When you realise that an injustice stays for a frivolous excuse, you know it’s time to rock the boat. A few days ago, I pointed out, in a ‘group’ I have been working with, that volunteers were being discriminated against through a simple technical issue. A colleague in this ‘group’ told me that it had ‘always worked out like that; don’t reinvent the wheel’! I was shocked, to say the least, because an injustice was being allowed just for a simple technical adjustment which required little if any effort. Shocked and not! We live in a society where we often experience the “don’t rock the boat” attitude in our hearts, in our relationships, society, churches, etc.
At the core of being human, is the importance of relationships, interacting with one another and so confronting opinions, positions, reasoning out which is the best attitude or position to be taken in a particular circumstance. Stability is very important for relationships and societies to thrive; one cannot be always in a state of change, but stagnation will bring about revolutions as problems are capped securely. As L.Sweet put it:
“a clinical definition of death is a body that does not change. Change is life. Stagnation is death. If you don’t change, you die. It’s that simple. It’s that scary.”
L.Sweet
Certain dynamics which bring about this ‘death’ around us.
In the local scenario, we are being faced day after day with tragedies in the place of work, particularly the construction industry. In the past 3 years we can speak of around 50 people being injured every month, and a death every quarter! We might get an uproar after one of the deaths, particularly if it’s of a local, but this soon dies down. Apparently, it is convenient for some for things to quiet down, to continue with their own construction projects at the expense of lives and the ‘death’ of our land and nature. Not really worth rocking the boat seriously, ain’t it?
Hiding behind excuses not to rock the boat
Members of the local church often hide behind two excuses not to rock the boat on social issues. The first is that pointing out or criticising one policy, reality or another, often would mark the person or the Church as a whole, in league with a particular party. But this can be proved wrong if there is consistency and we stick to our beliefs and to the richness our Church has in its teachings. And even if not … is silence, not rocking the boat worth it, when people are dying and suffering and we just pass by without looking at the man dying on the floor?
Another excuse is that many a time, speaking out on certain issues might put our shoulder to shoulder with people who we don’t agree with on other issues (classically abortion). I find this also as a comfortable excuse, as it doesn’t mean that we are taking up their beliefs, lock, stock, and barrel but rather, we are seeing eye to eye on that particular issue. Anyway in the journey, I might learn something from a God working in the life of these people who are acting in his field, in their own way!
Meeting Jesus “the rebel”
I am afraid that at times we are afraid to meet Jesus “the rebel” … rebel for mercy, rebel for love. He bends and breaks the rules to help others, obviously in an intimate relationship with God and formed in Mary, Mother of the Church; defends people against ‘false’, ‘corrupt’ authorities, and puts mercy as the only criteria on judgement day. This is what love does, it compromises us! So central, so freeing, so challenging, for our times! Our rebellion will become a source of healing, a source of growth for many. Let’s not shy away, let’s do it together! Let’s support each other in speaking out for the values which might be a thorn in the side of many but which are actually a source of love.
Rocking the boat just for the fun of it is not acceptable, but doing it prudently, and in love can cause us and our society to grow into what God the ‘rebel’, the rebel of love, wants us to live for.
