Even indifferent to their own kids… but this is besides the point.
I’m not sure what you have in mind, but I have seen destructive indifference (ranging to antipathy) to kids, particularly adult “kids”, by parents in church.
That’s what I have in mind. Seen it, experienced it, and have done it myself.
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While in the higher (‘James’ sense) of being Christian - this can be seen as an oxymoron, yet one has to keep in mind that we regularly traffic in two different definitions of ‘Christian’ and sometimes freely pop back in forth between the two so that context must always be used to discern.
In one sense ‘Christian’ refers to actual Christ followers who in the final judgment will hear “Well done, good and faithful servant…”
In the other sense ‘Christian’ refers to a lesser, cultural Christendom which is seen as having thoroughly adulterated itself with principalities and powers - the concerns of institution and maintenance of wealth/power. This will include many who indulge in indifference and worse regarding their neighbors.
The hard, reflective question for each to ask is where do we find ourselves in that? I think the answer can vary from moment to moment, even for an individual.
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“christianly indifference” is how I read it at first
Just read this witty poem in @Jay313’s new Thread:
Alexander Pope’s “An Essay on Man”:
Know then thyself, presume not God to scan;
The proper study of mankind is Man.
Placed on this isthmus of a middle state,
A being darkly wise, and rudely great:
With too much knowledge for the Skeptic side
With too much weakness for the Stoic’s pride,
He hangs between; in doubt to act, or rest.
In doubt to deem himself a god, or beast;
In doubt his mind or body to prefer,
Born to die, and reasoning but to err;
Alike in ignorance, his reason such,
Whether he thinks too little, or too much:
Chaos of thought and passion, all confused;
Still by himself abused, or disabused;
Created half to rise, and half to fall;
Great lord of things, yet a prey to all;
Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled;
The glory, jest, and riddle of the world
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I’ve been reading Jesus and John Wayne this week, and while don’t have a pithy quote offhand, have found it very interesting and insightful. {insert pause to reflect} The history of how we got here is one that I was unaware of, what with the influence of Teddy Roosevelt, Billy Graham, and other public figures.
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I read that not too long ago, and will read your insights and reactions with interest. Not a flattering work with regard to its subject, but I felt like she was evenhanded (at least as much as possible) about it and bestowed or conceded any praise where it was due.
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@Mervin_Bitikofer and @jpm, my reaction was the same. It’s an important book. It’s also causing my decision-making process to be much harder.
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A few more quotes I found pity from The Other by Ryszard Kapuściński. This was a fast read and worth every moment.
The Stranger, the Other in his Third World incarnation (and so the most numerous individual on our planet), is still treated as the object of research, but has not yet become our partner, jointly responsible for the fate of the planet on which we live.
(Bookshare edition, 64%)
This sounds petty to many of us, who are used to having access to leadership positions or to leaders and representatives. But we cannot claim to have achieved any kind of equality or equity, if the same groups of people are still calling the shots that were 50 years ago. That is only change for looks.
Jézef Tischner practised the philosophy of the Other with passion and perspicacity to the very end of his earthly journey. In his tireless promotion of its beliefs and principles — and this is true today in particular, in the times we live in — lie profound humanity and genuine heroism. And that is why, apart from strictly academic values, it is worth so much that it bravely and openly comes out in defence of another person, in defence of the Other, in a world that so often yields to the temptations of selfishness and greedy consumerism.
The great merit of this philosophy is that it talks about the individual person at all, about each single one as significant in himself, and that it keeps on reminding us of his existence and articulation. In all our postmodern commotion, in our confusion of languages, a strong, clear voice raising such qualities as identity, respect, noticing and esteeming another — the Other — is invaluable. But that is not the end of it; in developing and enriching the themes that appear in Emmanuel Lévinas’s philosophy, particularly in Totality and Infinity , Tischner says that the Self not only has to relate to the Other, but must assume responsibility for him and be prepared to bear the consequences of such a decision, such an attitude. Is there a Christian act of sacrifice in this? Yes — of sacrifice, renunciation and humility.
(Bookshare edition, 69%)
Let’s take this to heart.
Emmanuel Lévinas calls an encounter with the Other an ‘event’, or even a ‘fundamental event’; this is the most important test, the most far-reaching horizon of experience. As we know, Lévinas belonged to the group of dialogist philosophers that included Martin Buber, Ferdinand Ebner and Gabriel Marcel (later Józef Tischner joined their group too); they developed the idea of the Other — as a single, unique being — in more or less central opposition to two phenomena that appeared in the twentieth century. These were: the birth of mass society that erased the identity of the individual; and the rise of destructive totalitarian ideologies. These philosophers tried to protect the value they considered the greatest — the human individual: me, you, the Other, Others — from the effects of the masses and totalitarianism that eliminate all human identity (hence they disseminated the concept of the Other to underline the difference between one person and another, the difference of having irreplaceable, non-exchangeable features).
Where relations towards the Other and Others are concerned, these philosophers rejected the war route as leading to destruction, and criticised the attitude of indifference or isolation behind a wall, proclaiming instead the need — more than that, the ethical duty — to approach, to be open and friendly.
