"When you find something in a human face that calls out to you, not just for help but in some sense for yourself, how far do you go in answering that call, how far can you go, seeing that you have your own life to get on with as much as he has his?" (Frederick Buechner, Now and Then, 1983).
This is exactly what I felt when I was in practicum counseling clients from the under-privileged sectors, and in a way this is also what I feel most of the time in Christian communities. In fact, I suspect this is the very question that every serious believer should ask, since following Christ is, fundamentally, about giving oneself the way Christ did, and yet understandably there should be limits to the extent we give ourselves when bonding with others, not so much because Christ himself had set such limits as an example, but because in the present fallen world there will always be a need to give more, and to give unceasingly without discretion is bound to burn anybody out.
What makes it even harder, as Buechner so aptly observes, is that not only do I have a life different from yours, but we both are more than likely to be too tied up with our own lives to even try figuring out how to be of devoted profitable service to each other. Indeed, meeting the needs in someone is more than a casual inquiry after his health or the occasional offer of a helping hand; it is an intense investment of one's material, emotional, and spiritual resources. It requires us to become part of somebody's life, just as Christ became God Incarnate and dwelt among us to become part of OUR lives. As such, we literally have to turn ourselves into Christ-incarnates to the people who call out to us in need.
This is certainly a tall order. And like it or not, there will always be more people looking to have their needs met than those looking to meet the needs in others -- hence the very shrewd question posed by Buechner: How far do we go? How far can we go? This is probably something I'll need to tussle with for the rest of my life, especially when I encounter more and more peculiar cases where people barely connected with me are looking to me to have some of their deep personal needs met, oftentimes quite inappropriately or unreasonably so. At times like these, I really need to know where and how to draw the boundaries, while still being the Christ-incarnate that I am supposed to be.
This is exactly what I felt when I was in practicum counseling clients from the under-privileged sectors, and in a way this is also what I feel most of the time in Christian communities. In fact, I suspect this is the very question that every serious believer should ask, since following Christ is, fundamentally, about giving oneself the way Christ did, and yet understandably there should be limits to the extent we give ourselves when bonding with others, not so much because Christ himself had set such limits as an example, but because in the present fallen world there will always be a need to give more, and to give unceasingly without discretion is bound to burn anybody out.
What makes it even harder, as Buechner so aptly observes, is that not only do I have a life different from yours, but we both are more than likely to be too tied up with our own lives to even try figuring out how to be of devoted profitable service to each other. Indeed, meeting the needs in someone is more than a casual inquiry after his health or the occasional offer of a helping hand; it is an intense investment of one's material, emotional, and spiritual resources. It requires us to become part of somebody's life, just as Christ became God Incarnate and dwelt among us to become part of OUR lives. As such, we literally have to turn ourselves into Christ-incarnates to the people who call out to us in need.
This is certainly a tall order. And like it or not, there will always be more people looking to have their needs met than those looking to meet the needs in others -- hence the very shrewd question posed by Buechner: How far do we go? How far can we go? This is probably something I'll need to tussle with for the rest of my life, especially when I encounter more and more peculiar cases where people barely connected with me are looking to me to have some of their deep personal needs met, oftentimes quite inappropriately or unreasonably so. At times like these, I really need to know where and how to draw the boundaries, while still being the Christ-incarnate that I am supposed to be.
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