Serving without Saving

For anyone who feels tangibly the deep suffering and great needs present within our neighborhoods, our city, and our society more broadly, it becomes easy to get caught up in our own efforts to resolve this suffering, and to lose sight of what is most essential to human flourishing. And even as we seek justice and peace, social activism of all forms can convince us that we are capable of generating a new world out of our own resources, perfected and freed from those elements we identify as evil.

So, when the utopian promise of resolving suffering out of our own resources fails to be fulfilled, when we experience frustration, drudgery, setbacks, and even burn-out, where can we turn next? Do we really understand the needs to which we seek to respond? Can we truly claim to hold the solutions to the problems that surround us? And how is it possible to love our neighbors without seeking to save the world, or succumbing to the temptation that the acquisition of additional power is our central concern? Who saves, and how do we allow this salvation to take place rather than trying to supplant it by our own efforts?

Plough will be attending this event (which is hosted by the Crossroads Cultural Center) with copies of our book The Reckless Way of Love.