Learning to cry…

Posted by Paul | Filed under uncategorised

I recently stumbled on another interesting Francis Schaeffer-related article at Christianity Today: Learning to Cry for the Culture.

The author remarks that 

Schaeffer was the first Christian leader who taught me to weep over the world instead of judging it.
…
Instead of shaking our heads at a depressing, dark, abstract work of art, the true Christian reaction should be to weep for the lost person who created it. Schaeffer was a rare Christian leader who advocated understanding and empathizing with non-Christians instead of taking issue with them.

This got me thinking… There is a lot of talk of being incarnational today, but there is seldom discussion about identifying with the culture sufficiently to truly ‘weep with those who weep’; to empathise so deeply that we take on the problems of those around.
In contrast, the OT prophets frequently took this route. I think we tend to imagine prophets as sitting outside the mainstream and hurling in prophetic grenades, but there is frequently something deeper going on. Think of Jeremiah in Lamentations or Daniel repenting on behalf of the whole nation. The prophets were typically people who were faithful to God & challenged the culture directly, yet in some sense they also took on and processed the problems within themselves.
And think of the incarnation. It was not simply that Jesus turned up in human form so that we could understand better. He took on our failings, problems, issues. He identified with us. We have a high priest who sympathises. Think of his tears over Jerusalem — they don’t indicate a detached ’oh, well, you had your chance’, but a intimate involvement. Or think of tears at Lazarus’ graveside. Even though he knew what would happen next, he engaged deeply with the sorrow.
Can we, as the church, display the same aspect of incarnation? Where we take on and wrestle with the problems of the culture around rather than simply judging? Can we find that dual nature – being in the world, but not of? 

The normal human reaction is to hate what we don’t understand. This is the stuff of prejudice and the cause of hate crimes and escalating social evil. It is much more Christ-like to identify with those we don’t understand—to discover why people do what they do, because we care about them, even if they are our ideological enemies.

How do we do this? I guess we are back to listening to the culture. Really listening. Listening to what is going on below the surface. This always takes effort, and perhaps more if the people we are listening to are trying to actively dismiss or attack our beliefs. 

Jesus asked us to love our enemies. Part of loving is learning to understand. 

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Permalink | April 25th, 2008

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