Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

So writes William Butler Yeats in his great poem, “The Second Coming.” The turmoil of the first two decades of the 20th century led Yeats to a gnawing conviction that something God-sized was coming to a head, and that a worldwide spiritual transformation was near. 

               The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.

Yeats had the fighters of the Irish War of Independence (1919-1921) in mind, but the principle transcends time. In every era are both types: the steady, moral, quiet ones who stand at the center of things and acknowledge truths from both sides of an issue; and those tending toward fanaticism, whose perspective is completely owned by their one, consuming cause.  

It holds for contemporary America as well. The majority of American Christians tend toward the bulging center of things. Most of us avoid fanaticism in any form. We’re not likely to be seen holding signs downtown or on street corners. We’re not likely to get nose-to-nose with total strangers and yell at them. Good for us. Well, sort of good for us. History is filled with examples of missed windows of opportunity wherein people empowered horrible things by simply remaining silent and minding their own business. Those German citizens residing near—but not too near—Ohrdruf, Dachau, and Auschwitz come to mind. Like the popular trope for vigilance, “If you see something, say something,” suggests, we wish others would have seen something. We wish they would have said something.  

While it is cowardice to stick one’s head in the sand and simply avoid conflict, the opposite seems equally-flawed. The activists, the radicals, the in-your-face super-scolds who feel it is their high calling to shame others for whatever injustice-du-jour has captured their incontinent temper—these are today’s self-righteous ones—feverishly engaged to correct anyone with contrary opinions. At best, they see themselves as sincerely committed to moving the needle—if only slightly—toward their intended goal. At less-than-best, they see themselves as prophets—Elijahs and Jeremiahs—called to pronounce God’s judgment upon the sleeping, unwashed masses. At worst, they instigate violence: spewing hateful speech, then swinging fists, overturning cars, and throwing bricks through downtown windows. Wars start this way. Unfortunately, all of this passionate intensity tends to prove the perennial impotence of rage and the inherent persistence of personal vanity. 

Making things worse, activism has been cheapened by its move online.  The Twitter Trooper, the Facebook Fighter, the inveterate letter-to-the-editor writer, the bottom-of-every-article Constant Commenter—these are the new “activists,” safely hunkered down before their computers at home. Anonymous criticism is worthless. It is “masked activism,” neither noble nor good. At least the scolds in the street show their faces (with the exception of black-masked Antifas, whose passionate intensity seems most cowardly) and lend their names to their cause. But these new, online, pseudo-activists are like yappy little dogs barking away, hoping to hear their own yelps echoed back.  This is not noble; it is cowardice pretending at significance, pretending as activism. 

To be clear: I believe in Christian Activism. I don’t believe it resembles any of the above.  Christian Activism begins with turning away from the screen and spending one’s time out and about. Better to spend even one hour helping at a homeless shelter than a ten years in online crankery. A few humble suggestions:

How to Grow in Christ and Make Him Known: 

1.  Attend worship services: worship God as you do so. 

2.  Worship God daily with devotional time. 

3.  Dedicate your work and play to God as forms of worship.

4.  Spend an hour or two helping children learn about God. 

5.  Spend and hour or two helping youth with their studies at Homework Club.

6.  Spend an hour or two on a Bridges to Home move.

7.   Spend an hour or two researching local outreaches to the poor and the homeless. 

8.  Initiate kindness and make a new friend. Invest in that friend. 

9.  Add one, anonymous, good deed per week. That’s 52 per year.

10. Love an enemy. Befriend someone whose opinions you find odious.

This is just a start. From these ten, you can easily come up with twenty. We Christians should be known for our love, not our political opinions. Our politics do not matter, which is obvious to us every time we find someone we truly love holding opposite opinions. When that happens, we make an important choice: either we say, “I can’t tolerate a person who thinks such things!” or we say, “Oh well, it’s just politics, so politics can go to blazes.”  I’m pretty sure that’s where politics belong. 

When trouble looms on the national horizon, we, like Yeats, can wonder whether the center can hold. The things of this world are likely to fall apart by their own devices, but our center is Christ alone, who most surely will hold. He holds us, and we are fools if we trust anything or anyone else in his place. 

May the Lord shape our activism as love, reflecting his grace and presenting it forth to the world he suffered to save and redeem! †