Further Reflections

Last Easter I watched the Passion of the Christ with some friends. It was, in some sense, an emotional experience. But that emotion gave me pause, although I was unsure why it felt uncomfortable at the time. Only recently, it occurred to me that this was because we see Christ actually crucified everyday and it evokes no emotion in us the way that the movie did.

The crucifixion of Christ was as much a sin of omission as it was murder. Imagine if every just man acted out to stop the greatest injustice in human history. Their individual decisions to instead live their own lives ensured Christ's crucifixion.

Every time we choose to live our own lives we crucify Christ through our indifference or desperate ignorance. I am sometimes astounded by the rash of perturbing statistics that accompany most cries for help from a place like Camden. It is not only depressing to see how apalling the numbers are but to see a place or people that you think you know reduced to such. When it come's to God's work, however, the important statistics are not, I think, the statistics of suffering, of violence or poverty rates, of broken families and SAT scores, of mental illness or suicides. Ever since the fall, mankind has suffered in this world. The important statistics are unprecedented: the extraordinary indications of a lifestyle that makes no sense in the context of our world and its history, the statistics that reflect the choosing of one's own life over God's vision for us. Without dwelling on guilt or blame, perhaps when we look for brokenness in the world, we should not concentrate on its symptoms but on the crucifixion of Christ that occurs daily at our own hands, through our omission. It is not enough to concentrate on the effects of sin, but on the sin itself and the sinners, ourselves.

This is not about guilt. Choosing to give of oneself to assuage guilt is still choosing to live one's own life; it is choosing something that enables one to continue living as blind to the crucifixion that we see before us.

Nor is this about efficacy. There were two men with much to lose who stood up for Jesus, who chose to deny the possibilities of their own lives for him. They did not prevent his death and suffering or its injustice. Often our choice to deny our will for God's will not stop or even reach the suffering in which we see the injustice of Christ's agony. But it is still one instance of the rejection of the sin itself. Every instance of self-denial for the sake of Jesus takes down one cross.
Ultimately, we should only go where God calls us, and only because he calls us, and His wisdom and goodness will take care of the rest.