Even within the most recent context of my life I carried it as a badge of honor the ongoing conflict between me and the world. I saw myself, in what must seem like romantic idiocy on par with Don Quixote, as a fighter behind enemy lines. I walked out my front door swinging. Each human interaction became an engagement of invisible powers. Certainly such a narrative exists Biblically, but this was woefully applied by yours truly. The driver next to me is not mine to overcome, nor the librarian part of the horde, and finally the approaching retail associate does not carry the flag of my enemy. Even the most belligerent soccer mom or early morning jogger does not hide the seeds of my undoing. And yet... they are not with me. Right? Irrelevant.
The gospel in a moment of honest drama depicts a moment of observation by Jesus who sees the masses as something I never do; harassed and helpless (Matthew 9:36). It would only be condescension on my part to say that I understand this. I do not have the ability to see things as truly as Jesus did. To me the arrogance of the wealthy is not a cry for help nor the transparent symptoms of harassment. To me, it is what it is, the ugliness of human depravity. Which is why I am not Jesus. I would have to fake superior wisdom and magnanimity to say I see such people as harassed and helpless.
It is in this I suppose I've had to arrive at a different conclusion. I am little different from what surrounds me essentially. I too am oppressed by a nature I twisted for too long a time. I am afflicted by self-made affliction no different that of the unsmiling toll booth operator or mocking grad student with whom I just babbled a messy invitation to Bible Talk. Are they with me? What does it matter? We together belong to a community of sinking ships. Some try and bail water while others live those waning moments in revelry and others are paralyzed by the despair of it all. Everyone needs rescuing. We are with each other in that crucial fact.
It is only at a certain philosophic level, removed from real time interaction, I can view the world around me as harassed and helpless the way Jesus did. For that very reason I have no authority to deem who is and who isn't an enemy for whom I must wage war. So I am suitably removed from that horse and I must ask for necessary humanity to smile more often, remember more names and faces, and finally to join the PTA or Homewood Book Club etc. I have no war to fight with them. I am rescued from this ship and they cannot strip me of it. I can only hope to bail enough water that others will realize and come along.
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