The more I experience the dangers and difficulties of the world, the more I want to dissect and contemplate the tragedies and trials of my own culture and my own self.
I can’t shake the deep sadness that overcomes me as I reflect on one of the most destructive manifestations of evil that is quietly sweeping through the world: complacency.
In a world that is so obviously plagued by physical tragedies like oppression, starvation, and slavery (which are certainly deep spiritual tragedies as well), complacency slips around like a thief in the night. It quietly suffocates joy, dismisses compassion, and sweeps us away from the Kingdom of God without ever announcing itself.
Obviously, I don’t want to discount all of the tragedies that we do acknowledge in the world. It is not that we are acknowledging the wrong things, it is that we are forgetting one of their number.
We dismiss and excuse complacency because it does not manifest in the physical realm quite as immediately and harshly as many other devastations. It is the silent killer in a noisy world. But it doesn’t really matter that a nuclear bomb is bigger than a grenade if either land on your head.
As a world, we are weeping over the nuclear bombs (metaphorically), as we casually ignore the torrential downpour of grenades blanketing the atmosphere of our souls.
The reality is that inattention to the creeping of complacency is what has led and continues to feed all other tragedies in this world.
When will we be a people that realizes that sleeping through life is the same thing as destroying it?
Edmund Burke famously said, “the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” We read things like this and we know it is true, but then we head back to our binge-watching, our casual drinking, our napping, our online shopping and our gossip magazines.
The reason complacency has such a strangle on us is that it is not a physical oppressor. It is not a threat to our immediate physical well being and, thus, can be dismissed another day. We love ourselves, that is the root of the problem. We are afraid of things because they might destroy the physical idol of ourselves.
Complacency destroys identity; it destroys our soul. But we are people who worship the physical more than the spiritual. And while the two are closely connected, we tend to be a people that demand that the physical comes first. The Kingdom of God, however, works in exactly the opposite fashion. And we’re just too entrenched in the patterns of this world to want that.
Complacency will kill us. It will devour and destroy, slowly but surely, moment by moment, and day by day. It is on par with the great tragedies of the world, and it might even be the greatest because it is at the trigger and at the root of every tragedy in the world.
God, I want to get out of this. I want to see complacency for the deceiver that it is. I want to shine a light on it and step away from its foul rottenness. I want to acknowledge the damage it has done to me and threatens me with each day. I want to name the shackle so that I might walk out of it.
Mostly, I just want to live. I’m tired of fighting to not die. I want to thrive. I want to feel the bounce of freedom in my step, the whisper of love in the wind, the acknowledgment of holy in all that is around me.
I want to stop excusing complacency and start combating it. The nasty truth is that I can’t serve the Kingdom of God while I am still serving the mindset of apathy. I can’t have it easy and holy. It can’t be comfortable and daring. I have to die to something. And I’m tired of dying to awareness, thankfulness, and action for the sake of ease and familiarity.
Let this be the day complacency dies.
