Sure, But What Difference Does It Make?

Imagine for a moment that someone comes to you with this passionate plea: “You have to recycle everything you can in order to save our planet.” While this sounds a little heavy-handed in your mind, you do agree that recycling is a good idea. You strike up a conversation with this person and ask for some dialogue regarding his plea. Turns out he works for a company that not only processes recycled product, but also does international research and development to understand the global effects of recycling. This is fascinating to you, so you ask if you could visit the company and observe what is taking place within the facilities. Feeling he has a potential convert on his hands, he says yes immediately.

As you walk into the facility everything seems normal. There are lots of people working diligently by the conveyor belts, sorting and handling all sorts of materials. But something strikes you almost immediately. You walk by a garbage can – with a recycling container right next to it – and in the garbage is multiple soda cans and plastic bottles that once carried water in them. You are perplexed, but continue to follow your giddy guide who seems utterly oblivious to what you just observed. Later, you walk by a closet filled with all sorts of Styrofoam containers. As you walk through another room with more recyclables in the garbage can and more Styrofoam containers, you think to yourself: “I must be dreaming. These people are doing research and development on the global effects of recycling and they can’t even practice it in there own facility. What’s worse, my passionate guide who tells me that recycling will save the planet has no idea what’s happening.” The final straw comes when you are taken into the CEO’s office and find nothing different. In his garbage can – again, with a recycling container right next to it – you notice wads of paper and soda cans. After he finishes taking up about a half hour of your afternoon with a lengthy and extraordinarily articulate monologue on the detrimental effects of not recycling – which by this time you are understandably in no mood to listen to – you leave the facility confused and cynical. To add insult to injury, as you walk away you notice a 30 yard dumpster marked “garbage only” overflowing with broken down cardboard.

Could you imagine experiencing something like this? Or maybe I should ask, “Have any of you experienced something like this before?” I’m sure you all know what I’m getting at.

For a moment let’s reflect on the story. Not many people reject the notion that recycling is a good thing. We all seem to understand the global impact of billions of people giving back our “garbage” for reuse. It’s an enormous help for our environment. So here’s the question, “What difference does it make?” On an abstract level, we get it: even though I myself – thinking globally – don’t have much to recycle, a billion “myselfs” do. Even just one ounce of recyclables multiplied by just a billion is quite a few tons. So it makes sense. But seriously, “What difference does it make?” Has this information, or these beliefs, really changed the choices I make on a day-to-day basis? Obviously for the people at the company in our story, it didn’t make one bit of difference – even for the CEO.

Now one of these days I will have the guts to end one of my imaginings with that last sentence. Forgive me though, because I just can’t do it yet. Hopefully you all understand by now that I too am a big hypocrite – a big hypocrite in process. But I digress…

"My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.” (John 17:20-23)

I wonder if that’s all this world needs. That passage is taken from the book we Christians claim to live our lives by. Now I know that I have ripped it out of context, but it is hard to misunderstand this passage in or out of its context. I prefer to look at it in the context of the entire bible, but I don’t have enough room here or time to do that now. Whatever we want to say about that passage – and many others with the same message – it is clear that our love, our unity for one another in the church, incarnationally displays the truth of Jesus. So I have a question for us: “In which container are our soda cans?”

For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace, and in this one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. (Ephesians 2:14-16). And lest we think that reconciliation for all is only a thing of the New Testament: The word of the LORD came to Jonah son of Amittai: "Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me." (Jonah 1:1-2 – in order to see the poignancy of reconciliation in Jonah, we should really read the entire book. It also helps to read it in light of Ephesians as well).

So, the church is all about reconciliation, and this reconciliation is a global concept. Somehow God and Paul can see the world unified. They can see a love flowing from Jesus that envelopes the world and changes the way people make choices on a day-to-day basis. As Brian McLaren writes, “The church is a community of people who are learning to live the way everyone will live in the future, reconciled in every way.” (The Story We Find Ourselves In: Further Adventures of A New Kind of Christian - pg. 150). We are the church. The church is world reconciliation. I have another question for us: “In which container are we throwing our paper products?”

I believe with all of my heart that the gospel really is good news – but why? Because we were all made – on a global level – to experience the love of God. We were all made to experience the love of one another. His love, and the unity it brings, resonates within every person ever born, though some are almost entirely desensitized to it. But why are they desensitized to it? (That’s another question for another imagining, though I think this one does address it fairly thoroughly.) If people have the opportunity to catch glimpses of the love of Jesus in his church, something inside of them WILL be touched. But people don’t seem to be touched these days by the church. Are our "garbage only" dumpsters overflowing with cardboard?

I thank God for placing me in a community where we desire to work on the logs in our own eye rather than deciding that the world’s eyes have all of the logs and we can just rest with our splinter. (I feel that I should wake up every morning with this gratitude, but I don’t. I think it would be a great benefit for all of us if I did, and I also think this is a “soda can in the garbage” issue for me.) I see in this community people who are willing to live out the vast and complex consequences of living like Jesus. I see in our community people who are trying so hard to be humble with one another and all the people in their lives. For the first time in my life I am experiencing ongoing reconciliation with my church family. And for the first time in my life, I really desire anyone and everyone to come and experience the life Jesus is giving us. At bare minimum, I see us as a community of people who are growing more and more aware of our inconsistencies together. In a real way, through our love, we are awakening one another to the understanding that our actions must lead the way for our words. I truly believe people will be able to feel what difference the gospel makes. People will see our choices on a day-to-day basis affected and changed by the love of Jesus. They will also experience people who will acknowledge their hypocrisies and maybe say in response: “Crap, there's another soda can in the garbage…let me do something about that.”