Newsgroups: bit.listserv.christia
Date:         Thu, 17 Dec 1992 16:56:32 EST
Comments:     Converted from PROFS to RFC822 format by PUMP V2.2X
From:         Brenda Curry-White <BSCURR01@ULKYVM.LOUISVILLE.EDU>
Subject:      Christians in a Dream World

Jim Coen writes the following:  "A word to those with younger children: I
believe that, as a rule, Christians live in a dream world, somewhat out of
touch with the reality of the 'real' world."  He said this to drive home a
point about how Christians should keep ideas they object to out of schools
(i.e. homosexuality).  While I am not going to comment on whether or not
I agree with that, I want to take his statement in a direction other than
what he intended because it got me thinking about something else.

Many Christians do live in a dream world, unaware of what goes on around them.
While I believe we are not called to be so unaware (how can we combat that
which we don't understand or know about), I believe we are all guilty of
it in varying degrees at one time or another.

Last night I was talking to a woman at church.  Our church has adopted a
family of a mother, a 12 year old girl and a 7 year old girl for Christmas.
They do not go to our church, but are served by our Neighborhood Visitor
program, a neighborhood food pantry that our church donates to.  It so
happened that a different family was unable to accept a large supply of food
we had collected because they had to go to the local abuse or homeless
shelter (the story is fuzzy at this point so I'm not sure which).  When you
go to the shelter, you can't take any of your own food (isn't that a great
way to get people back on their feet?  it keeps them dependent instead).  So
we had all of this food.  Kathy (the woman at church) called the mother of our
family and asked if she needed it.  She said she would just feel terrible
taking food (she felt bad enough about having strangers give her children
Christmas presents).  But when Kathy asked her if she really needed it, she
said she did.  So Kathy took the food to her.  Kathy said to me,  "I expected
them to be kind of scruffy, you know.  But they weren't."  I said, "They
were just like us, weren't they."  And Kathy said, "Yes.  That was really
hard for me."

Kathy had the misperception that Poor equals dirty/scruffy.  It does not.
But because we humans tend to be very selective about the kinds of people
we choose to associate with, we develop the strangest stereotypes about
other people.  We live in a dream world.  We don't even know what's going
on with our neighbors down the street.  We choose to keep ourselves
unaware, because in ignorance there is a certain amount of safety.

I guess the problem stems from the idea that it's easier to keep our
distance from the world.  It's easy to condemn people and behaviors that
we have no first-hand knowledge about.  Once we get to know people, it's
harder to dislike them.  And we are so often so human that we really want
to dislike people, even if Jesus told us not to.

Now that I am a mother, I am beginning to understand how torn parents feel.
Even though Sarah is still so young, I think about the future.  On the one
hand, I always want to be there beside her to cover her ears and eyes to
protect her from things that might harm her.  But on the other hand, I want
her to develop into a strong enough adult to be able to look at the world
and what goes on in it and to be able to say, "I don't want that."  And so
one day I am going to have to give her the option to choose.  And that
scares me terribly.  If I could keep her in her dream world, her choice
would be easy to make.  But I don't want her to be blind.  I want to guide
her to see what goes on, and to trust her enough to make the right choice.

Oh well.  Rambling off.  I hope that we Christians do wake up soon to the
world around us.

Brenda