“A spirit of despair”
In an official report published the other day, there were some disturbing statistics about teenagers in my country.
One in seven had killed themselves or had seriously attempted to commit suicide at least once.
One in four are considered “at very high risk” of ending their own lives. Half (over forty-nine percent) consistently exhibit suicidal tendencies and are deemed “at risk.”
The most vulnerable group of all are high school graduates.
Among the reasons given by teenagers for wanting to end their own lives, the most common are the following: homelessness, joblessness, hunger, rejection by friends, failure at school or at examinations, lack of parental love, sexual abuse, date rape, and most horrifying of all, “total despair.” Frequent expressions used are, “Life is pointless,” “I am a failure,” “There is no hope of anything in life,” “I just can’t take life any more,” “I don’t want to live on the streets,” and most pointedly of all, “Nobody cares.”
Something is terribly, terribly amiss in my country when half the population has given up on life by the age of twenty. In the Jamaica of my youth, to win a “free place” to high school was deemed a door to life, not a passport to dark despair.
Data from the government indicate that in the “bright millennium year” 2000, of 173,000 teens who were unemployed, 71 percent had been “looking for work” for more than six months, and 48 percent for more than twelve months. Half of all teenagers considered their job and life prospects to be “absolutely hopeless.” Three-quarters of all teenagers had not been taught any skills, and had not passed any examination.
The most desperate group are the homeless street teens. Professor Brendan Bain of the University of the West Indies reported recently that among those street teens registered with the NISC (National Initiative for Street Children), one of the most likely outcomes of their teenage years is to become HIV positive and die of AIDS. Many are chronically hungry, and therefore chronically angry.
“Moved with compassion”
I don’t really know what Galilee was like when Jesus walked around preaching the gospel to the poor. I don’t know if there were teenage gangs in Jerusalem, or street children in Bethsaida. I get the impression from the book Cornelia ‘s Story that Caesarea was a bit like Kingston. But I do know that Jesus of Nazareth, my Savior, was moved with compassion by those in despair (Mark 1:41, 8:2 and many others places). And it was this infinite compassion that got Jesus constantly into trouble, so that he became an affront to almost everyone he met.
“Gentle Jesus, meek and mild”? No way! He was so inflammatory in his language and so impatient with the uncaring that he was thrown out of synagogues, threatened with stoning, hunted from place to place, and finally nailed to a tree as a firebrand and a public danger. His compassion led to constant charges of inconsistency. He claimed to have come to fulfil the law, yet broke it to heal the sick. He warned against lust, yet refused to condemn a blatant adulteress and defended a prostitute. He spoke against violence, yet praised a Roman soldier. As for his friends, they were a pretty desperate lot — a guerrilla, a traitor, a thief, a stinking leper, an unloved foreigner, and numerous street kids. Most of them would make a respectable Christian blanch.
The words and behavior on earth of Jesus of Nazareth have confused his followers ever since. He is seen as a renegade Jew, a revolutionary, a radical reformer, a socialist, an other-worldly mystic, an idealistic moral teacher, a willing substitute for wayward sinners, a prophet of doom. His name and fame are invoked to support every stripe and brand of religious enthusiasm from “born again” materialists of the ultra-right to “bleeding heart liberals” of the left.
Two reactions
Basically, there have been two reactions to Jesus’ attitude to the despairing. One says that he was not interested in what has been called “the human condition” here and now — injustice, poverty, hunger, despair. His message was simply to offer hope for a better kingdom in the far-off future. Present woes can simply be ignored, because Jesus is only interested in people’s spiritual needs. As long as we preach the gospel, it is said, and offer eternal salvation through Christ, we need do nothing else but keep our money tightly in our wallets.
This is a caricature of the Son of God. If that is true, three quarters of the New Testament can be thrown into the trash can.
There is another extreme: to portray Jesus Christ as being concerned mainly with present human needs, as if these were paramount. This, too, is wide of the mark.
“Every whit whole”
Matthew, Mark, Luke and John all concur as to the purpose of Jesus’ words and works. They all use the same word or phrase. It was to make helpless, suffering, despairing, dying people “every whit whole” (John 7:23). The Greek word translated “whole” or “sound” is the word from which we get our word hygiene. When Jesus comes into a person’s life, it is a total thing: healthy soundness of body, soul and spirit; sins wiped away; hope and strength to cope with despair; joyful assurance of salvation.
There is an important caveat that we need to remember. There is no evidence that Jesus was indiscriminate in his “mighty works,” curing people at random. Most of the people whose stories are recorded in the gospels were the absolutely hopeless cases: total paralysis, incurable insanity, congenital blindness, unstoppable bleeding — even the stench of death. This tells us that no despair is too deep that the Truth cannot bring help and hope. There is no despair that being at this table cannot heal.
We sing that Jesus’ word still has its ancient power. How often have we found that to be true! But remember: that power is manifested today mainly through the loving care of his brothers and sisters. And this table of the Lord is his power house.
Paul challenges us in Romans 8: “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?” And the answer is the answer to despair: “In all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.”
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One