I
“I don’t care.” That was the mechanism I used as a boy to fend off whatever punishment my parents gave. “You’re grounded.” “I don’t care”. “No allowance this week.” I don’t care.” And, to tell the truth, I didn’t care. I would just go to some quiet corner and get a book and read. I was quite happy. I didn’t care. “Go to your room and shut the door until I tell you to come out.” “I don’t care”. And I didn’t care. My little room had, in addition to my books, a little radio on which I could listen to University of Kentucky basketball, sadly this year already terminated in March Madness, but not in my boyhood days. The room had my stamp collection, through which, in my mind, I could visit all sorts of exotic locations; and it had two large windows, through which I could sail paper airplanes I had designed. No, I didn’t care. I could amuse myself and forget about whatever it was I had done that put me in that place.
“I don’t care” was my ultimate all-purpose rejoinder, a terrible taunt that told my parents their efforts to discipline me were worthless. A silly slap that let me slide into my own little corner and feel smug. “I don’t care”.
Of course eventually my parents would let me out, and the look on their faces as well as the words from their lips told me … well, let’s leave that for a moment.
II
“I don’t care” is the defense of the whole human race, isn’t it? As long as we can put up that brave front, we suppose that we can get away with almost anything. We can slander someone, making the most outrageous assumptions, and if we are challenged, we can say, “That’s the way it seems to me. I don’t care”.
We can say hurtful things to one another and not feel a thing, especially if we put some distance between ourselves and those we are hurting. Email! Have you noticed that typing stuff to one another creates an emotional distance, and we seem no longer to care how we treat one another? One day at the church where I was pastor, I was working away in my office, and suddenly there came an email that was a copy of something sent by a church member to my assistant pastor. My assistant felt hurt by it, and wanted me to see what had been sent her. Before I knew it, another email popped up, the assistant pastor replying to the church member, copying me. And then a reply to the reply, more pointed, more emotional. By the time we got to the reply to the reply to the reply, I was out of my office, hurrying to my assistant’s office. The door was shut; I knocked, and she said, “Not now.” I identified myself, and she repeated, “Please, not now.” So I was reduced to returning to my computer and emailing both her and her protagonist, trying to intervene before they really damaged each other!
It was all a huge misunderstanding and they are now the dearest of friends. But how easily we lapse into hurting one another and finding ever more sophisticated ways of saying, “I don’t care”.
In fact, when she finally unlocked her office door and let me in, the look on her face and the words from her lips told me … well, let’s leave that for a moment.
III
“I don’t care” is the defense of the whole human race. As long as we can put up that brave front, we suppose that we can get away with almost anything. Thugs take lives with reckless abandon, because they can, and our society has allowed them to be armed. Thieves in pinstripe suits take financial security away from families, because they can, and because those families signed documents they did not really understand. Even preachers pronounce outrageous things about people they do not know, because they do not expect the power of the pulpit to be challenged, and then their detractors take snippets of their sermons and YouTube them, because they can. And all because of, “I don’t care.”
But when you look into the eyes of a mother whose son has been shot … when your see the faces of children whose parents cannot give them a home … when you hear the frustrations of those preached about and against … well, let’s leave that for a moment.
IV
Our God made us for fellowship with Him. At the heart of God from the time of creation was His desire that we live in Him, with Him, and for Him. But we say no to that. We say to God’s great gift of life, “I don’t care”. “If you want me to be shackled to death, I don’t care”. We say to God’s great gift of freedom, “I don’t care”. “If you want me to be chained to illness and limitations, I don’t care.” We say to God’s great gift of harmony, “I don’t care.” “If you want me to be bound to conflict and cacophony, I don’t care.” To all that God has wanted do to for us, we have announced, as if we truly believed it, “I don’t care.” And we have gone off pouting into our own shriveled lives, pretending that we can be quite all right, thank you, just doing our own thing.
All of us. Without exception. We don’t care. “All we like sheep have gone astray, every one to his own way.” Astray is where we think we want to be.
But eventually we suspect something else. Eventually we begin to feel that there is something more behind those constraints. After a while I finished my book. After a while my room felt confining. After a while the brave words pale. After a while the heft of the gun is heavy, the sight of the family on the street is burdensome, the thrill of the powerful preachment dies. And after a while it feels not so good to be a sheep gone astray. After a while it feels just like the writer of Lamentations described it: “My transgressions were bound into a yoke; by his hand they were fastened together; they weigh on my neck, sapping my strength.”
After a while sin is no fun any more and “I don’t care” seems very pointless. “My transgressions were bound into a yoke … they weigh on my neck, sapping my strength.”
V
Our God made us for fellowship with Him. Our God will not give up that dream. Our God heard us say that we did not care, but He cared. And so He labored to bring us back to Himself. Into our world He came, pouring Himself into the life of Jesus of Nazareth, taking on Himself the frailties of our flesh. Into our world He came, feeling what we feel, tempted as we are, tried with the same frustrations that bind us. Into our world He came, and heard us say, over and over again, “I don’t care.”
He taught us from the Mount what it is to be blessed. And we said, “I don’t care”. He healed us from our diseases. And we announced, “I don’t care”. He offered forgiveness and hope, and we turned our backs on Him, despising and rejecting Him as one in whom we found nothing that we should desire. Who needs Him? We didn’t care.
And so one day it all came to a head. Up Calvary’s mountain one dreadful morn Jesus trudged up the slopes and let them bind Him, hand and foot, to a crude Roman cross. One day the sun grew dark with mystery as they flung Him, wild and high, up there, and left Him to die. They gambled for His garment at His feet and said, “I don’t care.”
The writer of Lamentations again, “Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by? Look and see if there is any sorrow like my sorrow, which was brought upon me.” Is it nothing to you, says Jesus, that I bow my head in sorrow? Is it nothing to you that I cry out to the Father, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken me?”
When I was released from my little room, my dad’s eyes had tears in them and his lips said, “I love you just the same.” When my colleague opened her door, her eyes were swollen and her lips said, “I am so sorry this has happened.” When that mother confronted the young man in the jail cell, her eyes flashed with pain and her lips screamed, “How could you do this to me?” That homeless family, eyes downcast in shame, because their future was gone. That hapless listener, ridiculed from the pulpit, all of them, their eyes, their lips demanded, “Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by?”
His eyes looked down and saw those whom He loved. His lips uttered words of grace. He broke the chains of our carelessness. “Woman, behold your son; son, behold your mother.” He broke the chains of our shame. “Behold, I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.”
He looked down and saw me, in my “I don’t care” mode. And He broke the chains of my foolishness. “It is finished.” “Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by?” It is not. It is not a nothing. I do care. I have seen His eyes, I have heard His voice. And I do care. It is not a nothing that He suffered.
“Were the whole realm of nature mine, that were a present far too small. Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all.” This is not a nothing to me. I do care. This is everything.
