Have you ever encountered someone to whom your existence
truly didn’t matter? They don’t
hate you – no, nothing so passionate.
Nor do they love. They are
simply indifferent. I’ve met a
few, and it unsettles me in a way hatred doesn’t. I watch them walk away and everything inside me wants to cry,
“I’m real! I matter! I
should matter to you!”
A cold snowstorm hit recently and my back door warped
slightly. The neighbor I asked
wouldn’t help me push it closed enough to lock it—he told me later he was
calculating how much he would normally be paid for doing “work”, and knew that
my request for the help of his strength came with no money attached. I spent the night in an unbolted
house. (Not a great idea in my
neighborhood.) The man doesn’t
hate me – he just didn’t care.
I’m told that some men are just like that. If you don’t annoy them, and don’t
inspire love or lust in them, it’s said they don’t have the attention span or
emotional capacity to engage in the meaningful exchanges of personhood, one valuing
another. They’re not trying to be
mean – it’s just the way they are.
A fact of gender.
This isn’t true.
God is not indifferent, which means he didn’t create Adam
(or Eve) with the trait either.
Where it exists, it’s a product of sin-nature, not gender. A big hoax has been played on our
little human race. In fact, one of
the worst and most effectively pervasive accusations against the character of
God is that He’s indifferent. Forget
angry God or judgmental God – uninvolved God is Satan’s optimum lie. It works better than the others. With a deep, even if unarticulated,
knowledge of sin, the average man feels God would be a little justified if He was angry or judging. But, having had the breath of the
Creator breathed into our lungs at the very beginning, each of us knows that in
one way or another, we are of value – and that an indifferent God is a travesty against all that is natural and
supernatural.
God himself hates our own indifference. He wishes, in Revelation, that we were
either hot or cold … but this wishy-washy lukewarmth that doesn’t really care
one way or the other – this indifference
– is disgusting to him. He calls
that sort of a person shamefully naked, a blind man. (Rev. 3)
I know a “blind” man or two. After interactions with them I feel general confusion and
sadness - it takes a while for me to realize my soul is reeling from one of the
most powerful darts of all – the lie that I don’t matter.
A few years ago I had a dream. The setting: the Great Tribulation. The characters: me and a bunch of bad guys. As these men loaded pallets in a
warehouse for shipping (the cargo was WMD or something as terrible) I calmly repeated
to the foreman, “What you are doing is wrong. What you are doing is wrong.” I was ignored.
Finally, annoyed that a droning voice had been bothering him for too
long, he turned and sent me to the ground with one solid, emotionless blow
across the face. I lay still,
unable to rise as they continued loading.
He hadn’t hit me in anger, or out of frustration at the content of my
message. In fact, I was about as
important as a fly. He simply
wanted the noise to stop. A great
realization came to me on that concrete floor. I’d always thought persecution would be overt, direct, and
angry. But indifference… what an
entirely different world this was.
Even hatred directed at a human acknowledges their humanness, their substance
and existence as a soul. At the end of the dream an
old friend entered and passed me by, ignoring my injured state. But her 12-year-old daughter walked in and saw, and stooped. Oh, I was a human
again. She saw me!
We’re well-rehearsed in our expectation of persecution and
tribulation during the End Times.
Yet, we will still be surprised.
For it may not be hatred that rounds us up and tosses us overboard. It may be indifference. And that is a very different blow to
our psyches. Hatred I might meet
with bravery, or anger with peace.
But before indifference my soul forgets it is a soul and my existence
forgets I exist. My heart forgets
it is loved and my thoughts forget they are important. I wonder if I am known or am worth
knowing. If today, when the sting
of one man’s indifference to me can only be eased from inside the affirming
arms of my Creator, what will the planet’s indifference do? For indifference is injustice at its
deepest – more so than hatred is – an injustice that disaffirms the essential
value of existence.
We who think we’re so ready to remain loving under
persecution may have a whole different arena of sanctification to go through
when indifference hits us instead of hatred. Our wills are strong enough to stand up to hatred on their
own. But without real intimacy
between us and the Lover of our souls, we cannot come warm and unfrozen through
the long tundra of indifference.
“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
I suppose Satan’s great victory would be to convince us, not
to slip to hate, but to linger in that cold world of indifference, and become
indifferent ourselves to all who would be indifferent to us.
God’s answer has always been clear. He is not indifferent, and neither are
we designed to be. And the only thing that will keep us alive and joyful is not a hardened indifference to persecution or enemies, but a vulnerability-producing love for those enemies. Yes, it will make us more "hurtable", but in the end, it will save our souls.
When we are not indifferent - when our hearts ache every time we offer love and have it boomeranged back at us - then we may become a bruised but living answer to a world that has actually believed God Himself indifferent to their own souls. He isn't, and neither are we!
(ouch)
