Confirming my feeling that hurry should be added to the list of deadly sins, I heard about a study on compassion where seminarians were assigned to preach from different gospel accounts and half of them were to talk on the parable of the Good Samaritan. Unknown to the students, they were being observed while passing a person in distress, not while giving their sermon. The question was, would those who had been studying the Samaritan be more or less likely to offer help to the injured person than those who were preparing sermons on other passages which were not as orientated toward compassion. There was one additional variable, time pressure. As it turned out the factor that was most influential on compassionate behavior was not which passage the student had studied, but whether or not he or she felt free of time constraints.
When hurried, people feel that they don't have time to notice their environment, to look people in the face, to connect. And since com-passion (to suffer with) comes from human connection it is virtually impossible to be moved to sacrificial action when one feels hurried. There's no time to notice or feel anything but the urgent. And urgency is usually driven by shadow energy, i.e., fear, anger, self protection or self promotion.
The world (think, powers and principalities) and that part of us that prefers comfort and security are in collusion to keep us sped up. And this is how hurry and busy become the source of the status quo (every privileged person's best friend). Or so it seems.
But in the kingdom that Jesus announced, the status quo is an enemy of the God in whose image we were made, the God who was most fully revealed in the Incarnation, taking the form of a vulnerable infant and an innocent victim. At every turn, in every way, God in Jesus upset the status quo. And most surprisingly in his preference for suffering-with over retaliation, a preference which ultimately led to the cross. People throughout history have assumed that God's power was coercive. Jesus revealed God's power to be paradoxically weak and his justice to be restorative rather than retributive.
Every one, whether or not they acknowledge Jesus in this way, has this desire for solidarity through kinship and compassion. It may have been brutalized or propagandized out of the consciousness of many at an early age, but if being made in the image of God has any meaning, it means that to be human is to have this capacity and desire. It is naturally and effortlessly expressed towards our children, at least while they are vulnerable and dependent, and it usually extends to other family members, friends, and beyond. The limits and expressions of compassion vary greatly and are determined by environment and temperament. (Many studies show how readily people turn to kindness or cruelty based entirely upon the mores of their peers.)
For those who are aware of their divine birthright it matters not where one starts -- fearful or generous, defensive or kind. In fact, it is a stumbling block to play the comparison game. We are where we are and no matter how pitiful we seem to ourselves we have a boundless capacity for love, because we're created by, in, and for love. Think of your children, or beloved friends, how much love did you have to hold back to love your second child or friend? None, right? Love is bottomless.
The question is whether or not we will value this inestimable gift enough to look for it in ourselves and others. Yes, this is a great risk. We will be hurt if we choose this path. But I find it consoling to realize that we are in the best company whenever we risk the vulnerability of compassion.
Back to the deadly nature of hurry. Expanding the boundaries of one's compassion to include the last, the least, the other, and certainly the enemy, is impossible when running on the automatic treadmill that we experience as busyness and hurry. Impossible! I dare say that it is impossible to do God's will when in a hurried state. Even when doing deeds that are conspicuously good.
Those of us who have been raised in church have been trained to be like the seminarians in the study I referred to earlier. We know the Bible and we hope that it will transform us into Christ's likeness. But there's more to the story of transformation. Shane Claiborne, who knows a little about what it takes to live sacrificially, sums up the issue quite well in the following paragraph:
"I have come to see that the great tragedy in the church is not that rich Christians do not care about the poor but that rich Christians do not know the poor... I truly believe that when the rich meet the poor, riches will have no meaning. And when the rich meet the poor, we will see poverty come to an end."
The "knowing" referred to in this quote applies to more than poverty. Every thing that artificially separates us from our human kinship can be cured by this kind of knowing. And we will never come to know and then love our neighbor when we hurry from one thing to the next. Taking the time to listen to and really know people is absurdly time consuming, especially if they believe and value differently, and for this reason it is subversive. It makes no sense in a world driven by productivity and prestige. But it is essential to walking The Way of Jesus. Which is why I have made a unilateral decision to add Hurry to the list of deadly sins.
When hurried, people feel that they don't have time to notice their environment, to look people in the face, to connect. And since com-passion (to suffer with) comes from human connection it is virtually impossible to be moved to sacrificial action when one feels hurried. There's no time to notice or feel anything but the urgent. And urgency is usually driven by shadow energy, i.e., fear, anger, self protection or self promotion.
The world (think, powers and principalities) and that part of us that prefers comfort and security are in collusion to keep us sped up. And this is how hurry and busy become the source of the status quo (every privileged person's best friend). Or so it seems.
But in the kingdom that Jesus announced, the status quo is an enemy of the God in whose image we were made, the God who was most fully revealed in the Incarnation, taking the form of a vulnerable infant and an innocent victim. At every turn, in every way, God in Jesus upset the status quo. And most surprisingly in his preference for suffering-with over retaliation, a preference which ultimately led to the cross. People throughout history have assumed that God's power was coercive. Jesus revealed God's power to be paradoxically weak and his justice to be restorative rather than retributive.
Every one, whether or not they acknowledge Jesus in this way, has this desire for solidarity through kinship and compassion. It may have been brutalized or propagandized out of the consciousness of many at an early age, but if being made in the image of God has any meaning, it means that to be human is to have this capacity and desire. It is naturally and effortlessly expressed towards our children, at least while they are vulnerable and dependent, and it usually extends to other family members, friends, and beyond. The limits and expressions of compassion vary greatly and are determined by environment and temperament. (Many studies show how readily people turn to kindness or cruelty based entirely upon the mores of their peers.)
For those who are aware of their divine birthright it matters not where one starts -- fearful or generous, defensive or kind. In fact, it is a stumbling block to play the comparison game. We are where we are and no matter how pitiful we seem to ourselves we have a boundless capacity for love, because we're created by, in, and for love. Think of your children, or beloved friends, how much love did you have to hold back to love your second child or friend? None, right? Love is bottomless.
The question is whether or not we will value this inestimable gift enough to look for it in ourselves and others. Yes, this is a great risk. We will be hurt if we choose this path. But I find it consoling to realize that we are in the best company whenever we risk the vulnerability of compassion.
Back to the deadly nature of hurry. Expanding the boundaries of one's compassion to include the last, the least, the other, and certainly the enemy, is impossible when running on the automatic treadmill that we experience as busyness and hurry. Impossible! I dare say that it is impossible to do God's will when in a hurried state. Even when doing deeds that are conspicuously good.
Those of us who have been raised in church have been trained to be like the seminarians in the study I referred to earlier. We know the Bible and we hope that it will transform us into Christ's likeness. But there's more to the story of transformation. Shane Claiborne, who knows a little about what it takes to live sacrificially, sums up the issue quite well in the following paragraph:
"I have come to see that the great tragedy in the church is not that rich Christians do not care about the poor but that rich Christians do not know the poor... I truly believe that when the rich meet the poor, riches will have no meaning. And when the rich meet the poor, we will see poverty come to an end."
The "knowing" referred to in this quote applies to more than poverty. Every thing that artificially separates us from our human kinship can be cured by this kind of knowing. And we will never come to know and then love our neighbor when we hurry from one thing to the next. Taking the time to listen to and really know people is absurdly time consuming, especially if they believe and value differently, and for this reason it is subversive. It makes no sense in a world driven by productivity and prestige. But it is essential to walking The Way of Jesus. Which is why I have made a unilateral decision to add Hurry to the list of deadly sins.
