My first job out of college was doing field service engineering for a company that made industrial compressors. Not the kind of compressor you might find in your garage that you plug into the wall and use to pump up your car tires. These compressors were up to 13 feet tall, and some were driven by 5,000 HP motors or jet engines! Yes, pretty massive.
I’ll never forget my first day at work. My boss sat me down at a table in the office filled with technical manuals, each 4” thick, about 12 of them. Then he said, “Study these!” and walked away.
I’m not the kind of person who does very well when I don’t have many specifics regarding what someone wants me to do. I’m way too worried about doing the wrong thing, not accomplishing what was intended, or worse, messing something up. What did my boss want? What was he expecting to actually happen? What did he mean when he said, “Study these”? What did I need to learn? Would he quiz me? How long would he be gone? Was I looking at these for 5 minutes or all day? I was fresh out of college, very shy, very intimidated by my surroundings, and now I was completely overwhelmed.
I started looking through one of the manuals and was instantly lost. The information was so technical and was not something I had studied pursuing my degrees in Physics and Engineering Technology. I put that manual down and picked up another one. The second one wasn’t any better. And the next, and the next.
My boss eventually returned and said, “OK, let’s go.” We then left the office (to do something, I don’t remember what), but it had nothing to do with the manuals, and he never mentioned them again! I was extremely relieved but also very confused.
Today, I look back, and I know exactly what was going on. My boss didn’t expect me to learn everything presented in those manuals. In fact, I don’t think he expected me to learn anything at all. He was just very busy with his normal workload and didn’t have time to train me, so he gave me something to keep me busy while he got his work done!
The main point I intend to convey in this personal story is that I became consumed with anxiety, wrongly thinking I had to know everything, and was unbelievably relieved when I found out I was only responsible for learning a few things at a time; they would let me know what those things were in due time.
How about you? Do you feel you need to fix everything?
Today, we are dealing with so many issues, coming at us from every direction. Here are just a few, in no particular order:
- Cancel Culture
- Systemic Racism
- Censorship
- Wokeness
- LGBTQ
- Gay Marriage
- Transgenderism
- Socialism
- Feminism
- Diversity
- Equity
- Identity Politics
- Progressive Christianity
- The Green New Deal
- The Great Reset
- Settled Science
- Cultural Appropriation
- Critical Race Theory
- Climate Change
- Abortion
It can make your head spin just thinking about these things. When I share this with my audiences, I often refer to the old-time performers who used to keep many plates spinning on stage. They were constantly going from one plate to another, keeping them going. That’s often how we feel. We may make some progress regarding a particularly challenging social issue, but then someone asks, “But what are you going to do about this other issue?” So, we head off in another direction to refocus our efforts and energies, only to realize there’s yet another issue needing our immediate attention. And so on and so on. It can be exhausting and understandably so.
I’ve experienced many days when I spent so much time being overwhelmed by my enormous task list, obsessing over each item, feeling there was no way I could accomplish all of them, that before I knew it, the day was over, and I accomplished almost nothing other than thinking I couldn’t do all of this! Was I right? Yes, there was no way I could do all those things. No human being could, and no one would expect me to. I would have been much better off prioritizing the list and working on the most important ones, so that at the end of the day, even though the list was still daunting, I made significant progress on the most important ones, which is all anyone could do. I could be energized by what I did accomplish, as opposed to being demoralized by all that was left.
So, what’s the lesson from this “Question of the Month” article? Do you feel like you have to “fix” all these social issues or even make a concerted effort each day, so that eventually, these issues greatly diminish or even are irradicated? Many Christians are so overcome with the sheer volume of issues that they feel completely defeated and lack the energy to do anything at all. The less energy they have, the less they do. The less they do, the worse they feel. The worse they feel, the less motivated they are to do anything at all. They may lose their effectiveness as Christians. It’s very easy to fall into this trap.
I am not sharing this as a judgment to discourage anyone. I am simply drawing attention to the process that has resulted in so many Christians virtually giving up hope and “sitting on the sidelines,” hoping someone else will swoop in and “save the day.”
Here’s the good news and the bad news. Bad news first—you can’t fix all of these issues. You can’t even fix any of them. The good news— God’s not asking you to! He’s simply asking you to share your faith with those around you as He grants you the opportunity.
No Bible verses directly or indirectly tell us to go out, fix the world, and solve all the problems. We are, however, commanded to
“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” Matthew 28:19-20
The worse things get, the more desperate people are for hope, and Christians are the only ones who have true, lasting hope based on a relationship with Jesus Christ. We can share that, and should, more and more, as the world around us gets worse and worse. I’ve “read the end of the book” and realize that we should fully expect to see what we are observing all around us right now. But our ultimate hope isn’t in creating a more comfortable place for us to live today; it’s in eternity with Jesus Christ. Let’s get to work; the time is short!
