What if it’s not about changing the world?
When I think about changing the world, when I think about the magnitude of the work that we do at Adventures, I tend to freeze. Maybe that kind of challenge is thrilling or inspiring to some (Hi, Seth Barnes), but to me (and to most people), it’s debilitating. How great are the problems of the world! How do we combat all of the poverty, hate, evil, and greed in this world? I feel inadequate, and not in a “I need more training” sort of way. I feel inadequate in a “I face an impossible task” sort of way. Trying to tackle the sex trade, rampant divorce, political ideologies, and socially accepted hatred are impossible callings.
And so I’d rather not try. I’d rather help up to a point, and then choreograph a first-class PR campaign to fashion an exaggerated reality how I am “changing the world”. All I’m really doing is seeking an unhealthy stagnation of working hard enough to not have to work anymore.
But what if it’s not about changing the world?
What if it’s not about making the world a better place?
What if it’s not about making the world a better place, but making a world of better people? What if it’s not about creating a high-octane global campaign strategy, but instead it’s about building authentic relationships with individual people who need practical, distinct, and relevant truth?
Changing the world does not start with changing the life of one person, that’s all it is. They are one and the same. Changing the world looks like changing one person from broken to healed, drowning to uplifted, fearful to faithful. Changing the world will always be a “What if” if we forget that what we are made to do is love individual, typical people.
Is there a global problem you want gone? Find one person and change their day. Do you want to start a non-profit to solve a crisis? Sit with someone and love them recklessly. If you don’t do the latter, you will never do the former.
And eventually, you’ll change the world without even knowing it.
But, again, what if it’s not about changing the world?
Go love people.
“But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him? – 1 John 3:17
