Marti weighs in on justice/injustice…
Do we really have a good excuse for just staying on the sidelines and watching? Do we really need to fear the approaching emotional manipulation with its appeal for what we should be doing? But Marti, how do I get involved with making right what has gone so horribly wrong, and who do I pull in to help fulfill the need?
As to that first question, we no longer have an excuse to be bystanders. If we want to be where God is, we must feed the poor, lift the oppressed, and care deeply.
But how?
Even if we wrench ourselves awake from the dreamy indifference with which the world’s poor have forever been treated, we become aware that in ordinary times, we give when it’s easy — a gesture…a reflex…a salve to the conscience. The entreaties come on late-night TV or in the mail from well-meaning but long-discarded celebrities who cuddle with large-eyed children and appeal to our pity and guilt. Maybe we send off a check and hope it will help someone somewhere stay alive for another day. That is not the model for us current crusaders or the message for these extraordinary times.
Like children with their neighborhood lemonade stand, every enterprise has to start somewhere. For every lemonade stand there is a beginning to inform, invite and involve in the practice of justice, to teach the inequities that every disaster exposes, and to help people understand that in the poorest of countries, everyday is a deadly tsunami.
Embrace everyone who tries, including the endearing person who unscrupulously tries to exploit. Invite people to think globally, but to act carefully, always demanding efficiency. For every fact that you know about injustice, find one action you can do about it. Prove what works. Then use whatever leverage you have to get it done.
If you find yourself tiptoeing around prejudice or condemnation, you know that you’re in the wrong place. Move on as the Lord directs.
No matter what you do, it will never be enough. Yet this is not an excuse for helplessness. Invite everyone to your lemonade stand in a way that makes people think they are missing something if they hold back. Be genuine. Gain nothing personally. Open yourself up to criticism because you are willing to work with anyone to find help for whatever has taken your heart — and insist on making right what has gone horribly wrong.
Finally, do not operate out of pity, but operate out of passion. Pity sees suffering and wants to ease the pain; passion sees injustice and wants to solve the problem. Pity implores the powerful to pay attention; passion warns them about what will happen if they don’t. The risk of pity is that it kills with kindness; the promise of passion is that it builds on the hope that the poor are fully capable of helping themselves if given the chance. The world’s poor do not need sympathy, they need people to be informed, invited and involved in making a difference. We are not talking about size or scope, but about getting to work to make right what God has placed on your heart.
You see, Africa makes a fool of our idea of justice. It makes a farce of our idea of equality. It mocks our pieties. It doubts our concern. It questions our commitment. Because there is no way we can look at what’s happening in Africa, and if we’re honest, conclude that it would ever be allowed to happen anywhere else.
Bono, Congressional record – Senate, volume 152, Pt. 17 November 14, 2006.
John Fischer The Catch 
It seems to me you’re forgetting something here, John: COMpassion. Compassion embraces both pity and passion. We can see Christ’s actions in Scripture, such as His overturning the tables of the money-changers in the Temple, and we can say, “Now there’s a man of passion.” But Scripture actually says that He was “moved with compassion.” I think Christ showed both pity and passion because He was a man of COMpassion. There is nothing to be ashamed of for taking pity on the pitiable – it is a godly quality. “Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him.”- Psalm 103:13. It is a fatherly quality. Let’s be careful not to condemn some qualities of God in order to promote others. It is all of God or none of Him. It is His justice as well as His mercy, His discipline as well as His reward, His pity as well as His passion.
You are exactly right – it is COMPASSION that leads to meaningful action. I’m thinking John and Marti are talking about the pitfall of pity WITHOUT passion in this piece, Waitsel; the tendency to text $10 to the Red Cross, send up a cursory prayer for those affected by some disaster, and then forget about it until the next commercial airs, when we tell ourselves that we’ve already done our part. Had the Good Samaritan seen the injured man in the road, felt bad [pity] for him and just tucked some money in his pocket and kept going, the money would do no good and the man likely would have died. But Luke 10:33 (NASB) tells us the Samaritan felt COMPASSION, and so bound his wounds and carried him to the inn and invested HIMSELF and his money in the man’s recovery. In Luke 10:37, Jesus says, “Go and do the same.” I’m thinking John and Marti are saying the same thing to us here – GO and DO.
Yes!
I loved this message and it reminded me of a dear little boy in Canada who last year set up a lemonade stall in Canada to raise funds for orphans at Messef Orphanage in Haiti, that I help with. He was horrified to hear that the children don’t always know if they are going to eat or not on any given day. He had pity and passion and actually did something about it, at the tender age of eight. This was his second year of helping; the previous year he gave his birthday money to help the children. God bless him!
This is a beautiful story. Thanks for sharing it!
Personally, I have always preferred to point out the injustice than be involved. When my family and I chose to stop pointing and and began doing not only were others lives changed, so were ours.
One thing I have concluded is we all have something that motivates to action. It is easy for me to be frustrated when my passion is not taken up by someone else,
What is better and we all need to do is respond where God moves us and operate as one body. There are many needs out there and I think it is okay for our passions to change as we change.
Excellent.