Christian Living
One of the negative attitudes shown, that disturb us significantly is indifference. It becomes difficult to digest, especially when it comes from our fellow Christians.
As Elie Wiesel (American writer and Noble prize winner for peace) quotes “The opposite of love is not hate, its indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, its indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, its indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, its indifference.”
Indifference is such a harmful attitude that it is compared to hate or heresy or ugliness or any other negative entity.
It is a non reactive attitude which is negative; something like “don’t care” attitude.
I have been a victim of such attitude myself and have been left wondering for days, as to what I had done to deserve such a treatment. It pained me a lot, for I always did things, for the good of others without wrong motives or selfishness.
I longed for love and true relationships, (though I had no lack of it from my family) and tried to build good relationships with people.
In spite of forgiveness, hospitality and care shown(to the people who showed indifference to me),little was the difference made and I pondered in my heart, as to what I should do as a Christian? As I was thinking about it over a period of time, a thought occurred. Even our Lord Jesus would have encountered people who showed indifference to Him. How did He react to such people? I started searching the Bible.
When Jesus preached, there were a lot of people around Him. But only few responded to Him in Faith, for which He replied “let those who have ears hear” (Mt 11:15), referring to those who were not eager to listen to Him, and to those who did not believe Him.
He again said that He came for the sinners and not for the righteous (Mt 9:13). Does that mean that there are also people who are righteous? No. We all know that, all of us have sinned, and fall short of God’s standards (Rom 3:23) .But here again (in Mt 9:13) Jesus was referring to those who became poor enough to (or were ready to) acknowledge their sins and ask for His forgiveness. He very specifically said that, those who are not with Him are against Him (Lk11:23). A warning to those who showed indifference to Him. Because being indifferent to Him (or His words) is a matter of Life and Death for eternity.
Likewise to people who show indifference to us (either to God’s word or to the love or care shown), we need to ignore their attitude (not them) and leave the issue to God. When we face the hurts of indifference we need to remember that even our master faced it and He didn’t retaliate to them. As a child of God, we need to remember that, we don’t give back insult for insult; or indifference for indifference. But good - with lot of tolerance, forgiveness and love. It may be that sometimes we may need to respond our tolerance with silence and gentleness of the spirit. And also we may require to wait, until those souls become poor enough to respond to us.
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