Voices
I’ve been thinking about voices the last couple of weeks. No, I didn’t say I was hearing voices. I’ve been thinking about them. Specifically, I’ve been considering the people who have no voice–the citizens of Darfur, the homeless, the mentally ill, the poor, the children, etc. They are the people of our world who have such little power that their cries for help often go unheeded. It’s as if they are drowned in the selfish blast of the wealthy and powerful. I’m learning that one of the major tasks for Christians is to be the voice of the voiceless. There are hundreds of passages in the Bible that speak to this calling.
To remind myself, I’ve put a quote from Desmond Tutu on my computer desktop. “For many of us it is not our politics that constrain us to say and do what we do and say…. It is precisely our relationship with God, it is our worship, our meditation, our attendance at the Eucharist, it is these spiritual things which compel us to speak up for God, ‘Thus saith the Lord …,’ to be the voice of the voiceless. For many the spiritual is utterly central to all we are and do and say.” Our Christian faith must compel us to be the voice of the voiceless. I reflected on my own silence again this morning as my pastor spoke of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and his unrelenting voice that spoke out against the Nazi regime and called Christians to a costly discipleship.
Honestly, I’m more comfortable letting others do the talking, to point out the injustices and the need for more compassion toward the marginalized. But I am not called to be comfortable. I am called to care about the poor, the sick, the incarcerated, and the oppressed. More specifically, God has seen fit to place me with an organization that has the responsibility to be the “family voice” for families dealing with emotionally and behaviorally troubled children. Typically, these families are poor, single-parent, and alone in their struggle to parent very difficult children. To speak for these people or any peoples is a huge responsibility, one we cannot ignore no matter how much we may want to.
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