You Can't Make Me Care

[This post is kind of the anti-thesis of the previous one.]

The world wants to tell you what to care about. On the societal level, this is called advertising. Care about your skin, your car, or the sheen of your shampoo. Care about (what people think about) the cleanliness of your house, the name on your jeans, the reading on your bathroom scale. Care about this so you will buy that.

On a personal level, people also want you to care about the same things they care about. Preachers, teachers, parents, friends, writers, politicians, cousins, neighbors - everyone has their own agenda. It may not be malevolent, quite the opposite. Some people believe dearly that the issues that move them most deeply should move everyone as deeply. They cannot understand why your priorities or your emotional reactions, are any different.

I think everyone has had at least one conversation where the person you are talking to is getting riled up and you think, "I simply don't care about this." I feel that way about many, many things. A fine example of this is homosexuality. I just don't care enough to develop an informed opinion about this issue. I don't feel like wading through the social, biblical, psychology, anecdotal and personal evidence on this matter. So if you ask me what I think I'll just shrug my shoulders and say, "Meh." It isn't that I think this issue and its implications are unimportant. It's just that it is unimportant to me.

Just as there are too many choices of peanut butter, there are too many things to care about, too many worthy causes to give to, too many honorable movements to "like" on facebook. And there isn't enough time to care about them all. There isn't enough energy in my body to make me care about everything I, as a good, thoughtful, Christian, am supposed to care about.

So I make choices, and I'm sorry, but while you may think that society is on a moral decline because of X (and who knows, you may actually be right!) I am happy to let you solve that problem, but don't tell me about it, because I don't care.

Some examples...

I don't care about taxes. I don't care if they are raised or if they are lowered. I don't care about the super-rich who control everything. I don't care about the fact that Social Security won't exist when I'm 65 years old.

I care about children. Not just my own, but all children. It breaks my heart that there are children in this world that are abused, neglected, or that go to bed hungry, cold, and alone. I care that there are children in Foster Care because this means that Christians have failed to love and provide for those who need it the most. Until Christians do a better job caring for children, we should stop calling ourselves Christians, perhaps only saying that, "One day we aspire to be Christians, but for now we are just play-acting."

I don't care about labels. Republican or Democrat. Conservative or Liberal. Rich or Poor. Evangelical or Reformed or Christian Reformed or Emergent. Modern or post-modern or post-post-modern. They are useful only to dismiss another person or their ideas.

I care that the majority of Christian are daily abusing their bodies by eating things barely classifiable as food and drinking things that should be categorized as drugs. I care that most pastors are over weight. I care because I don't think you can be spiritually healthy without being physically healthy. I care about making my own bread and eating more vegetables. 

I don't care about what you think.

I care about what you do.

I don't care about what famous people think or do.

I don't care what you think of me.

I care how you treat me.

I don't want to hear about how much you care about something. Unless you show me passion. If you show me why I should care, then I might. But I'm not making any promises.