(Bookshare edition, 81%)
The real challenge of our times, the encounter with the new Other, the racially and culturally Other, also derives from a broader historical context. The second half of the twentieth century was a time when two-thirds of the world’s population were liberated from colonial dependency and became citizens of their own, at least nominally autonomous states. Gradually these people are starting to discover their own past, myths and roots, their own history, sense of identity and, of course, the pride resulting from it. They are starting to feel themselves masters and commanders of their own destiny, regarding with hatred any attempts to treat them purely as extras, as the background, as victims or passive objects of domination.
(Bookshare edition, 88%)
Years ago, my mother-in-law expressed outright worry after hearing yet another news report about the non-white population of the U.S. eventually outnumbering the white population (as if they were two homogenous masses) – them against us, I guess. I tartly (uncharitably) retorted she needed to start making new kinds of friends.
But I also meant it. We need to expand our horizons and learn to appreciate, welcome, be with, invite people we perceive as other and who see us that way as well.
Mark, I saw this post yesterday, when I didn’t have the brain power left to bother reading it. Done now. THis was great! So many pithy lines. I could quote them, but I’d just be retyping the poem in bits.
We are the embodiment of contradictions.
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Thanks for drawing me back here. I knew There was a thread I meant to come back to for s post of yours but couldn’t think which. Think I’ll have at it now.
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We are to see Jesus in all kinds of lowercase ‘o’ others, and through serving them we also serve the uppercase Other. Too many miss the latter though, and while there is nothing at all wrong with enjoying the gratification that comes giving and service to others, even sacrificially, it does not constitute a personal encounter with the Good Shepherd, the true and truly Other.
Phil Yancey’s personal but objectively describable experience with the truest Good Samaritan does. Phil is a fairly well known Christian author who had been in Christian circles for a long time without being one himself, and he describes his conversion:
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Kapuściński’s use of Other, rather than other is entirely unrelated to writing conventions related to divinity or humanity, but to demonstrate a recognition of that Other person as person, whose individual name (which we would capitalize) we may not know (yet) but who is not nameless, not merely a mote in the mass. At present the only name we have is the respectfully-used name: Other. We may also even use it in awe, as we would use for any highly respected person, in which case Other is a title of respect as well.
This is normally not the case, is it?
“Other” is generally used as a term of distrust as well as derivations such as “otherness.”
Kapuściński seeks to turn our normal, wrong, human tendencies on their head by treating this unknown, yet-to-be-seen person with great respect and an eagerness for acquaintance.
This is a Christ-like view of encounter and hospitality that any of us should pursue.
From MacDonald’s unspoken sermon series: “The Hardness of the Way”
The man who for consciousness of well-being depends upon anything but life, the life essential, is a slave; he hangs on what is less than himself. He is not perfect who, deprived of every thing, would not sit down calmly content, aware of a well-being untouched; for none the less would he be possessor of all things, the child of the Eternal. Things are given us, this body first of things, that through them we may be trained both to independence and true possession of them. We must possess them; they must not possess us. Their use is to mediate—as shapes and manifestations in lower kind of the things that are unseen, that is, in themselves unseeable, the things that belong, not to the world of speech, but the world of silence, not to the world of showing, but the world of being, the world that cannot be shaken, and must remain. These things unseen take form in the things of time and space—not that they may exist, for they exist in and from eternal Godhead, but that their being may be known to those in training for the eternal; these things unseen the sons and daughters of God must possess. But instead of reaching out after them, they grasp at their forms, reward the things seen as the things to be possessed, fall in love with the bodies instead of the souls of them. There are good people who can hardly believe that, if the young man had consented to give up his wealth, the Lord would not then have told him to keep it; they too seem to think the treasure in heaven insufficient as a substitute. They cannot believe he would have been better off without his wealth. ‘Is not wealth power?’ they ask. It is indeed power, and so is a wolf hid in the robe; it is power, but as of a brute machine, of which the owner ill knows the handles and cranks, valves and governor. The multitude of those who read the tale are of the same mind as the youth himself—in his worst moment, as he turned and went—with one vast difference, that they are not sorrowful.
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Okay - I can’t leave well enough alone. From a bit later in the same sermon as the above …
Thus death may give a new opportunity—with some hope for the multitude counting themselves Christians, who are possessed by things as by a legion of devils; who stand well in their church; whose lives are regarded as stainless; who are kind, friendly, give largely, believe in the redemption of Jesus, talk of the world and the church; yet whose care all the time is to heap up, to make much into more, to add house to house and field to field, burying themselves deeper and deeper in the ash-heap of Things.
But it is not the rich man only who is under the dominion of things; they too are slaves who, having no money, are unhappy from the lack of it. The man who is ever digging his grave is little better than he who already lies mouldering in it.
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God have mercy on me, a sinner!
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You and me both, sister!
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Still talking about the Other that we capitalize though, any imagining and being content with merely a concept of an unknowable entity that arose from a New Age-ish materialistic mysticism (aka woo) is not holding any kind of person or personhood with great respect and eagerness for acquaintance, just the opposite.
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Dale, we couldn’t possibly be talking about the same thing.