It is currently almost 2am in the morning. I crawled into bed at midnight but haven't been able to sleep. Tonight I am finding rest to be an elusive quarry. Tonight I find my heart set on a restless course. The primary tenet upon which the cause of my stirrings lies, the primary idea which carries the implications that deny me sleep is that, according to the teachings of Christ as I understand them, I am obliged to treat every Christian as brother, sister, mother, or father. I should mention from the start that I disagree wholeheartedly with anyone who would seek to dilute the biblical language surrounding the family of Christ to a mere sentiment. One which lacks any radical demands on our lifestyle and serves only as one more half-understood idea to throw into the confused milieu of warm and fuzzy Christian jargon. I feel that if a fellow Christian should ask me for anything, I should be there and willing as if it were my own brother or sister that made the request. I believe that what unites us in Christ is stronger, more precious, more real, and longer lasting than genetics. I believe that blood is thicker than water, but that the Spirit of God is thicker still. My life is not my own, it belongs to my Father and my family.
Here's where it starts to get tricky for me. Over half the world lives in poverty. Among that majority there are bound to be countless brothers and sisters of Christ, countless people that I believe Christ has explicitly instructed me to regard as family, not to mention the fact that Christ explicitly teaches in Matthew 25:31-46 that he equates our treatment of these brothers and sisters with our treatment of Him. At this point a picture comes to mind of my flesh and blood, my own siblings, living in the gutter without enough to eat and I choke. I feel angry and distraught and I feel the tears threatening my eyes. How could I not do all that I can to help them? My own flesh and blood. Now, to put things in a little perspective, the absolute poverty line in India is 50cents a day, and no doubt I have many brothers and sisters in India that live on this. That means if I was to spend say $2000 on a new laptop, that I would be spending the equivalent of 4000 days wages for someone in India living below the poverty line. Here is where the idea of being a family united in Christ begins to really hurt. If my brother was living on less than 50 cents a day there is no way on the earth that I would be so callous as to spend $2000 on my own indulgence. That money could feed my brother for years, that money could put my brothers children through school, that money could save my brothers life as well as many other brothers also. I am struck by an idea which calls for an overhaul of my entire lifestyle. For with what I consider loose change, I could drastically change the lives of people whom Christ has called me to love more than I love myself, people whom Christ has told me to put ahead of myself. How then can I justify the money I waste on indulgences? And I don't simply mean the indulgences upon which we would all agree are large and extravagant. For that scale looks very different in the eyes of the impoverished.
This is the point where I hear the voices of "wisdom" calling me back from the dangerous theological path which this rationale threatens to take me down. I hear statements that involve the words self imposed homelessness, and poverty, and austerity, and I quickly seek to tame and modify my thoughts in order to sidestep a moral dillema that might otherwise ruin me. And perhaps there is some wisdom in these warnings. However, one thing they all have in common is that they serve to frighten me away from a frank and honest appraisal of what scripture requires of me. The fact is that when one examines the enormity of what Christ requires of us, the radical love that it requires, it is utterly overwhelming. The fact is that Jesus was homeless. He had nothing to His name that I can think of except the clothes on His back. Two men of faith, John Leonard Dober and David Nitschman, sold themselves into slavery in order to take the gospel to a slave colony. Our history is full of heroes of faith, sung and unsung, who have not shied from striving for a lifestyle of radical love, one that puts me to shame at the thought of my own. There are many who will say that to deny myself as much as I can is unnecessary. That some degree of self-indulgence, or to put it more palatably, one's right enjoyment of God's many blessings, is perfectly appropriate. Whatever the right course in this regard, I know that I am not currently living it. There is a long way to go, and I know that His grace will meet me every step of the way. For now, I will not presume to provide a conclusion, but I hold this thought with an open hand.
May Christ give me the strength to live by the convictions He places in my heart. Amen.
