Let it break your heart...

“If it doesn’t break your heart it isn’t love. If it doesn’t break your heart, it’s not enough.” –Switchfoot

I have something I’ve been wanting to say.

It’s about action and inaction.

It’s about criticism and self-boasting.

It’s about choosing love over hate.

Last week as social media exploded with the Invisible Children campaign, Kony 2012, I saw a funny thing begin to happen on my newsfeed: division. It seems that the IC campaign has three camps: the supporter, the critic, and the indifferent. Soon articles and blogs had been written, friends had been unfriended, Wonka jokes had ensued, and somewhere in the midst of it all the children became invisible again.

While some supporters were flawed and some critics were justified, while some sat idly by, injustice reigned.

To the supporter: you were moved, you want change, good. Now do something about it. Sacrifice, spend yourselves (Isaiah 58:10), seek justice, love mercy (Micah 6:8), educate yourself, find an organization that does the most good, and pour yourself into it. Go to Africa, go to Mississippi, go visit your neighbor, just DO something, act beyond clicking share or buying a cool shirt, and cause change.

To the critic: you’re passionate, you’re sick of campaigns without action, I like it. Now do something about it. You disagree with Invisible Children? You think we should act here first? You’re sick of people acting like activists but not acting? Show them how, lead the way. Find your passion, your niche, and fight for it. Fight for justice. Build people up, that takes far more patience and courage than sarcasm or criticism.

To the indifferent: wake up. This life is fleeting and when it’s over, as you’re drawing your last breath, you’re going to wish that you had woken up before you were dying. We belong to one another, we need one another, we need to fight for what’s important, this world needs people that have woken up, not more warm bodies.

This life, no matter what you’ve been told, is not about us. It’s not about our comfort, our feelings, or our financial lot in life. It’s about love. Our convictions may not be the same, but the commands we live under are, and the greatest of these is love.

__________________________________________________________________

This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.- 1 John 3:16-18


“More than my questions about the efficacy of social actions were my questions about my own motives. Do I want social justice for the oppressed or do i just want to be known as a socially active person? I spend 95 percent of my time thinking about myself anyway. I don’t have to watch the evening news to see the world is bad, I only have to look at myself. I am not brow beating here, I am only saying that true charge , true living giving, God honoring change would have to start with the individual. I was the very problem I had been protesting. I wanted to make a sign that read “I am the problem” – Donald Miller

“We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the words and deeds of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people.” MLK Jr.

“The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.” – Elie Wiesel