Following Jesus & doing the dishes

Dave Berlach ponders the benedictine spirituality of doing the dishes.

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I have been pondering for sometime now the issue of commitment in our culture. Just chewing it over, ruminating, and chewing it some more, and I think I’m starting to come to a conclusion, which I thought I would share with you here.

The current them of Stoop is “Looking backwards, Moving Forwards” - in relation to this issue, if we look back in time a few decades, commitment and social duty or social responsibility were a big deal – they were a part of growing up and “becoming a man/woman”.  Today however, drenched with choice and options, there is little need for commitment, and moreover definitely no celebration of it as a marker of our social status. My question then, has included what can I take from the past that should be re-learnt as I walk into the future. I’m also careful not to be nostalgic in looking backwards – clearly there were problems in the past and things that should not have been so, and it with this mindset that I proceed. The biggest catalyst of all for this, I suppose has been becoming a father; what that means and what I want to teach my children; so, let’s begin.

I read an article recently that quoted the old adage, “Everyone wants to change the world, but no one wants to do the dishes!” Apart from being a nice little quip to bring up a dinner parties or when discussing the socio-political landscape of say, for instance the Make Poverty History campaign, I think there is a tightly packaged bundle of truth  in the statement, especially as it relates to commitment and social responsibility. Something that has really bugged me for a while now is the ease of “protesting” in the digital age – I can stick a cute slogan in my Facebook or Twitter status and all of a sudden I’m an activist! The digital landscape makes protest possible, without the pain of actually having to do anything. And being the savvy consumers we are, we really like this aspect – I mean surely it’s the better of two choices, one of which equals potential pain and no social recognition, and the other that equals instant social status as a philanthropist/activist without the pain. It’s an easy decision right?  However, the problem with this, like so many of the choices we’re offered by our culture, is that it doesn’t really challenge us at all – we don’t have to commit to anything; there is no long term engagement with a cause; we’re free to still do what we always have – and that is a big problem. The pain and perseverance of committing to someone or to a cause is what forces us to grow; we decide to do it no matter how it feels or what people think. When it starts to hurt, we stick in there and keep going. Our culture tells us that “if it feels good, do it” – the converse of that is “if it feels bad, don’t do it”. I fear that this loss means that we end up with a whole lot of talk but no action. Worse still, the danger is that our activism forgets the little things or deems them ineffective or unimportant when compared with the grander ideas of uprising or fighting against injustice.

From a christian perspective, this idea when read in conjunction with Jesus life is preposterous; but it is exactly the conundrum that many sociologists and missiologists report the western church as facing (read Mark Sayers, Gerorge Barna, Alan Hirsch et al for more on this) – to put it bluntly,  we have bought into the secular religion of consumerism and forgotten Christ’s call to be disciples.

The more I think about it and consider what I am actually called to as a follower of Christ, the more there is this nagging issue of discipleship. And that call challenges everything that the Empire seductively lures me with, as in order to become more Christlike I must abandon my need to be “liked”, my need for instant gratification, and biggest of all, forces me to acknowledge daily how far away from being like Jesus I actually am. Although that humility sometimes really sucks, God says that it is the humble that he shows grace to, and that a life with him starts, continues and ends with being a lowly servant.

It is from this point of humility that Christ again and again calls me to commit to the journey of becoming like Him – more kind, more peaceful, more just, more merciful; that is, more and more like the blessed people that He speaks about in Matthew 5. The annoying part about this whole commitment to discipleship is that it becomes very hard to compartmentalise my faith – God wants in on every nook and cranny of my being. I must give up my perceived right to be angry at my wife, or my self justified prejudices, my sinful lusts and desires, and my unconscious need for control. Jesus keeps exposing all of the things that I don’t want to give up or those that I don’t want anyone to know about, and to my shame, the majority of the time I wish he would bloody well stop it!

So, I’m committing to this journey of discipleship and (sort of) looking forward to the continually humbling experience of following Christ, who displayed the most incredible commitment and humility of all. And I’m hoping that this commitment will extend throughout my life so that looking back, I may be able to say that I started the race and followed it through despite the challenges that I faced. And above all, I hope that come what may, Christ (and most likely my wife) will always remind me of the grand humility of washing the dishes!

Amen.

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Dave Berlach is editor Stoop Magazine