Stop Doing Nothing

Somebody asked me who was this man “Obadiah” that the Book of Obadiah carries as it’s namesake. I didn’t even know there was a book in the Bible called Obadiah. So I encourage you people who read this blog, open your Bibles and start reading, there’s a lot to discover by the grace of God. Secondly, because I don’t think I ever stopped to check in with Obadiah, I write this of an incredible warning we must take to heart about the apathetic nature of middle-classdom, living in America. What do I mean practically– remember when you were younger and watched the bully beat up a kid and did nothing about it because you didn’t want to get involved? Yeah, that’s where it starts. Because you probably, very recently in fact, probably witnessed injustice and did absolutely nothing about it! You probably had your reasons for it– you were sick, you were tired, you were running late, you had no power to do, etc, etc. So enters Obadiah, a prophet called not to Israel but to Edom.

On the day that you stood aloof, on the day that strangers carried off his wealth and foreigners entered his gates and cast lots for Jerusalem, you were like one of them. – Obadiah 1:11

We learn here that if we do nothing, we might have as well been the person committing the atrocity. That’s right, talking about something to raise awareness is nothing. Minding your own business is guilt. The notion of minding your own business and “not judging” is a laughable farce created to help people sleep at night. It’s a devilish tool employed to to be satisfied with the world to blindly sleep through a lifetime without asking why or what could be done. To this notion Obadiah writes in verse 3, “The pride of your heart has deceived you, you who live in the clefts of the rock, in your lofty dwelling, who say in your heart, ‘Who will bring me down to the ground?'” We are no different than anybody else. In fact, one of my mentors used to say this to me all the time when I’d get filled up with an arrogance of indifference, “we’re just one paycheck away from being on the other side.” Now, this goes further than just doing nothing about an injustice. You can say that by doing nothing to help somebody struggling through life is as unjust as doing nothing about an injustice. How could you watch somebody struggle and not help? I am not talking about watching a baby struggling to walk here, I am getting at watching over and over a person, a friend, a family member struggle to get on his or her feet and through no fault of his/her own. Yet we refuse to get dirty ourselves. We believe for some reason we are too good and cannot be bothered by somebody else’s struggles, I mean we have our own struggles to deal with! At the end of the day, we will be called to answer upon our actions and our in-actions because an inaction is the act of not acting. Just as we celebrate the life and work of Martin Luther King Jr today, I want to encourage all of us, from the greatest to the least of us, the importance of doing something. Don’t sit by idly watching because it’s not your business or because you’re too busy or to weak. God could have easily have done nothing, but He did something and that saved us. You too can be an instrument in the work of salvation that Jesus offers the world. Stop Doing Nothing.

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