December 03, 2012
Paying It Forward
One of our local
papers has a weekly column titled “You Said It”, where people write in with
little comments about things they see and hear going on in the community. It is
amazing how many of the comments are from people thanking others for
anonymously paying for their groceries or their bill for a meal. Often the
writer is so appreciative that they promise to pay it forward by passing the
same generosity on to someone they encounter. Certainly Jesus paid for my
salvation by going to the cross and although I try to reach others with the
Gospel message, I’ve never thought in terms of paying my salvation forward. I
now wonder what those actions would look like.
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1 comment:
Gail;
-----I don’t think the actions would look much differently. I think the thoughts leading to them would look quite different. I had a soft spot in my heart for this whole “paying it forward” thing ever since I saw the movie named the same. But at that time, I perceived an insufficiency about the concept, not one that makes the idea wrong, for goodness’ sake, it’s a great idea. But one that makes it not the end of the road leading to an even more real concept.
-----A couple years after I saw that movie, I read a book titled “The Liberal Mind: The Psychological Reasons for Political Madness.” Now, I did buy this book for its apparent immersion into politics, but quickly found it to be mostly about psychology. And very well done psychology at that! I picked up a concept Dr. Rossiter tied into a structure of social psychology which I immediately recognized as attitudes I admired since childhood, but never satisfactorily developed into my character and personality. The book is at home while I‘m writing this at the office, so I can’t look up the term he called it, and I’ve had trouble remembering it. But I think he called it intersubjective consciousness, at least that's the way I remember his idea.
-----What he meant is that we have sympathies for folks around us because we have been in predicaments ourselves. We emotionally relate. A sympathy is an interesting thing. It is some attention given to the feeling we imagine someone else having, maybe enough attention that we can somewhat feel like that too. It may or may not move us to actually do what we are able to help, even if that is only to pray. Yet, intersubjective consciousness goes beyond sympathy and exists not if we do not help.
-----It is not necessarily made of the same things that make sympathies. It is what the term implies, a consciousness that the reality of the other person’s situation is indeed as real as are my predicaments. It is a consciousness that this person is as conflicted, frustrated, disappointed, angered, or however he might actually be thinking and feeling as I think and feel about my situations. It is a recognition that, although this other person’s nerve endings do not connect to my brain for me to truly experience his difficulties, they do connect to his brain, and he indeed is feeling those uncomfortable experiences. That acknowledgement is good enough for me to know his situation is every bit as critical as is mine. The bad another feels is every bit as bad as that which I feel. In reality difficulty is being experienced by someone, and the fact it is not by my nerve endings does not mean it does not exist. Intersubjective consciousness, the simple knowledge of someone proximate to me being in need, hears the call for my doing what I can, if that might only be to pray. I can not walk out of the proximity into which God has placed me, nor can I deny someone hurts; I must admit; I must do. Intersubjective consciousness sees in addition to the world according to me a world according to him, as well as a world according to us that can not be whitewashed, washed away, or in any way possessed by either myself or him. This idea then ties tightly into the experience Jesus receives of all that is done, the experience to which He refers at Matthew 25:34-45, “...in as much as you have done it to the least of these, my brethren, you have done it to me...”
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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