What Can I Do?

Depending on what news you listen to or watch, our world is either falling apart at the seams already, or it is on the brink of falling apart. Have things always been this bad? And what can anyone do about it? I want to encourage you to take a deeper dive into the questions, both from a practical and a biblical perspective.

Practically speaking, it’s very difficult to say whether things are better or worse. Most of us, think of the years near our birth as the best years – so someone born in the 40’s usually considers the 40’s and 50’s as the best years, and someone born in 2000 will think of the 2000’s and 2010’s as the best years. This is good, because it usually means we were safe enough and cared for enough to remember our childhoods fondly. Moreover, those were the years before we discovered what was happening around us. Believe it or not, while adults may believe the world is on fire, children growing up now will likely think they grew up in a time when things were better! That should give us pause before we do anything that could make things worse for young people growing up now.

Biblically, there has never been a “Golden Age” where people behaved well, followed the Golden Rule, watched out for each other, and prospered. There have been good times and bad times, but even during the best of times, such as when David was king of Israel, many terrible things happened. I find it refreshing that the scriptures did not coat the past in a veneer or beauty but told the truth about the good and the bad. After all, from the time Adam and Eve were kicked out of the garden of Eden, it only took one generation before brothers began to murder each other. As a Christian, I am tempted to think, “If only we could be more like the first Christians, things would be better,” but the reality is that the early church was far from perfect.

In his instructions to Timothy, Paul wrote: “The time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander away to myths.” (2 Timothy 4:3, 4) We could say that such a time has arrived, but in truth, we have always lived in those times – people always look for someone who will tell them what they want to hear. They did it when they didn’t want to listen to the prophets of old, and they do it now.

What are we to do then? If things have always been bad and they will always be bad, why not throw in the towel? Let me invite you to re-read the little note I made about being “safe enough and cared for enough” when we were young. Not everyone was kept safe and loved in their childhood, and not everyone is loved and cared for now. After Cain killed Abel, God and Cain had a brief discussion: “Then the LORD said to Cain, “Where is your brother Abel?” He said, “I do not know; am I my brother’s keeper?” (Genesis 4:9) In some ways, the remainder of the Bible tells us that we are, in fact, our brother’s and sister’s keepers. We have a responsibility, indeed, a calling, to love and care for the people around us. Not everyone will receive or wants that love and care, but we are to offer it. To whom? Jesus, when he was asked, “who is my neighbor?” made it clear through the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37), that anyone with whom we come into contact is our neighbor.

Thus, to the question of what we should do in the time we live in, the answer is the same it has always been: Love God and love our neighbors as ourselves. We won’t get people to agree with us, but that’s not our role. We won’t get people to vote the way we want them to, but that’s not our role either. We won’t be able to make people like us, but that isn’t necessary. The way we make the present as good as it can be and the future as bright as it can be is to love God and our neighbors as ourselves. In this long election year, I encourage all of us not to lose sight of what is most important – fulfilling the great commandment of love. Whatever we do, may we do it from the love of God and for the love of our neighbors.