|the music of ignorance|

'The opposite of love is not hate but apathy.'
This quote has probably been heard a million times but today for some specific reason when I read it again spoke of some new meaning. Society's views on love have been distilled to a temporary romantic feeling that involves short-term relationships both physical and emotional and leave it to them finding other places where this temporary feeling remains. Love that is sung about in popular music pertains to these temporary feelings of ecstasy replacing sex with love and forgetting the definitions of love. When singers like Justin Timberlake sing about love, I highly doubt that he is singing about love that surpasses all things even when the 'feeling' that stems from love at times is not there. I cannot begin to understand the superficiality that singers choose to represent when they have the power to influence people. Perhaps its about escapism and choosing to ignore the music of reality and really looking at what love really entails. Hence the apathy, which is the music we listen to, placing headphones over our ears while the music of reality screams on, we live with the soundtrack of ignorance, covering our ears.

You might say, "I have a family to think about." or "I need to develop my career" or even as Christians "I need to find out my calling and purpose." Then I think, well, its one thing to do that but another to live ignorantly of issues that occur. I am wondering about all this and whether acts of altruism and being physically involved is the way to rid the guilt of having heard the soundtracks that we've made for ourselves and now realizing how painful it is to listen to the tune of reality. How can I change the dissonance of what goes on? What can I do to really make a difference? Or will it even make a difference? Social injustice (which is what I'm referring to) is evident in all social classes. To ignore, however, fellow man is an injustice to all. I think it was Martin Luther who said "Injustice in one place is injustice everywhere." Society needs to redefine what love actually means and what God really meant when He said that He loved the world. (Jn. 3:16) As Christians, we are called to love people but when we become apathetic, that becomes the greatest letdown. I think maybe even Christians don't think enough about the world and its issues and become caught up in theological drivel. Maybe we have become in danger of becoming a religion for middle class people. Or maybe we need to start praying to ask how we can become a group of believers that inspire hope into those who are losing it.
I hope that we don't become stagnant and ignore issues at hand because we think it doesn't concern us. I hope that we don't begin to even think we have it all figured out. C.S. Lewis writes " For there are two things inside me, competing with the human self which I must try to become. They are the Animal self, and the Diabolical self. The Diabolical self is the worse of the two. That is why a cold, self-righteous prig who goes regularly to church may be far nearer to hell than a prostitute.'

Whatever position we are in, I think it is our duty to begin to love the world and change it not all at once, but changing it one pebble at a time. If not in this lifetime, then at least we have died trying to live instead of just living to die.