Apathy

One of the great killers of a marriage is apathy. Apathy is stealthy, a slow, quiet, methodical killer. A marriage that begins with great affection is systematically destroyed through distractions, other things that command our time and attention. Some of these are good and necessary, such as raising children or keeping a job. But we begin to permit these things to push out the primary relationship. One day, maybe after all the children are gone, we wake up and realize that we don’t know the other person and, frighteningly, we don’t even care to know the other person. A lack of cultivating disciplines in the garden of our marriage has allowed the choking weeds of apathy to kill our marriage.

The same is true in our relationship with Christ. There is a time when things are exciting. We are learning new things. Our minds are being renewed. But as we grow older and are given new responsibilities, we allow them to become distractions to our primary relationship. They are all good things, like rearing children and working the job. We are blessed with these ever-growing opportunities, but slowly, they become the primary focus. Your relationship with Christ in and through his church becomes just another activity on a crowded calendar. Those activities aren’t as important, and any excuse will do to avoid them. Besides, it’s not as if they are strictly “required.” A son’s baseball game, a daughter’s gymnastics demonstration, or a child’s musical performance aren’t strictly required either, but everything will be planned around them because they are important to you. And they should be. We plan and pour ourselves into those activities that are important to us. This reveals where our love is.

When Mary anointed Jesus’ feet with the extremely expensive nard in John 12, it was a demonstration of extravagant loyalty. It wasn’t strictly required. She, most likely, paid her tithe as was required by God’s Law. That was fundamental loyalty. Because she lived close to Jerusalem, she probably even attended Passover, though, technically, she wasn’t required to do so. Only the men were required to attend. So, she probably already went above her strict requirements. The nard that was worth a year’s wages was gaudy love, so much so that there were some who were offended by what they considered waste. However, like the bride in Song of Songs 1, who is overcome with desire and affection, Mary wants to give the best she has, not because it is strictly required or because she is afraid that if she doesn’t, Jesus will send her to hell, but because she loves Jesus.

Granted, Jesus had recently raised her brother from the dead and, no doubt, she is feeling a deep sense of gratitude. She is overwhelmed with emotion. But she had already confessed her loyalty to Jesus even before he raised Lazarus from the dead. Her loyalty was already there.

We are not going to remain in a “red-hot” love all our lives. No one can live that way. But the danger is that we don’t cultivate our relationship with Christ and allow apathy to creep in so that one day we wake up and just don’t care. What’s more is that this apathy is contagious in our families. What is important to parents becomes important to children. That is, children know what you genuinely love and what you simply endure. They will endure with you while they are at home, but if you simply endure your Christian duties so that they are not a part of your deepest loyalties and your fundamental identity, they will not only notice, but they will not become what they love in the future. This is why apathy is such a problem in second- and third-generation Christians.

Cultivate extravagant loyalty to Christ. Fight slow-killing apathy

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