Not the abstract. . .

I have grown increasingly uncomfortable with the quickness to speak in general terms instead of individual.  You hear it all the time.  Human suffering has replaced the faces, names, and stories of the people who suffer.  It is not helpful.  What does human suffering look like?  None of us know.  What we do know is the face of people who suffer.  The appeal of relief work is not to a cause but to faces of people in pain, sorrow, and loss.  You cannot raise any money for the cause by speaking in general terms or speaking of the cause abstractly but people are moved to act by looking into the pained eyes of those in need.  Even the cause of animal abuse is heightened by looking into the faces of hungry and suffering dogs (along with the sound of Sarah McLachlan).  The St. Jude Hospital or the Shriner's Hospital do not appeal to cancer but show us the faces of children with cancer.  The abstract does not move the heart nor does it reveal the depth of the problem.

For the Church this is especially concerning.  Sin in general has often come to distance the individual from his or her sins.  If everyone is a sinner, then no one really is, right?  Christ did not enter the world because of sin in general but for particular sins and sinners.  Of course, He died for all but that sentence only has meaning if He died for me.  Over and over again the Scriptures point us to the God who knows us not as one among many but individually.  The number of hairs on each head.  The individual birds of the air.  The single sparrow that falls to the ground.  Each one of us, with all our sins and failures, happiness and joys, fears and doubts, trials and troubles, interests and desires -- each of us are known to God.  I would go so far as to say that God does not know a humanity which does not have a face, a name, and a story.  Where generalities diminish the profound character of God's mercies, the particulars only emphasize those mercies new every morning.

The eternal question of Scripture is addressed not in the abstract but in the personal.  Who am I that God is mindful of me?  This particularity is revealed in the way Jesus treated those who were not even to be noticed by society in general much less individually -- from the poor man in the parable who is named Lazarus while the rich man is anonymous to the children He insists are not to be set way.  Jesus did not come for sinners in general but for the particular sins of sinners whose names and lives He knows.  This should be of profound comfort to us.  God does not deal with us abstractly but concretely -- as concrete as the splash of water, the voice addressing us with absolution, the taste of bread and wine.  What a marvel of God's mercy?!