Care
Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks,
Our peace in His will
And even among these rocks
Sister, mother
And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea,
Suffer me not to be separated
And let my cry come unto Thee.[1]
That said, we might ask: Of what does the Christian
duty of care consist? In the section on prayer above we noted that prayer is a
learnt activity. Could the same be said of care? This was a question posed by
T.S. Eliot who, in his famous “Ash Wednesday” poem, written shortly after his
conversion to the Christian faith in 1927, penned this remarkable prayer-line:
“Teach us to care and not to care.”
What might this prayer be important for us today?
Firstly, teach us to care. Perhaps the first thing to
note here is the distinction between kindness and care. If you have watched the
Ellen DeGeneres television talk show you might have noticed that she always
signs off her show with the exhortation to “be kind to one another.” But being
kind to one another does not carry the same weight as caring for one another.
Caring implies a relationship and an ongoing commitment in which lives become
inextricably linked. Whereas pity and beneficence tend to be the primary
motivators for acts of kindness and charity, it is compassion that sparks our
motivation to care. We can be kind to one another yet still live autonomous
lives, largely isolated from, and even indifferent towards the suffering that
is evident all around us.
When we pray, “Lord, teach us to care,” we are not
only voicing our determination to allow compassion to break down the walls of
indifference that exist between us; we are also resisting the
professionalization of care that has become a feature of our age. Have you
noticed that in the case of a public tragedy, for example, one of the first
things usually to be reported is that counselling has been offered to the
victims and their families? It seems that we can no longer rely on local
communities and family networks to provide the requisite networks of care and
support. Care has become something that we expect the health sector,
not-for-profit organisations (including Christian social service agencies) and
specialists to deliver on our behalf. On the one hand, this makes perfectly
good sense, as most churches lack the resources and expertise to provide the
level of care that is required in many situations; on the other hand, though,
it absolves us of the need to become personally involved in the provision of care
for our fellow human beings. We show we care by referring people to the right
agency or organisation or by sending them on their way with a food parcel or
supermarket voucher. Persons made in the image of God are reduced to clients,
healthcare consumers, welfare beneficiaries and recipients of charity.
“Lord, teach us to care,” constitutes a plea for this
distorted thinking to be corrected and to take responsibility for those aspects
of care that are best located within those grassroots communities of care and
worship that we call the church.
And so now to the second half of the prayer: “Teach us
not to care.” At first glance this appears to be a contradiction, but perhaps
at a deeper level it constitutes something of a reality check for us. Such is
the scale of need in our world that it can be likened to a huge sponge soaking
up every ounce of care we throw at it. Not only is it never satisfied; the more
it is fed with care the more it appears to grow, as evidenced by the
ever-expanding health care system and the ever-growing list of charities,
not-for-profit organisations and community initiatives. Society’s provision of
care, well intentioned and practical, can inadvertently encourage self-pity and
a sense of entitlement. American author Eugene Peterson puts it this way:
There is a great irony here – that so much of our
caring nurtures sin. The only group in our society who show any sign of
acknowledging this is parents of young children. Parents know that there is
nothing less innocent than childhood. After a few weeks, months at most, of
responding unquestioningly to every sign of need, mothers and fathers start
getting smart, start filtering the requests, cross-examining the wails. If they
don’t, they realise in a few years, and with a sense of dismay, that it might be
too late to do anything about it, because as they have been bandaging knees,
wiping away tears, buying designer jeans, running interference for break-away
emotions, they have at the same time been feeding pride, nourishing greed,
fuelling lust and cultivating envy. But outside the circumstances of
child-rearing, there does not seem to be much awareness of this deviousness.
The moment any one of us says, “Help me!” and discovers how quickly others are
in attendance on us, making us the centre and confirming our importance, a vast
field for the exercise of sin – that is, getting our own godless and
neighbourless way – opens up. It is really quite incredible the amount of
illness, unhappiness, trouble, and pain that is actually chosen, because it is
such an effective way of being in control, of being important, of exercising
God-like prerogatives, of being recognised as significant, without entering the
strenuous apprenticeship of becoming truly human, which always requires
learning the love of God, practising the love of neighbour.[2]
The prayer, “Lord, teach us not to care,” counters this
tendency to indulge those manipulative impulses that sometimes accompany
expressions of need. Part of caring is to exercise discernment and to develop
models of care that go beyond do-goodism and activism. Perhaps this is what
T.S. Eliot had in mind when he followed his plea to be taught to care and not
to care with another plea: Teach us to sit still and to find our peace in the
Lord’s will. In the midst of all our caring deeds, never let us neglect the
task of encouraging one another to be still, to contemplate the deep mysteries
of faith and to find our peace in God.
What might be entailed in your church learning to care more
fully in the manner of Christ?
Do you see any differences between the duty of care that is
laid upon the church and the duty of care that is exercised in society?
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