The 21st Century Christian, the Information Age, and “Compassion Fatigue”

The 21st Century Christian, the Information Age, and “Compassion Fatigue”
Copyright 2013 by Shea Oakley
All rights reserved

It is impossible for the believer to be content with this world as it is, but it is also impossible to change everything our spirit tells us is wrong with it. This can create a conundrum for the sensitive soul who longs for the redemption of all things, knows this must await the return of Christ, but at the same time also knows that we are called to be lights in the darkness in the interval. This dilemma is only compounded by living in an age in which mass communication on a global scale has made us more aware of what is wrong with the human race than any other generation in history.

The vast majority of Christians in 500 A.D. or 1000 A.D. or 1500 A.D. most likely had no idea what the needs were of people outside of a twenty mile radius from their place of birth. The ability to know what was wrong with the world (and to act in any way other than prayer to address how that wrong impacted people) was radically limited by the lack of media technology we take for granted today. This most likely both simplified and focused the lives of our predecessors in the faith. Their immediate community was their only world and, thus, their primary concern.

This kind of existence is nearly impossible for a conscientious believer today, at least in the developed world. Through an endless supply of print media, television programming, websites and other forms of modern communication we citizens of the 21st Century daily come face to face with a myriad of problems that plague both the Church and the world at large. It is very easy to feel overwhelmed by the immensity of needs on this fallen planet.

This reality contributes in a profound, but perhaps little appreciated, way to the afflictions in the community of faith that we today call “Compassion Fatigue” and “Ministry Burn-Out.” There are saints who deeply and sincerely want to make a difference for the Kingdom of God, but they have become so inundated by what they see and hear and read everyday that they either feel paralyzed by the immensity of it all or they have taken on too many causes at one time. The result is a sense of frustration and failure that can be discouraging to an extreme.

Added to this problem is the wrongheaded assumption in the West that we are all capable of doing far more than the benighted people of the past. Too many in the church have unconsciously adopted the world’s idea of unaided human potential being somehow limitless. Some have justified the taking on of too many challenges by using the Biblical declaration that “with God all things are possible” or “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” They take this to mean that God can give us the strength to do the superhuman things it would take to address most, or even many, of the problems we see everywhere thanks to living in the Information Age. The rub here is this: God will indeed give us the strength to accomplish what He truly has called us to accomplish. What He will not do is give us the strength to accomplish something he never had in mind.

In this truth is the solution to our conundrum as Christians living in the 21st Century West. We must seek God’s will for our ministerial lives while purposefully not listening to the cacophony of needs that are served up by our access to mass information. God expects us to learn to listen to His often “still, small voice”, not to what other people, or we ourselves, may tell us we must do to save the world. We are only responsible to do what He has called us to do with our finite human lives. Yes, our Lord can empower us beyond what we are capable of accomplishing in the flesh alone, but He does not expect us to achieve what He has never asked of us.

Sometimes we truly need to ignore all the voices telling us to “do something” and listen to the Voice which says “my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” If we decide to only take on that yoke we will find we accomplish far more than we could ever do, in and of ourselves, at the beck and call of even the Christian voices in mass-media that tell us we must somehow do the impossible.