“Helping Others is Inconvenient So Just Ignore Them”
by brian rushing
Once again, a year has blown by us in a hurry, and we find ourselves about to celebrate two of our favorite holidays: Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Thanksgiving might could be explained as the holiday of stuffing your face until you are about to pop (and then waiting awhile and stuffing it some more); and…
Christmas as the holiday of faking good behavior so Santa will give you gifts. (Or when you have gotten a bit too old for Santa, switching it to the holiday of using Santa to threaten others into fake good behavior!)
So (tongue-in-cheek) we might could call these two holidays our celebration of the sins of gluttony and deceit!
Just kidding… We know that this is not what these holidays are all about, but too often, we seem to head down a path that doesn’t embrace a truly thankful, giving spirit that these two holidays should point us toward. Too often we find ourselves with bad attitudes (and maybe even behavior) during this time of the year. We find ourselves with hurried attitudes similar to two of the people in Jesus’ story of the Good Samaritan: the priest and the Levite.
These two men should have provided kindness and mercy to the man in need, but they both failed to do so – perhaps because it was too inconvenient to do so in the busyness of their day.
J. I. Packer says: “It is our shame and disgrace today that so many Christians — I will be more specific: so many of the soundest and most orthodox Christians — go through this world in the spirit of the priest and the Levite in our Lord’s parable, seeing human needs all around them, but (after a pious wish, and perhaps a prayer, that God might meet those needs) averting their eyes and passing by on the other side. That is not the Christmas spirit. Nor is it the spirit of those Christians — alas, they are many — whose ambition in life seems limited to building a nice middle-class Christian home, and making nice middle-class Christian friends, and bringing up their children in nice middle-class Christian ways, and who leave the submiddle-class sections of the community, Christian and non-Christian, to get on by themselves.
…The Christmas spirit does not shine out in the Christian snob. For the Christmas spirit is the spirit of those who, like their Master, live their whole lives on the principle of making themselves poor — spending and being spent — to enrich their fellow humans, giving time, trouble, care and concern, to do good to others — and not just their own friends — in whatever way there seems need.”
These words from Packer hit me pretty hard, as I consider my own behavior during this holiday season. I don’t like doing things that are inconvenient to me. And Helping Others is Usually Inconvenient! But that doesn’t give me (or any Christian) the right to Just Ignore Them.
And what I discover is that I am so busy with my plans, that anything “extra” that comes along during a day is pretty inconvenient – just like the beaten man was for the priest and Levite. Will I be willing to “spend and be spent” to enrich the lives of those who aren’t my friends and family this December? What will I do this holiday season to move away from the attitude of the “Christian snob” and live more like Jesus who gave His time, care, and concern to do good to others – even when it was inconvenient for Him? God, change my heart, change my attitude, change my behavior. Help me to “slow down” and stop feeling inconvenienced by others, and instead to realize that I have an opportunity to speak to others about You in each unexpected encounter.
(Quotes in today’s post are from Knowing God by J. I. Packer)