Monday, January 24, 2011

Justice Socially

1. 25. 2011, 12:38 am

I haven’t blogged in a while. I guess it’s not so much that I haven’t had anything to say, but I just haven’t wanted to admit my current state of apathetic reservation. In actuality, I’ve been thinking a lot: God, my own action or lack thereof, what it means to live in community, social justice. The only conclusion I’ve come to is that I’m an awful person. I want to be passionate about social justice issues, particularly when working with college students attempting to teach what it means to live as restorers, but it’s hard for me to get excited or upset about things I don’t see. Recently, I’ve been reading a lot about this new wave of Christians that are taking things much more seriously, holistically, than previous generation (as an over generalization). They are choosing to be an incarnation of Christ, rather than preoccupied by things; embodied, not distracted. This is an area of “social justice” that I think I can live out in a more real way; that is to say that, I’m not overwhelmed with the ideas of world hunger and other large social injustices living on a college campus, but I can be completely present, giving individuals the attention they deserve as Imago Dei, in the image of God. I can begin to change the way I see people, which in turn allows for the betterment of all people, or in a sense, social justice. I haven’t fully discovered what this will look like at a practical level (except through what I’ve already shared), but I know it involves active participation in an arena that I can tangibly effect. None of this is to say that the larger social justice issues are not important, and in a way of confessing, via this imagined web chat, I admit that something I need to work on is visualizing what part I play in God’s restoration of our world. I digress. Being completely present is a small step that I will attempt to make in presenting Christ’s presence (in me and in this world) more fully to others. An undertaking that I pray I am not alone in.

For His Kingdom’s sake,

Zane