As you guys know, I rarely, if ever, get political. So with that in mind, I hope you won’t find this post political. I don’t really care about politics. I don’t really care if you’re a republican or democrat or who you voted for in the last election.
But like many of you, I’ve been watching the recent national protests from the “Occupy Wall Street” movement.
I won’t even pretend to have a real grasp on the issue, but I like the way Brent McCracken summed this group of protesters up:
As a “movement,” Occupy Wall Street doesn’t reveal an organized grassroots agenda as much as it represents a general climate of anger, frustration, and antagonism against the “haves”—a suspiciously narrow (1 percent), heartless, no good, very bad group whose entrepreneurial and capitalistic success apparently oppress the 99 percent of us have-nots who are being unfairly kept from sharing in the 1 percent’s riches.
I can see why they might be upset, but their tactics, while certainly their right, seem a little off to me. I’ve never been much of a protester.
I’ve never carried a sign.
I’ve never participated in a march.
I’ve never been a part of a sit in.
I agree with Bruce Wydick, who wrote,
Like most protests, the Occupy Wall Street folks are better at identifying something that is wrong than identifying a way forward that is right.
And this is why I don’t protest.
The reality is there are things that need to be changed.
Our political system needs change.
Our financial system needs change.
The Church needs change.
But I think all this “protesting” just shows that we would rather point fingers, lash out, and fight than share blame and own up to how we’ve contributed to the problems we face. It sounds a little too much like Adam in the garden saying, “This woman made me do it.”
There is no area of your life or our nation where true change begins with blaming. Blaming is for cowards and sluggards.
True change begins when we realize that we’ve all added to the problems we face in our nation, in our churches, in our families, and in our individual lives.
