The status quo

I had the privilege of watching the movie "The Help" yesterday with my wife. It's a beautiful story about courage, about standing up for what's right. It's a story about challenging the status quo.

As I watched the movie, I was struck by the reality of how Christians throughout history have so often been seduced by the culture. This has happened many times throughout history but in this post we'll just stick with the American slavery and segregation issue.

I've often wondered how I would have dealt with the issue of slavery or later segregation if I had lived in that era. Usually, I see myself fearlessly, and without restraint confronting the abomination of such injustice.  I imagine myself asking the church what the hell it's thinking!

Then I think about what it really would have been like to live in a time when it was simply normal to own slaves. What if I grew up being taught by my parents not that slavery was a wicked and shameful disgrace but rather, that good Christians don't beat their slaves or even speak harshly to them, instead they give them enough to eat and allow them to sleep inside our house on cold nights. What if my pastor and his family owned a couple of slaves and nobody thought anything of it?

Maybe, instead I would have grown up in a Christian family where my parents took a stand and refused to own slaves because they believed it was wrong but, took no further action. Perhaps my family would have gone to a church where instead of the pastor owning slaves, he taught that this is wrong but, took no further action.

From where we sit today we know that anything short of turning slavery on it head would have been insufficient.  We know that participating in it was wrong. We know that it wasn't enough for people to simply not participate in it. It needed to come to an end, period.

It seems that when a society is in the midst of such extreme injustices they don't see it as such at the time. It's simply the status quo. It's as if everybody goes into a drug induced stupor and cannot see what is so obviously wicked and abhorrent.

As I look back in history and think about the issue mentioned above as well as others, I ask myself a dangerous question.  What are we as a society currently blinded to?  What are future generations going to remember this one by?

Is it possible that future generations will look at us (especially the church) and say, "How could they have lived in such luxury and affluence while people all around the globe were starving and dieing of easily preventable diseases?  How could they have been so indifferent to their hurting suffering brothers and sisters around the world while living in such extravagance?"

I'm realizing lately that it's not enough to simply give out of our abundance and condemn the injustice of our world.  We somehow need to join those living in extreme poverty. Just like we would imagine locking arms with the slaves, we need to lock arms with the poor and together fight the causes of poverty. Doing this sounds great but, let's not kid ourselves, it will come at a cost.

I don't exactly know how all this needs to play out but, I do know that it starts with stepping out of the fog and being willing to look at the reality in which we presently live. I know that ending extreme poverty is possible but, will only come at a price. I know that only if we come together will we be able to actually see extreme poverty fade from our world. I know that I want to be on the right side of history when it's written.  I want to be with those who took the gospel seriously and were willing to actually live it out no matter the cost...no matter how strange it seemed to those steeped in the status quo!