Apathy. To be apathetic is to not care. It smacks of laziness. Why bother? So what? My online dictionary tells me that apathy means lack of interest, enthusiasm, or concern. To me that is an extremely negative concept. The world needs people who care. We are here to make a difference. As Christians, we look to Jesus who is the exemplar of caring – about specific individuals, about society, about the world. He invested himself in the lives of others. He reached out to others offering healing and hope. He took an interest in people and in the world. He was enthusiastic about showing forth the love of God. He had deep concern for others. The last thing we could say about Jesus is that he was apathetic.
I recently was exposed to the idea of apathy as a spiritual virtue. Apathy? A virtue? How could that be? Then I began to think about what gets us into trouble. How do things go so awry in the world? Why is there so much violence and contention? What is the source of much grief and heartache? What leads our relationships astray? Our passions are at the root of much of the suffering in the world. We are enthusiastic about a system of government and then we want to impose it on others. And there’s trouble. We are excited about our religion and we want to rule the world according to our religious views. And there’s trouble. We become committed to a certain political viewpoint to the condemnation of all other perspectives. And there’s trouble. We have adamant opinions about certain kinds of people. And there’s trouble. In recent years we have seen the rise of many different versions of fundamentalism in politics and religion and this has created a lot of conflict and violence in the world. Certainly anyone who is a fundamentalist is not apathetic. In fact, just the opposite. A fundamentalist is impassioned and committed and concerned. So I have begun to see how being passionate, the opposite of apathetic, can lead to problems.
There is another dimension to this as well. Maybe we can say that we want to be apathetic, for instance, about what race someone is. It shouldn’t concern us if someone is white or black or purple. A human being is a human being. It shouldn’t concern us if a person hired for a job is a man or a woman as long as s/he is qualified and capable. It shouldn’t be of interest to us if someone is rich or poor. A person is a person.
There may be some ways, then, that we can see apathy as a virtue. Caring too much about the wrong things can lead to problems. But I still can’t give up the idea that apathy is negative. Our spiritual journey invites us to be in discernment about what we are called to be concerned, impassioned, and enthusiastic about. Our faith compels us to examine what really matters to us. Is what matters to us the same things that mattered to Jesus? I do want to be engaged, passionate, and deeply caring. But I want that passion to be for love, for justice, for well being of others, and for the good of the world. That’s what I see in Jesus.
Prayer: We pray for hearts filled with divine love. We want our lives to pulse with the passion of love for God, for life, for the world. We want to be caring people who make a difference for good in the world. This requires sorting out of our motivations, our desires, and our self interest. May we be honest in our discernment. May we be willing to grow and change. May we let go of passions that are destructive. May we look at our sisters and brothers without bias or prejudice. God loves the whole world with unabashed passion. May the same be said of us. Amen.
Lakewood United Church of Christ 