Grandma's Apathy

Apathy is an easy target. It’s hard to camouflage its telltale indifference. “I don’t care” is its trademark remark. Its mantra is a mumbled “Whatever.”

Most frequently associated with adolescents, apathy is the way some of them mope and scuff their heels through life, hooded by headphones and iPod music! They exasperate their parents, those biologically bound life coaches urging them to get interested in … in … something. They frustrate grandmas and grandpas who grew up in the “hard work” generation.

No one likes an apathetic person. We want to be around people who care. We need to see passion. It feeds us. But people who don’t get passionate about anything leave us feeling like we’re eating rice cakes.

However, it’s not just an adolescent problem. Many social commentators are pointing out that apathy is on the increase. Today it is a political problem recognized as voter apathy, leading Time.com to pose the question, Will politicians matter in the 21st century?

It is an economic problem as more and more Americans without so much as batting an eye let themselves slide down through inconvenient debt into bankruptcy. A stain on my good name? Who cares.

Then on top of the kind of apathy bred by cynicism, there is the kind born of overload and helplessness. News and information technologies have made our world smaller. We can enjoy our microwave meal in Minnesota while watching live video of a tsunami devastating a nation halfway around the world.

Culture watchers point out that the unintended consequence of a globe made smaller by technology is a world made scarier by information. The remedy for having too much to care about is to care about less.

It is ironic that Al Gore has embarked on a worldwide campaign to warn about a shrinking polar ice cap at a time when the greater problem may be our shrinking faith in the power of people to make any difference.

What about Christians? Is there evidence that we are being numbed by the noxious gases of apathy? Perhaps not. We can still be mobilized by big constitutional causes or small community crises.

Nevertheless, there is a very subtle form of apathy we may not recognize. It is a type that predates our contemporary world’s current malaise and goes undetected behind the disguise of passion and caring.

It is what might be called “Grandma’s apathy.” This is the kind of apathy that occurs when so much passion gets spent on those near and dear to us that there is little if any passion left for anyone else. The circle of care is drawn so small that the heart encompasses little more than what is within immediate reach.

For example, do we begin to care about mental illness only when one of our family members is afflicted? When one of our church members begins sounding a trumpet call about the importance of prison ministry, do we shove it to the background until our grandson gets convicted of a drug felony?

I see the signs of this problem even in the way Christian mission organizations are having to go about fundraising these days. It seems to be accepted now as an inevitable fact that people will not give to a general operating fund and let mission leaders disburse those funds according to their vision and strategic plan. Rather, the only way to inspire a passion to give is to somehow create a connection between the giver and the end recipient. Turn a mission venture into a local church project and you’ll generate much more interest among the members.

This methodology is not intrinsically bad. But when it is the only methodology that works, there is something dangerously wrong. Christians are called, yes, to love their neighbors through direct contact. But we are also called to love the world at large and to entrust our offerings to the care of those who are ministering on our behalf to people and people groups that our local church mission teams will never visit.

In the final analysis, apathy is not just the absence of caring. It is the absence of caring about anything beyond what is easy and immediate. The true scope of compassion encompasses the faces and needs of people who will never populate your collection of wallet photos. Wage war against “Grandma’s apathy.” Practice caring, especially for those way beyond your reach. Keep supporting your local mission teams. But also give generously to the general funds of mission organizations that are reaching the world.