Don't Talk About That...There Are Starving Children In China!

Remember when you were a kid, depending on your age, and you wouldn't finish eating your dinner your mom or whom ever would say, "there are starving children in China" or Africa these days. I remember this? I even remember it being used as a line in Dirty Dancing. (for some reason when I think of this line I think of that movie) At any rate, this was to make us feel bad that we were so blessed to have food that we would finish eating our brussel sprouts or whatever "health food" our parents wanted us to eat.
Fast forward...yesterday I had a couple of instances where someone used this same type of thinking but in a different way. In the middle of good or even heated conversation someone pops in and says something to the tune of, "think of the starving missionaries in the world...", now this is an exaggeration, but you get the idea. Basically, its a way to manipulate conversation to someone else's agenda. It could be to many ends. From the examples I have from yesterday I can't quite figure it out, but I did get the message. The message was, "this is stuff we shouldn't be talking about, I don't like it, so I will throw this out there to make you feel as though your spiritually deprived." Now, they weren't successful on making me feel spiritually deprived, but they did accomplish one thing. That was to make me realize how often when we are uncomfortable with a certain behavior in the christian world we try and find ways to manipulate those around us with spiritual superiority. The thing is, it is not wrong to talk about tough matters, nor is it wrong to question the community around us, and nor is it wrong for those of us in the community to have heated exchanges. This does not neglect the missionaries who are overseas or not overseas. Nor does it make those missionaries better than us. There are things in christian communities that need to be addressed and just because there are people doing things we deem highly spiritual does not mean we should stop addressing problems. Heck, part of the problems can be some of these missionaries. Nor does it mean those who are addressing problems are ignoring work being done by others.
Brooks has a great entry on his blog and I think it could be a good parrell here as well. Brooks talks about the balance between being too individualistic and too community oriented. He talks about the extremes and the negative effects of both thinking, then addresses the positive on both. But he points out that we need each other. The same here. There is balance needed. We should always find ways to support those who are doing work as missionaries and support those as God has lead us. We should always be mindful of our part in the Great Commission. On the other hand, we must realize we are more and more being saturated into a new environment and with that calls into question a lot of what we have always known. These issues need to be addressed. They aren't going to go away. But if we focus too much on the issues and never try to fix them so that we are a healthy body then we neglect the Great Commission. There needs to be a balance between both thoughts. There also needs to be a healthy balance. And what I saw yesterday was unhealthy. It took a detour that stopped growth and acknowledgment of change. Do any of y'all watch Friends? Remember the episode after Ross and Rachel broken up, Rachel and Ross were trying to get everyone else to kindof pick sides. What happened? Chandler started smoking and would try to entertain people instead of letting the people work things out. The same with what I'm talking about here, we must allow healthy conversation so that we may grow and to that end change things around us for the kingdom.
I hope this makes sense to y'all. I just kept noticing a running theme and I saw how unheathy it was and thought, what better thing to do then to blog it! ;)

Blessings!