irreligious at best.

Recently I’ve been flicking through a site called “F*ck my Life” (www.fmylife.com). This has pointed out something very hurtful and sad to me. I’ll admit that I’ve had more than my share of laughs at some of them because a lot of them are innocent little things like tripping in front of people twice in a row or doing really dumb and embarrassing things by accident that we all do especially if you’re someone like me and tend to be forgetful or an idiot at times. But an over arching theme in all of them is that painful and occasionally life ruining things happen. 

Many of them involve finding out in a ludicrous way that someone’s cheated on them. More than a few involve people just plain trying to find acceptance in high school or life in the big world and just not finding it through being self conscious or having their flaws put on public display. I’ve never been easily embarrassed, which has worked in my favor as some of these I read them and I can totally relate, and others I read and my heart breaks much like I think Jesus’ would. 

For example, one user anonymously posted “Today, I woke up in the hospital after trying to kill myself. When my mom walked in to see me, the first thing she said was, “Well, I guess that’s just another things that you fail at”. The nurse laughed.” Another more mild one was “Today, it is my twin sisters and my birthday. We both wanted a day at the spa for our birthday. My sister got a gift certificate to the spa, while I got mouthwash and a $20 gift card to Target. My mom said it was too much to make me pretty also.”

So what’s the point in all of this? Do I just want to be a downer on a site that’s designed to be humorous as people get things off their chests? Well, no, not really. It’s that we live in a broken world. I’m sure that I don’t need to tell you this. So often in our culture we are bombarded by images of world tragedies and things we feel so powerless against. This isn’t to diminish the tragedies that happen in third world countries. These are lives that are broken that Christ also would like to see mended. I firmly believe that working for social justice should take place all over the world, but sometimes I think we forget to minister to our own culture. 

In the great commission that is so popular in Christian cultures it states that we are to reach out to the ends of the world, but we often use this only for missions sake. There’s a couple versions of this commission, the one most often cited is in Matthew, but I am talking about the one in Acts 1. This is the book in which Luke is detailing the events of the early church for his patron, Theophilus. In Acts we get one last glimpse of Jesus’ teaching the disciples. The last thing he does is state that they will be filled with the Holy spirit to be empowered to bring the gospel and be His witnesses in “Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

This is fascinating to me as we so often miss the first part of the mandate. We are to reach Jerusalem first, then Judea and so on. See, although this could be a metaphor for how the early church was supposed to work, it could very well be a pattern that we too can follow. Jerusalem was home for the disciples. Not literally, but the disciples were Jewish, and all Jews held Jerusalem in very high regards and it was almost like the hometown of every Jew. Judea and Samaria were right next door, but a little out of the way. See, I believe that Jesus was telling His followers that they are to start at home. It’s a prerequisite for being able to reach out to the world. First they had to be able to work inside their own culture before they could extend into a larger scheme. 

So again, I raise the question: what’s the point? Well, we are surrounded by people here and now that are hurting. They’ve been beaten down verbally, and maybe even unintentionally, but the words of others have still hurt them. Or maybe they’ve had bad experiences in all sorts of relationships. Or maybe they just don’t think anyone cares and one more person’s off the cuff remark has sent them off the edge. I myself know that it is so easy to just hammer people with a nasty word under the guise of kidding around. It has come to my attention though that maybe this isn’t always the best way to relate to other people. It seems ok with friends who know that I love them and care about them, but if they don’t understand that or if for some reason or another they take me seriously for even a moment, then the damage is done and sometimes even an apology is not enough to correct the situation. 

Christ has sent us first to those around us. The people nearest you are there for a reason. So we should do our best to mend pain in their lives wherever we see it and not add to it. We also have plenty of people in our communities who need more than a salvation message: they need to see a direct representation of the love of God. This is where the great commission starts.