Another Way Crisis Creates Clarity
I wrote a few weeks ago that crisis creates clarity. In that post (“The Clarifying Effects of Distress”), I spoke about how, because of the crisis of the pandemic, some will find that their faith is deeper and more substantial, while others will find themselves questioning tenets of their faith that they always took for granted.
It’s true, isn’t it, that crisis somehow sharpens our senses so that either we find deeper and greater comfort in God’s promises or we find that those promises begin to sound hollow, trite, and irrelevant? Crisis has a way of helping us see what we actually believe.
A couple of weeks ago in my post “How to Respond to the New Rise of the ‘Nones’”, I addressed a corollary issue: how this crisis will reveal the “cultural Christians” – people whose identification with the Christian faith is merely tribal, not personal.
I observed that after such a long hiatus away from weekly worship meetings, and especially with the easy availability of live-streamed services from all over the nation, cultural Christians might not return to weekly worship meetings at all. If and when they do come back, it will be primarily for the sake of social compliance. They’ll come to church on special occasions (Christmas, Easter, a baptism, Mother’s Day, a children’s program), mostly as a kind of tribal ritual, maintaining their public identification with their family or with the Christian tradition.
Some will of course hesitate to rejoin public worship for other reasons, primarily their own health or the health of their loved ones. But for many “cultural Christians,” there just won’t be much of a point in resuming the weekly habit of gathering with the people of God to celebrate the goodness of God.
I think there’s another way that crisis creates clarity: it reveals our selfishness.
You know the old question: if your house was on fire and you could take with you only one most precious possession, what would you grab? The urgency of that fiery moment makes us do a kind of instant triage: what is the one thing I must not lose in this catastrophe?
I think that this pandemic has turned up the heat on our values, and it is revealing a deep inner layer of selfishness that never manifested itself in more secure times.
In the early days of the pandemic, I was surprised at the way people’s fears manifested themselves in their shopping patterns. It was no surprise that people hoarded toilet paper and hand sanitizer.
But ramen noodles?
Canned vegetables?
Soy milk?
Fear does have an odd way of warping our sensibilities, doesn’t it?
It’s not that anyone ever made an idol out of toilet paper, but hoarding does say something about our priorities. In unpredictable and chaotic times, love of neighbor (who also needs toilet paper) gives way to a desperate love of self. And trust in our covenant-keeping God is thrust aside in our panic to regain control over our circumstances. Our true priorities are revealed in our frantic efforts to protect our own interests.
As uncomfortable as it is to have our hearts exposed in this way, it’s a good thing that the crisis is revealing our selfishness to us. God’s Spirit can use this insight to purge our hearts and make us more fit to serve God and find our confidence and delight in Him.
How we are revealing our selfishness to the watching world:
Yes, it’s a good thing that we are seeing our own selfishness manifested in these troubled times, but it’s not a good thing that we are revealing that self-absorption to those within our influence.
You might expect that the social media presence of Christ-followers would be distinctive.
But it isn’t.
If our social media posts are any indication of what is going on in our hearts, we Christians are as anxious and rootless as everyone else. If you survey Christian posts on social media, you will find a wide variety of attitudes and outlooks, not all of them befitting followers of a suffering Savior who rules now from heaven and will return one day in glory.
Posts by Christians these days include not only wry humor about our situation and helpful exhortations to put our confidence in God, but also…
dark speculations about conspiracies
deep suspicion of the experts who are trying to provide the best available advice in an unprecedented and ever-evolving situation
defiance aimed toward civil authorities
sputtering outrage at the threat to our religious liberties
What do all these dark themes have in common? They reveal our anxiety about the threats to our control over our circumstances.
In other words, the pandemic is not just revealing our selfishness to us. Thanks to the outlet of social media, we are revealing our self-centered obsessions to the watching world. This is not a winsome picture of the gospel.
Crisis is always revelatory. The crisis of a new marriage reveals how self-absorbed we are as we try to realign the “me” impulse to the new “we” impulse. And there’s nothing like parenthood to destroy any last clinging shred of self-centeredness; the demands of caring for small children will quickly realign our interests to care for the needs of those who, at least at first, cannot reciprocate.
This isn’t a rant about Christians on social media. There is a place for thoughtful discussion of the issues in the public forum. And as citizens of God’s Kingdom, Christians have a great deal to contribute to that discussion.
But we need to remember two things about how we participate in those discussions:
1. What we share with the world is only the outward manifestation of something that runs much deeper, so we must keep watch over the sacred precincts of our heart. This, then, is God’s Word for our anxious times: “Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life” (Proverbs 4:23).
2. We must remember that many people have no contact with Christianity except through what they see of us online. So consider this word from Paul: “Walk in wisdom toward outsiders, making the best use of the time. Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person” (Colossians 4:5-6).
And from Peter: “Keep your conduct among the Gentiles [outsiders] honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation (1 Peter 2:10).
Persevere,
Paul Pyle
Discipleship Pastor
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