I’ve had a strange desire lately… I’ve been engaging in Facebook fights. I’m not sure what it is inside of me that makes me want to go out of my own way to argue with some friend of a friend (or if we’re all real with each other here, an acquaintance of someone I sort of knew in college), but I have found myself more often than not in some back and forth with someone who has no desire to be in a real conversation nor change their mind, but instead to get some good points in and make their opponent feel small. I know this was the goal because, I found, it was my goal as well.
There is a general unhappiness in me these days. Nothing extreme, no sobbing daily or yelling at my wife or random fits of rage, just a general undercurrent of discontent. A numb feeling of “too tired to care” or as us 80s/90s babies would say, “whatever…”
We’ve been almost a full year in this pandemic, we’ve been locked down, restricted, re-locked down, phased, and social distanced. Now, we’re in the dead of winter, either it’s below 0 or it’s dumping tons of snow on us. I haven’t been able to see my friends or family or youth or you all outside of through Zoom for a vast majority of this year, and for an extrovert such as myself, that is also deeply draining.
I find myself lamenting about things I used to not care about, getting riled up at nothingness, not being able to let go of insignificant slights. The majority of my interactions with others is through social media… which has become a cesspool over the past year (perhaps it always had been, but I would argue that it is increasingly worse over the past year)… and so, I argue, I debate, I fight endless, needless, pointless fights, knowing that my mind won’t be changed and neither will the other person’s (or persons’).
I have found that we as a people have fooled ourselves into thinking that this is in some way productive. Deep down we know it’s not. In fact, when I’m not all riled up about it, I know that it isn’t, but in the heat of the moment I blind myself to that fact. “I have to respond to this guy,” I think, “or he’ll assume he won… and he SOOO didn’t!”
If I took the time that I’ve wasted arguing on Facebook over my entire lifetime and instead focused that on actually attempting to affect change in the areas that I’m arguing about, then some real change might have actually happened. Instead of focusing on someone else’s opinion of human worth or racism or climate change, if I put that energy into action towards rectifying injustice in these areas, not only would I be more likely to create positive change, but I think I would be happier as well.
Our workers in the parable of the Vineyard have a similar struggle. It is because they are focused on everyone else (in a negative way) that they become unhappy. A quote that I once heard on a TV Show said, “the only time you look in your neighbor’s bowl is to make sure that they have enough. You don’t look in your neighbor’s bowl to see if you have as much as them.”
When we look to others, what they’re doing, getting, saying, in order to compare and find worth in ourselves through that comparison, we wind up pouring water into a bottomless glass, hoping it will fill up. Instead of looking to others, like the workers, we need to look within. Instead of breathlessly arguing with others on message boards about issues, we should try to create change around that issue in the real world.
Let’s not waste what little energy we have left after the emotional toll of the pandemic and this season and the millions of other things happening. Let us use that energy to follow Christ in caring for the outcast, the marginalized, and the oppressed. Let us be thankful for however much is in our bowls and look in our neighbor’s bowls to make sure they have enough, and when we find out that they don’t, let us share with them. Amen.
