What Is The Biggest Problem? (July 24, 2005)

The Indian tribe that I worked with in Colombia had all kinds of problems, like alcoholism, chemical dependency, child sex abuse, malnutrition, recruitment into left-wing guerrilla causes and fearful reprisals from right-wing death squads. So it was with some surprise that I heard my 20-year-old Arhuaco friend comment on the issue that he thought to be the most urgent one facing his people. It was jealousy!

I thought he was laughably wrong about that, but it was easy to see why he felt that jealousy was the biggest thing his people had to overcome. It was because he regarded himself as a victim of their envy. He had just graduated from high school and wanted to go to college. Other tribesmen thought that further education would make him insufferably proud, and so they opposed his dream. Jealousy, he concluded, was a cancer eating away at the Arhuaco soul, and it had to be defeated so his people could make progress.

Well, his people had other things to worry about too. But I noticed in my friend a tendency that I've seen often in other people and that no doubt exists in me as well: the conviction that whatever concerns me most should most concern you. My problem is the problem and why aren't more people doing something about it?

A couple years ago I attended a Christian conference where a well-known speaker told us that the biggest evil facing America was racism. Really? Racism? I would have picked abortion. I am sure that the speaker, a black man, endured racial profiling every time he hailed a cab or stepped into an elevator with a white woman. That's a
bad break, I know, but when it comes to a hierarchy of moral outrages in America, the simple fact is that we haven't killed tens of millions of blacks lately - we've killed tens of millions of babies. That's worse.

My favorite answer to the question "What is wrong with the world?" comes from G. K. Chesterton, who responded simply, "I am." "I" is the person whose bad behavior I must labor to find most troubling. The biggest problem in the world today is neither Muslim terrorism nor third world debt nor abortion nor racism nor jealousy, but my sin.

The Bible says, "Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others" (Philippians 2:4). Your issue is not the world's biggest issue. Other people have problems too, and they're as urgent or more urgent than yours. Worry about their problems. And when it comes to yourself, the biggest thing
you really have to worry about is your own sin.