Even among the non-Christians in my readership, I think we can agree that this world is sick.
Sick with greed. Sick with cruelty. Sick with apathy. Sick with sin.
Laden with fevers of too much passion without enough compassion.
Aching all over with illnesses of overwork, exhaustion, frustration, anger and fear.
It’s not a dead world. In fact, it’s probably far from death yet. But it’s dying.
That’s not a surprise, of course. For all of us individually, life is a chronic and fatal disease. Our time on this world has a limit, and we’ll die of something, whether on our feet or in our sleep. The world, and the larger populations on it, are no different.
I know, I know. This post probably sounds pessimistic and dreary. Maybe it sounds like I have some hopelessness growing inside me.
But that’s not it at all.
Sicknesses pass. Sure, another one will follow eventually, and a fatal one probably someday, but even in that, it means the sickness is over. The thing of it is that most of us don’t end with the sicknesses we suffer in life. We get over them, and we carry on. We get through the unpleasant symptoms and then when it’s over, we have more strength to do what needs to be done and to enjoy the world around us.
We live in a sick world. So let’s care for it. Whether ourselves, or the people around us, or groups of people, or even causes that we decide to get involved in…let’s do some healing.
Lord knows, it doesn’t have to be big-time healing. We don’t need miracle cures. It’s borrowed time anyway. What we need are longer periods of happiness and shorter ones of despair. All of us, in some way great or small, can help someone else (or even multiple someones) get through the darkness in life and have more chances to sit in the sunlight.
Time to examine the world and the people around us. Time to make some diagnoses.
Time for some healing.
Deacon Blue
Inda Pink
In Sickness and in Health. Till death do us part.
“Even among the non-Christians in my readership, I think we can agree that this world is sick.”
excuse me? can we flip it around and reread that sentence?
“Even among the non-Jews in my readership, I think we can agree that this world is sick.”
OR
“Even among the Christians in my readership, I think we can agree that this world is sick.”
wow, deke. could we get a little more patronizing in here? start a post with a condescending exclusionary statement like that and you raise the hackles of your non-christian readers. of which i might be the only one, but i seriously doubt that.
aside from that-
amen, my brother. tikkum olum.
What I meant, Robyn, was that my blog takes a largely Christian view on things. Therefore, I kind of assume most of my readers are Christian. And Christianity tends to be the religion most focused on original sin/the redemption of sin/etc. compared to people of other religions, atheists, and agnostics.
I was not attempting to be exclusionary but to address the point that most of us, regardless of whether you hold my general belief system of not, can agree that the world is pretty sick right now.
I hope that clears things up. I’m anything BUT exclusionary, and if my language suggests otherwise, I apologize.
yeah, and how to cure this *sick* world ? and healing the persons in it ?
*questioning question*
Robyn, you ain’t the only one. I stand as a proud non-Christian.
Probably, Deke, you have as many non-Christian readers as Christian readers. After all, you aren’t exclusionary. For non-believers like me, that’s a breath of fresh air. All to often all I get from Christians is judgment and contempt.
But that’s off topic. ‘Cause the only place we can do any healing at all is right here in our own garden. And we can all do that.
If we will.
darknessdevilgirl,
I wish I had the answers to that. I think a lot of it starts with just doing right by the people around us: treating them with respect, helping those who need help, listening at least as much as we talk, etc. Those may seem like small things sometimes, but using the metaphor of the seed, “from small things do large things grow.”
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Seda,
I may indeed have as many non-Christians…maybe even more. In the end, I suppose it doesn’t matter, as long as I give y’all some reason to keep reading. But perhaps in light of Robyn’s comment and your observation, I should be careful to assume whom the majority of readers are.
😉
In any case, I hope I continue to stay far away from that judgmentalism and exclusion stuff. You know, except when I’m harshing on scary neo-cons and people who advocate that Christians should breed like bunnies on fertility drugs.