we won't change the world. Shame on us if we communicate that "because of this night, everything is different" and the work is done. If kids don't leave feeling motivated to keep giving of themselves, we will have fallen short. All we can hope to accomplish in 16 hours is to get the ball rolling, to excite kids' spirits and awaken their imaginations to what if? And of course, at some point, we all top out in kindness. We all top out in generosity. We all top out in patience. It's at that point that we need inspiration, and we need help.

The promise of a new world is grounded in God, who in Revelation 21 tells John that he is making everything new. The hope of the world now is to bring a taste of that future into the present. That's the essence of the kingdom of God. The transposition that brings the end of the story into the middle yields some pretty radical ripple effects. It is by those effects alone that we can say another year has any hope of being "new". Otherwise it's just the same old.

The Words When There Are No Words

On Wednesday, when “that terrible thing in Oregon” was mentioned in conversation, someone else asked, “What happened in Oregon?” They hadn’t heard about the gunman who opened fire at a shopping mall outside Portland, killing two people. What’s sad is that in another week or two, lots of us will struggle to remember “what happened in Oregon?” because our attention has already been torn away, to another horrible and unfathomable shooting.

I’m referring, of course, to what happened Friday morning at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut: 20 kids and 7 adults murdered in a shooting rampage that lasted only a few minutes and has no readily apparent motive. The blogosphere and social media sites exploded around 10 a.m., with more than a few of the reactions reflecting the sentiment that, “There are no words.”

That’s understandable, coming from a nation worn out by what happened twice this week, and in September in Minneapolis, and in August at Texas A&M, and in July at the movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, and on two separate occasions this year in Wisconsin, to name a few. But, like many conclusions we grasp at when tension runs high, it’s wrong.

It turns out that there are words, plenty of them. And those words will heal us.

Words make the abstract concrete, assigning some meaning to what are otherwise just nebulous feelings. I used words like "horrible" and "unfathomable" in the first paragraph of this post, and they are clues as to how I'm processing this. Notice that, sadly, I didn't use the word "shocking". Apparently I've come to accept that "these things happen", and I hate that that's the case.

We all try to make sense of the world we live in. Kids do this too. Confusion is unsettling; clarity, comforting. Words have to be spoken at a time like this, because it’s not as if the jumble of feelings will just iron themselves out. It doesn’t work that way.

I’ve never understood people who try to prescribe or preempt what we are and aren’t allowed to express in the wake of a tragic death. It’s usually "out of respect for the families", which is noble, but the truth is that death is death, and both its finality and the way it comes unlocks certain things in each of us that otherwise aren’t acknowledged. Words need to flow freely at a time like this, to bring the inside out. Sometimes the words are imprecise, but every attempt at verbalization brings us closer to a realization of what we're dealing with. Sometimes the words are raw, because they reflect the torment raging inside of us.

Two years ago, the thing-that’s-not-supposed-to-happen-here happened here, in Carlsbad, California. Friday’s incident reawakened feelings of panic in parents who had been a part of that. Everyone at that time felt lucky that no one had been killed. How lucky did they feel on Friday, faced with the reminder that what they went through could have been so much worse? (I’ll answer that: extremely lucky.) And there were lots of words spoken back then, many of them redundant, some of them over-the-top, but all of them valid.

President Obama spoke Friday after the shooting, reacting “not as a president, but as a parent.” He was applauded by some for keeping his remarks constrained to the human side of the tragedy and derided by others. Frankly, his obligatory words as mourner-in-chief matter little to me. School officials spoke, and they said about what we expected they would. Pastors will be called on to conduct funerals, and they’ll summon as best they can words of comfort. They’ll try to lend perspective and offer hope.

But the best words at this time come from you and me. People need to get their words out there, and they need to do it now, while thoughts and emotions are fresh. It is healthy. We’ve all been trained a little too well to play nice, to not speak things that will bring upset to other people. The price of that, though, is unprocessed grief that corrodes the soul. Even if inelegantly stated, words are the vehicle that shed light in dark places. They are our coping mechanism.

Does God have anything to say about an event like this? Yes, he does. But let's not forget that God's communication with the world tends to be more global than situation-specific. In the book of Job, he simply lets Job and his friends rail on and on until they run out of steam. And then God speaks. He's not obligated to take the podium within hours of a school shooting. His "reaction" is less a reaction than a reiteration of foundational truths about himself, humankind, sin, and the prospect of redemption. Ultimately, he expressed himself through the Incarnation - "The Word became flesh and lived among us" - and all who were confused about the nature of God needed to wonder no more. That grand articulation is the reason we have Christmas.

I know I said earlier that words need to flow freely at a time like this, but spiritual platitudes meant to "help" are probably the least effective words that can be spoken right now. Christians believe God is true, and if God is forever, then truth is forever too. I think that's one reason we feel compelled to find words, even when it seems there are none, because deep down we can't and won't accept that something so awful can exist for no reason at all.

Someday, long in the future, the parents of 20 kids who died Friday will be able to say, “In 2012, something terrible happened to me and to my child. I couldn’t make sense of it then, and I can’t make sense of it now, but it’s part of my story. And I accept that.” When they can speak those words and mean them, it will mark a great step toward healing.

"There are no words"? But there are. And we'll find them.