Grace and Truth: A word from pastors

Do your gadgets have glitches to which you’ve grown accustomed or resigned yourself?

Mine do.

Take my computer at work: For a couple of months, I’ve had to get down on my hands and knees to turn it on. First I flip the switch “off” on the back of the tower. Then, after waiting a few seconds, I turn it back “on,” and finally, I press the big “on” button on the front to actually start the machine.

At that point I can stand up again, dust myself off and begin my computer-related tasks. Beginning my workday with several seconds on my knees seemed a ready-made prayer opportunity, so I decided not to ask for a fix.

Such inconveniences are sometimes called “first-world problems.” My unusual computer startup routine fits neatly among other nontragic problems, such as espresso drinks made with the wrong kind of milk, broken iThingies and flight delays.

A month ago I had another first-world problem: The phone company accidentally disconnected my Internet connection before they could install my new connection. This happened after hours on the phone with different customer service representatives half a world away, rarely getting the same answer twice.

Frustration increasing, I heard myself speaking rudely to the representative. When the really bad news came—FOUR WHOLE DAYS without home Internet—I wondered if I would start yelling.

I had a serious case of first-world entitlement-itis and, with a 9-year-old listening to my end of the calls, I worried it could be contagious.

I had recently watched the movie The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, about British retirees moving to India. I felt myself easily superior to the nasty characters who looked down—way down—on all things Indian. I would never complain about curry and traffic, as they did.

Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbor, “Let me take the speck out of your eye,” while the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye.—Matthew 7:3-5

And I didn’t complain … until the day someone in a faraway call center quoted me yet another price, asked me to wait on hold for the fourth time and took away my Internet for four days. Then I began to feel ugly.

I knew my anger was out of place, but it took several minutes for me to stop myself. In my imagination, I heard the voice of a friend telling me simply to stop. So I did.
I thanked the customer service representative on the phone for his help and said I’d be grateful for my restored home Internet connection whenever it happened. Then I got on my bike—still addled by my anger—and pedaled to church for an afternoon at the office.

Thanks be to God, my first-world problem number one came to the rescue.
“God forgive me,” I uttered as I got down on my knees to start my computer. I burst into tears there under my desk, very much in need of the grace of God.

Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love;
according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions.—Psalm 51:1

I saw with utter despair the sin of my rudeness toward the customer service representative and the underlying sin of cultural superiority that allowed my rudeness to flourish as it did. I was also grateful for my friend’s imagined voice—speaking the truth in love—that helped me change my path in that moment.

Create in me a clean heart, O God,
and put a new and right spirit within me.—Psalm 51:10

The work of curing first-world entitlement-itis is tied closely for me with the work here at home of undoing racism, sexism, heterosexism and other “isms.” It is difficult work, possible only through God’s healing grace and our commitment to God’s reign “on earth as it is in heaven.”

I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands.—Revelation 9:9

I thank God for the glitches that send me to my knees, physically and spiritually. And I thank God for the women and men whose voices remind me of the gap between the here-and-now and John’s vision of a new city in which “nothing accursed will be found”—not first-world problems or hunger or pain or loneliness or oppression.

Sara Dick is associate pastor at Shalom Mennonite Church in Newton, Kan.