For the Activist
A vision of transformation big enough to include our own lives
Dear activist,
I’m worried about you. About us. The world comes at us so urgently these days, wars and rumors of wars from all corners of the globe. Just when you think you’ve found a sliver of a reason for hope in your neighborhood, something big and bad has the rest of us pointing and gaping and demanding that you redirect your outrage and efforts to this new and terrible crisis: Gaza, Springfield, Ukraine; climate change, species loss, contaminated groundwater; police brutality, xenophobic political candidates, Christian nationalism.
Activists differ in their commitments but share the conviction that injustice cannot be left alone, that inequity and destruction require our response. (What’s that? You’re not an activist? Maybe, but if you’re reading this you surely show signs of it.) Our awareness about what is wrong has been finely tuned and we are working hard, so hard, to make our world just a little more right.
But you get tired, don’t you? Bone tired. I’m a pastor whose ministry is often activist-adjacent and I see the trends. I see those who’ve been at this for a long time, the losses and set-backs etched into grimaces and cynicism. The joy that must have once characterized their efforts is largely gone, even as they continue to show up to the work that must get done.
Then there are the former activists. Their idealism led them to contend for justice and their fatigue and disillusionment led them out. They’ve got interesting stories to tell about where they used to live, what they used to do, who they used to conspire with. But real life came knocking and they followed it out the door and into something more stable.
I’m sympathetic to the cynics and the nostalgics; you can find both in me. Should I be making more money? Do my efforts at righteousness appear foolish and weak in the eyes of the powerful? Still, I want better than nostalgia and resignation for us.
I wonder if we’d be less tired and more joyful if we made a little space for ourselves. I don’t mean something like self-care, though I hope you’ll choose to love yourself. Rather, I’m thinking about making room, amidst all this groaning world asks of you, to pay attention to the sort of person you’re becoming.
About our activist tendency to focus all of our attention out there, Wendell Berry admonishes, “how superficial and foolish we would be to think that we could correct what is wrong merely by tinkering with the institutional machinery. The changes that are required are fundamental changes in the way we are living.” And then, “We need better government, no doubt about it. But we also need better minds, better friendships, better marriages, better communities.”
In Berry’s warning I hear a challenge to the activist’s tendency to be so consumed with what is wrong in the world that we neglect our own growing, maturing, and flourishing. That kind of narrow-mindedness means we never become the kinds of people who can sustain the work of justice joyfully. We’ve neglected our own becoming.
Despite the collateral damage littering activism road, I’ve been fortunate to know incredible exceptions. Surely you have too. These women and men have given themselves to God’s beautiful vision of shalom and have understood that vision to include the renovation of their own hearts, minds, and souls. Their vision for renewal is big enough to include themselves. They maintain the conviction that whatever good they have to offer, if it is to be truly good, must come from the surplus of their own deep transformation. These friends bear witness that cynicism and nostalgia aren’t inevitable. Something much, much better is available.
Ours is a God who refuses to treat anyone as a means to an end. How sad he must be when we reduce ourselves to tools which can be worn out and discarded. After all, it’s nothing short of resurrection God delivers to all of the broken and dying places in the world.
Can your own heart testify?
Plundered Events
Rediscipling the White Church was published a couple of months after the pandemic locked everything down which meant that almost all of my initial interaction about the book took place online. So I’m thrilled about the chance to engage in-person with the themes from Plundered over the next few months. If you’re in Chicago, Portland, Spokane, or South Bend, I hope you’ll come out!
The View From Here
Something a bit different for this week’s view. My publisher sent my friend Corrie Haffly an early copy of the new book and she took a few quotes from it to create a few lovely images. You can see the others on her Instagram page. Thanks Corrie!