If You Open Your Eyes, Can You See What We Ruined?
Imagine living in a place where you were completely ignorant of the great evil around you. Imagine the government officials and community leaders you expect to take care of you are actually completely apathetic toward you, or worse desire your harm. Imagine a system in which society doesn’t function for the common good, but instead has become so thoroughly corrupt that leaders could get away with the murder of an innocent man because he was criticizing them. If you lived in such a world, would you want to know about it? If you could ignorantly pretend everything was normal and safe, would you want to be confronted with the truth? Is the breaking of the spell worth the constant state of anxiety this would trigger?
We can point to several examples of societies like this throughout history. My brain immediately jumps to the Soviet Union, especially under Stalin. For a more recent example, we could look to Belarus under president Alexander Lukashenko, where journalists are afraid that they’ll be killed for speaking out against the president. Of course, North Korea probably serves as a more famous recent example, but then eager students of history could point to several rulers throughout the ages who have used brutal repression to maintain power.
Our first reading for this week (Jeremiah 11:18-20) sees Jeremiah in a similar situation. Powerful people intend to do him harm for being outspoken about God’s will. Sure, Jeremiah is preaching a harsh message, God isn’t going to keep protecting these wicked and sinful people anymore. God is giving up on them. Sure, a remnant will remain. God will preserve the righteous, but there aren’t enough righteous people left. Calamity is coming. The structures of power will be completely toppled in the land.
Given his message, it is no wonder that Jeremiah was painting a target on his back, and yet, he didn’t see it that way. He was trusting and naive, “like a gentle lamb led to the slaughter.” Jeremiah didn’t even realize that his people had become that bad. God showed him how evil Judah had become. God gave him the rude awakening. God confronted him with the monstrous truth. The people you trust, the people you love, are wicked. They will not think twice about hurting you, throwing you into prison, or killing you if they get the chance.
After God opened his eyes, Jeremiah couldn’t help but proclaim his message with boldness. If he had fear before, this is replaced with a sort of righteous anger. “Let me see your retribution upon them,” is a prayer with some violent intent. Do them harm before they can harm me! Now, this doesn’t sound very Christian. We shouldn’t wish evil, even on our enemies.
But then again, Jeremiah isn’t a Christian. Furthermore, it is his duty to preach strongly against this wickedness. It is not evil to expose the truth of an evil society. Obviously, this isn't evil. God does it. God opened Jeremiah’s eyes to the true evil of the world around him. God took him out of his blissful innocence and awakened him to the harsh reality of the sinful world. So, what about us? Do we want to know? Do we want a prophet to tell us how bad the world really is?
Well, we might not live in an oppressive authoritarian society, but global trade that includes countries with varying levels of respect for human rights leads to some interesting problems for us. We’ve probably seen news stories or videos about labor exploitation in foreign countries. If you knew the t-shirt you are wearing was made by children in a sweatshop in a third world country, would you still want to wear it? If you found out that even the clothes that are made in America were made of fabric that was woven in bad conditions overseas would you give up buying clothes in general?
And if realizing that the fashion industry is rife with exploitation and that led you to make your own clothes, what would you do when you see videos about the horrors of factory farming? Would you give up animal products and become vegan to avoid contributing money to an industry that abuses animals?
And what about the truck drivers who are forced to drive terribly long hours in often unsafe conditions to get your products to you on time? Would you keep watching football if you knew the brain damage and shortened life expectancy of so many players? Would you feel good about driving your car if you knew the personal and environmental risk of so many cars on the road? Would you feel happy about using electricity if you knew that some power plants are fueled, at least partially, by coal that is mined in ways that destroy environments and poison people? Wouldn’t all that be a rude awakening that you would want to avoid?
Huh… Ooops… I did it.
The reality of our world is harsh, and what’s worse is that we are all responsible to some extent. There are a lot of problems, and sometimes the easiest way to get through life is to close our eyes and plug our ears. If we can just pretend that these problems don’t exist, we don’t have to feel as bad about them. We can go on living our lives without thinking about the harmful implications of everything we do. How are we supposed to get through the day in a horrifyingly brutal world without breaking down and weeping for the loss of innocence?
But then again, why should we be weeping for our loss of innocence instead of the exploitation of child labor in Africa so we can have chocolate? We can’t help but have our eyes open, cry for the evils of the world, pray that God will do something about it, and then get up and fight. It is on us to proclaim. It is on us to open eyes to the evils the world faces. The church has a prophetic voice that speaks truth to power and exposes the underlying evils of the world. Nothing but God is sacred. All things can be overturned aside from the Gospel.
We may not be living in a system that is outright repressive in its authoritarianism. However, we do live in a society characterized by apathy. No one wants to face these problems and take them seriously enough to do anything about them because they know it will lead to sacrifices for themselves, they just don’t know how far those sacrifices will go. It is certainly scary to have our eyes opened, when we’d rather remain blissfully ignorant.
God doesn’t let us stay that way. God showed Jeremiah the evil of his generation. Through the words of modern day prophets, God opens our eyes to the evil in our day. Like Jeremiah, we can’t help but carry on that message. We will never fix the world completely, but we can do the work God calls us to do. We know that we will have to make sacrifices, but God calls us to be faithful even through challenges, and by faith we can know that some sacrifices for a better future won’t destroy us. Individually, there is nothing any one of us could do to make things right, but the Church is the Body of Christ on earth. We aren’t alone. We have each other. God is with us. We can face the evil of our world, and God can defeat it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountaintop_removal_mining
