7 The righteous care about justice for the poor, but the wicked have no such concern. ~ Proverbs 29:7
17 If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them. ~ James 4:17
In the show Avatar, there’s a main character by the name of Uncle Iroh. Now, Uncle Iroh was a military hero. He led siege after siege, taking over other tribes for the Fire Nation until he came to one particular city, Ba Sing Se. The siege lasted for 600 days but ended when Iroh lost his son, Lu Ten, in battle. After he lost his son, he no longer saw the necessity of the war, and he brought his men home. The rest of his life he spent trying to help others. We later find out that he lives his life trying to help others because he was unable to help his son.
He never saw a problem with leading the sieges, taking homes or lives, burning down cities until he lost what mattered most to him, his son. He simply bought into the lie that was told to him because he didn’t want to see the truth until the truth directly affected him in a traumatic way. So many of us in the Church are exactly the same way.
We don’t want to open our lives to the truth because we’re benefiting from the lie. Or we’re apathetic because the lie isn’t directly affecting us. But see, that’s how the enemy gets us. He doesn’t directly hit us at first. He allows us to get comfortable. To put our feet up. To turn a blind eye to little things until we’ve completely gone blind, and we don’t even realize it. Then, when we’re completely disarmed, he takes away all security and comfort we once had and suddenly the lie is no longer a big deal, it’s now directly negatively affecting us.
So, how do we combat this? We refuse to listen to apathy’s lullaby and by refusing to turn a blind eye to things, even if they seem minor. When someone else is done wrong, we stand up for them because if it could happen to them, it could happen to us. We can’t wait for the mob to be at our front door before we want to fight back. We need to fight back before they even enter our city. We need to wake up and pay attention to what’s going on in our world before it’s too late to do anything about it.
Peace. Love. Go Forth and Don’t Wait Til It’s You.