There is an old saying that familiarity breeds contempt, but I wonder if it wouldn’t be more accurate to say that familiarity breeds indifference.
I also think that indifference leads to apathy. We can just live with a thing for so long that we take it for granted; and, this brings me to our relationship with God.
King David woke me up this morning with some words from his inspiring and enchanting song, “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want (Psalm 23:1 KJV).”
I count only nine words but they are dynamite. Back in the day, the Near-Eastern biblical writers saw God as a great and perfect Father.
Our Father serves as a kind and gracious shepherd; therefore, we lack for nothing. What is interesting is understanding that the Aramaic word for shepherd (NERAINI) means not only shepherd but to feed, to tend, to keep and to nourish.
All of these concepts speak to an intimate relationship with the Divine Holy Other who created us. When I sit and think of this a while, it melts my heart.
We do not have to do anything to inherit this grace other than to receive it. God has no hidden agenda. God simply wants a loving relationship with us.
Then, here comes Jesus. And, what we get to see is God in human form, modeling these very same traits. What we see is God acting out the same shepherding qualities that King David wrote about so many years before.
Understanding God in this manner is not rocket science. It does not take a genius to grasp this.
But, then Jesus tells us, “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth (Matthew 5:5 NIV).”
So…just maybe we are living in a backwards world where the simple-minded are more able to see Jesus. Maybe the simple-minded are truly those wisest amongst us.
And, maybe we have just lived with a thing for so long that we have become indifferent.
I was raised going to church. There was no children’s church, children’s time or any fun stuff in worship when I was a child. I was relegated to sitting on a pew next to my mother on the off occasions when she was not singing in the choir.
As a child, I would squirm and fidget. I would look overheard and count the light bulbs in the ceiling. I was just doing time until the sermon was over.
My mother always had chewing gum in her purse. She’d usually tear a stick of Juicy-Fruit gum in half and split it between my brother Joe and me. My baby brother Gary would be in the nursery.
Joe and I were both bored to tears. I would silently lament that if heaven was this boring, I didn’t want to go there.
I’ve never been one who is good at sitting still. Sometimes, back in the day I would fidget so much there would be consequences to pay when I got home.
My mother always threw my dad under the bus and used him as a threat-weapon. “If you don’t sit still and be quiet, I will tell your dad and you’re going to really get it when we get home!”
The funny thing was that Dad was always sitting there on that same pew and in his case, he got so still at times, I wondered if he was breathing…until he snored.
Such was church back in the day.
Once a year, a real-live missionary would come by and speak. We would often have a spaghetti supper where soy was used in the sauce instead of ground beef or sausage.
The spaghetti tasted worse than cardboard and then we were told that people living in those mission fields ate this stuff every day. So, naturally we’d give tons of money after a meal like that in the hopes that somebody over there could finally get a decent meal to eat.
Such was mission work back in the day.
Mostly, we got our boring dose of church, went home and resumed our lives. It was enough to be saved; and, that was about it.
Let’s see now, a dose of Jesus on Sunday and eat a terrible mean once a year. That ought to just about do it! We can put up with this for eternal life.
Except…we know we will definitely need a funeral someday, so a big reason to remain on a church role back in the day was to ensure that we had access to a grave that was either free or very cheap. And, we might also need a preacher for that aforesaid funeral or the occasional wedding in our family, where we’d need access to a church building.
Such was church membership back in the day…only for many folks back in the day is now.
Contrast this with intimately knowing God as King David describes. It puzzles me how so many Christians today seem to clearly miss the bull’s eye and as a result also miss out on the greatest banquet that humanity could ever join.
Our Heavenly, Divine, Holy Father came into this world in person to give us the face of love and healing. Christ came to usher in thy kingdom come, not through indifference, boredom, ritual or heaven forbid, violence!
(And, you’d be surprised how many Christians are advocating violence in order to force thy kingdom come.)
Our job is a simple one:
“The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord: And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment. And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these (Mark 12:29-31 KJV).”
It’s impossible to be indifferent when it comes to God’s love. It is truly the case that we’re either in or not.