Maybe We Don't "Do" Anything

"So, what do we do about that?" a friend said to me. We were talking about the clothing designer for Target who got fired because he was openly a Satanist. "Do we support Target for firing someone with beliefs like that? Or do we not support Target because they're firing someone based on their beliefs? Like, what if a Christian got fired because they were a Christian? What do we do?"

"Maybe we don't 'do' anything," I said, having this thought for the very first time. "Maybe we just...live our lives."

And if someone confronts us about our stance, we can say that: we don't know what our opinion is. We're still thinking about it, for XYZ reasons.

This was a brand new thought for me, and one that is very counter to how I've always thought and lived. In the era of social media especially, it feels like we have to take a side, post for or against, share some hot take. But we if we don't have to do that? What if we don't have to "do" anything?* What if the world needs and Jesus wants something more mundane than that?

The Jews were expecting a leader who would rescue them from the evil, corrupt government and restore Truth to the world via war and politics. What they got was the exact opposite of a political leader. Jesus largely ignored the politics of his day, not even taking the "right side." He spoke in riddles to force people to talk to each other, and loved children to highlight the importance of faith, and toyed with religious leaders to prove they didn't have all the answers, and ate with sinners to model doing the contemporarily unthinkable, and overturned temple tables to mourn the house of worship becoming something commercial and gross.

Jesus did do things, but not...not what I see a lot of Christians doing today. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think Jesus would be posting all over his social media—or even boycotting or not boycotting Target. I kind of think he'd be talking one-on-one to the person your Facebook post is mocking, and buying food at Target for the homeless guy.

Jesus never delighted in making fun of people—and in fact, the people he came closest to "making fun of" were actually the religious blowhards who saw the world as black and white and thought they knew everything.

Maybe when we see or hear things that outrage us, our reaction doesn't need to be to DO something, but to BE something? I wonder if Jesus is unimpressed with most of the actions we take, if he feels like we're missing the point. Like, posting Bible verses and labeling sinners is one thing, but have you tried loving your neighbor?

I'm tired of being told I need to be mad about something or DO something in response to every little thing. Maybe it's not that deep. Try your best to live like Jesus, and trust him to sort out the details.

~Stephanie

* This will need to be a longer post at some point, but I'm NOT saying I think Christians should stand by while atrocities and injustices happen. I think Christians are called to advocate for people who are abused or endangered, whether by systems or individuals. There are definitely times when we should "do" something; I just wonder if the something is more personal, less performative than what we've been doing.