Hypocrisy is the homage that vice pays to virtue.
~François, Duc de La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680)
When the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the angels with Him, then He will sit on His glorious throne. Before Him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. And He will place the sheep on His right, but the goats on the left. Then the King will say to those on His right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ Then the righteous will answer Him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry and feed You, or thirsty and give You drink? And when did we see You a stranger and welcome You, or naked and clothe You? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these My brothers, you did it to Me.’
Then He will say to those on His left, ‘Depart from Me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave Me no food, I was thirsty and you gave Me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome Me, naked and you did not clothe Me, sick and in prison and you did not visit Me.’ Then they also will answer, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to You?’ Then He will answer them, saying, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.’
And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.
~ truth, from The Truth in Matthew 25
There is, beloved, an astoundingly simple question…
Do we care about anyone? Really care? There is, it seems to this fool of a writer, a deep deficit within us. Perhaps it is just me, but my guess is that i am on the right track. We, within and of our own selves simply do not give a flying pile of garbage whether the poor around us perish.
And then He saves us… Mightily.
He tears into the wretched ego which pushed Him away for so many years.
He softens the heart that was made of the hardest stone.
He heals the hurts we were trying to protect.
He frees the mind from the constraints of living by its own ideas.
He complicates our circumstances until we yield them to Him.
He pummels our hands until we open them.
He gives us grace that we can find peace.
He comes into us as we breathe out our last self-drawn breath and we inhale the new Atmosphere of His Spirit into our lungs. And we somehow have our eyes opened to the starkly-contrasted darkness around us.
“Oh my G_d! Did i simply not notice these people before?”
And He says, “Yes my child, you did. However, you were so wrapped up in your own garbage that you could not see the waste around you. You were even willing to let your own children hurt and even die if it would have bought you a moment of relief from the self-imposed stress you had cultivated in your own life.”
…This writer just went on an outreach to a trash mountain community on the outskirts of a mega-city here in Asia. The children are dirty and the mountain reeks and rathes with the foul decomposition of waste and the growth of the maggots that encourage the breakdown of the garbage. Places like this really do begin to make one think of what hell is like. The hopeless unending-ness and unfixable-ness of places like this in the world act as a shadow of the true torment that awaits those who reject Him.
And then, on the mountain, i learned a truth that turned my stomach even more than the smell coming from the trash. The men up on the mountain could indeed make a modest wage doing the dirty work of collecting the right kind of treasure from the effluent of garbage the rest of us in the city fling their way. However, instead of sending the money down the mountain to feed the (read their own) starving children, the men will smoke and drink and gamble and pulse (phone charges) the money away. If they have any money left over, they may give a pittance to their women to pay for the costs of running the household.
Said simply, there are kids starving to death in that base camp… and the wasting and stunting and dying is completely unnecessary.
And then…
i saw the three digits of my hand below the one pointing at these wretched men, and noticed they were pointing back at me. Oh my, this writer has had moments and seasons in the past where the shadow of my sin has brought about a profound apathy and disinterest in the needs of the people i worked with, ministered to, and even was a father to. My “needs” were more important than anyone. Period.
Now, just as surely as i had three fingers pointing back at me, the G_d who heals has done a doozy of a job on a guy like me. And this same disinterested party now aches for the well-being of others. But, what i have found is that the ache does not find its genesis anywhere within my own flesh. Rather, the ache is infinite and growing, for it comes from the One who is Love Himself. And this One is now working out this Love in me and through me that i might become truly like Him – and serve as a weapon of His righteousness.
So, yes. The men on this trash mountain deserve to have their butts kicked for not taking care of their kids.
And so did i.
And Jesus Loves all of us. And He loves us with a Love that covers a multitude of all our sins. This covering being so powerful as to cancel and wash away the filth of who we were (and maybe still are).
Can we see it? Apart from Jesus, we are profoundly evil creatures. We will do and say anything that meets our perceived needs in a moment. And apart from Him, there is no hope that we will ever change. Apart from Him, we can do nothing. What if we got out of the business of pointing fingers at the (real) evil of others and began to see what G_d still needs to root out in our own lives?
It does seem to this fool that this is the only way we can begin to even hope to fix problems like this trash mountain. Unless the garbage has been cleared away from our own lives, how in the world could we even begin to hope that we will be able to help others do the same?
