What if There Isn’t Room in My Heart?

I clicked on the headline somewhat unthinkingly (as I too often do). “The forgotten war in Syria.” It’s a place and a people that has a unique place in my heart given our church’s efforts to sponsor refugees during the Syrian refugee crisis, given the number of words that I wrote and spoke around that time advocating for a compassionate response, given the Syrian men, women, and children that I have come to know in our city over the last eight years or so. I had done a recent presentation on our church’s response to the Syrian crisis at a conference a few weeks ago, so I suppose that contributed to my reasons for clicking the link. But mostly I clicked because the war in Syria had receded into the shadows of my heart and mind and I probably felt like it shouldn’t have.

The reasons for my forgetfulness pretty much exactly map on to the lament of Lina Chawaf, the writer of the piece. There’s Israel and Gaza and Ukraine and Russia. There’s endless conflict on the continent of Africa. There’s the latest batch of outrage-worthy injustices being served up domestically. As she says, “It’s natural for us to turn our attention and open our hearts to the crisis that is most immediate, most pressing, most urgent.” But we mustn’t give in to this temptation, she argues. When the world’s eyes are elsewhere, it’s easier for bad people (in Syria and elsewhere) to do even worse things. We must remain ever vigilant, ever attentive, our compassion and righteous indignation ever ready to be marshalled in the direction of all that has need of them in this fragile, broken, unjust, and violent world.

Near the end of her article, Chawaf said something that made me pause:

But this should not be a popularity contest. There is room in our hearts and minds for more than one outcry for help.

I read those two sentences again. And again. And then again. They sat awkwardly with me. I mean yes, in principle I agree in principle that it is not a popularity contest. But in a media context where crumbling outlets are always scrambling to secure clicks in the context of ever diminishing attention span hollowed out by the Internet, it kind of is. It’s sad but it’s true. It should not be this way, but it is. The news is at least kind of a popularity contest. Why do most news sites have a sidebar with “Popular now” content? Popularity may not determine what content is produced, but it certainly influences it in a significant way. If people stop clicking on news about Syria, news about Syria will no longer be produced. The same is true of Ukraine and Gaza and every other conflict that holds our horrified attention for a few weeks or months… and then doesn’t.

But the second sentence of that little quote gave me even more pause than the first. There is room in our hearts and minds for more than one outcry for help. But what if there isn’t? What if we don’t actually have room to be stretched in all the requisite directions at the same time? What if we don’t have the practical, emotional, spiritual bandwidth to be caring enough or in the right ways about all the terrible things happening in the world at any given moment? Who can possibly always be demonstrating the appropriate levels of compassion and activistic zeal and compassion and horror at all the terrible things going on in the world? What if we weren’t meant to carry that much?

This is no whiny appeal to compassion fatigue or misguided plea for more self-care. What it is, I hope, is a recognition of basic human limitations. I don’t think we were designed to be aware of as much as the Internet puts before us on a daily basis. We simply can’t take that much on board. There is always too much going on that we can do too little about. Our information ecosystem places impossible demands upon us. We will inevitably triage the flow of terrible news in some way, or else just give up.

And each one of us has important things closer to home that require those same emotional, spiritual, and practical resources. Keeping food on the table in difficult economic circumstances. Children that need to be loved well amid many things in our culture that mitigate against them growing up in healthy ways (not least the aforementioned digital context). Friends and family that may be struggling. Local concerns in communities where addiction and poverty are wreaking endless havoc. Needs in our churches, many of which are struggling to maintain their vision in the context of steady decline. Trying to preserve faith, hope, and love in a culture undergoing a crisis of meaning and purpose, where loneliness and despair seem to be almost literally everywhere.

So, no, Ms. Chawaf, there isn’t always room in our hearts and minds. I’m sorry, but there just isn’t. Sometimes, our hearts and minds are full. Sometimes, God may indeed be calling us away from the heartache across the world and toward the heartache across the dining room table or church sanctuary or in the office beside us. Sometimes God might be saying, “How about you don’t click around the outrage machine this morning and instead try to love one person in your personal, local orbit better today.

Yesterday at the jail the guys were late showing up for one of the services. I asked they why and they just shrugged. “Who knows? We just go when the guards say we can go.” Things always feel a bit different when the guys show up late. They’re a bit annoyed or resigned or snippy or some combination thereof. “What can we pray for?” I asked optimistically at the end. I was, truth be told, hoping for a rather perfunctory list that I could dispatch to the Almighty with minimal fuss. I had another group coming and everything was off schedule.

A grizzled older guy that I hadn’t seen before interrupted the usual mixture of chortling prayer requests for immediate release combined with more serious pleas of various kinds. “My wife has cancer. It’s real bad. So, you know, maybe we could pray for her.” Well, that settled things down quick.

We prayed. Obviously. When the “amen” was pronounced, when some of the guys had touched their hands on their hearts (which many use as their “amen”), when some had crossed themselves, I looked over at the guy who had shared. There were tears in his eyes. My heart and my mind ached for this poor man. The guys started milling around waiting for the guards. I went over to him, put my arm around him, and simply said, “I am so sorry. Tell me about your wife.”

Those five minutes will not change the world. They will not magically make this guy’s problems disappear. They may not make any difference for his wife (although we did boldly pray for a miracle from the Great Physician, so we’ll see). But they felt more significant to me than signing the latest open letter about Gaza or Ukraine or Syria or Sudan or doing any of the things that we tend to do to demonstrate that our caring is calibrated appropriately for whoever is evaluating the state of our caring at any given moment. And perhaps more than in the past, I was ok with this. My heart has limited space, after all.

Image source.