I am watching COPS (again!) after a wonderful retreat with Jesus (more on that later) and was reminded about a post on the show I wrote this summer. Have you ever sat down and really watched this show? The whole thing is one big commentary on the despair that oozes out of every crevice of society! And in the face of this oozing, I feel so helpless…

I just spent the last 2 hours watching COPS. Not something I normally do on a Saturday night (although I am bored after returning to Michigan from DC!), but I needed to do somethings on the Mac and thought I would have some background “noise”.

After watching this program, I realize how insulated I am in my nice home (well, my parents) in the white suburbs, far removed from drugs, poverty, violence, battery, rape, and any other form of human despair. I write this both in thanks and also lament. I am thankful for God’s protection and care over my life and circumstances, but lament both being so far removed from pockets of social decay and also the fact that social despair and hopelessness exists.

I really wonder sometimes how much of handle God really has on this thing called life and time and reality. You look throughout history and even the present and see such…despair. I am reading a chapter in a book called Christ Plays In Ten Thousand Places on how Christ plays and moves throughout history. And I finish this COPS marathon and think about my time in Romania with orphans and gypsies and about the news and really wonder sometimes where God is in all of this.

I know humans create much of this suffering. Our rage and arrogance and murderous hearts and greed and pride all move history in the direction of despair. And I know God does not cause suffering per se (although that is certainly ANOTHER blog post for another day), but like Dr. Cox from Scrubs sometimes I really want to scream: God, where are you?

This is just a short post on some reactive thoughts and I know most of them seem to be from no where, but I really struggle sometimes with God and history, and now thanks to COPS I have four more episodes worth of despair to add to my struggle…

-jeremy

…and after re-reading my post I wonder what is my role in this? As a follower of Jesus am I not called to deliberately follow Him into this despair? To take the Light of Christ into the heart of society’s centers of darkness that cultivate and perpetuate marginalization, inequity, crime and the hopelessness that undergirds all of it?

Instead this is what I do: I hide it under a fine bowl from Pottery Barn, setting upon my beautiful marble-top table from Crate and Barrel, nestled in a secure house (provided by ADT Security), behind a thick wooden door, guarded by a nice white-picket fence and all the plushness and security that comes from American Suburbia.

Maybe 2008 is the year to escape and light the darkness…