November 4, 2008: The Cougar And The Ant

After I finish writing this I'll go vote, even though I know beyond doubt it won't matter. My individual vote is meaningless - not just in the national election, but in all the local ones too. Since no significant election I've ever heard of was decided by one vote, it is certain that the same persons will win public office tonight whether I go to the polls or stay home and drink hot chocolate.

The reason I vote then is not because I think it matters. The reason is because I know that if lots of people are as lazy about voting as I am tempted to be, it will matter. Thousands of people, each making the unassailably correct assumption "My vote won't change anything," will in fact change everything. To avoid the political catastrophe that would result from the mass inaction of otherwise thoughtful people, I (and everyone else!) must flip a mental switch, if need be, and act in the mode of an ant-in-a-colony building a bridge rather than a lone cougar-on-a-prowl hunting for food.

There are thousands of cases where it is our obligation to be that ant-in-a-colony. Let me mention one especially dear to my heart: attending Sunday School and church.

I'll be honest: you may be in a position where going to Sunday School and church does nothing for you. You learn nothing because you've heard it before, and you may even know by heart the passage being studied. You're just one person anyway and you won't be missed – so why go? Go because when lots of people begin to think as self-centeredly as you, churches empty out and have to close their doors. The anthill collapses when all the ants start thinking like cougars.

I attend a Wednesday night Bible study at a church near my home. Two young associate pastors are leading a study of Hebrews. When a young woman found out I was pastor of another church, she said to me, "I just think that's so neat that a pastor would come to a Bible study to get fed himself!" Of course I received her gracious words without correcting her. The truth is, I'm not there to feed. I've read through Hebrews lots of times, have preached through it twice, have strong opinions about it. I'm just there as an ant lending my support. (I'm hoping, for example, that my being there will encourage an unchurched friend to come.)

A relative of mine attends a church pastored by a buffoon. I've tried to get her to leave that church a number of times, but her answer is always the same: she stays for the sake of other dear souls who go there. Not for her sake, and certainly not for the buffoon's - but for others and for the good of the whole. I can never argue with that. May her saintly (or antly?) attitude infect many others!

When you show up promptly this Sunday at 10 AM for the adult class at Faith Bible Church, I'll be aware, all too painfully aware, that it is probably not for your own sake that you do that. I'll live with that, and the pain of knowing that the severely dwindled attendance of recent months must mean I'm boring the snot out of people, as long as there are some ants who understand that their continued presence is crucial to the functioning of the whole. In both of the last two weeks we had Sunday School, two first-time guests showed up at 10 and talked to me alone for quite a while until a few others arrived. (And thank God for those later arrivals! It would have been a long hour without them.) It's like when I took lunch the other day at a newly opened Chinese restaurant where I was the only person in the place apart from the waiter and a cook. The food was great, but it would have felt more comfortable, more right, if others were there too.

Be one of those others. Sure, you have your individual needs - we all do - but while seeking to fulfill them, do not neglect to take up your assigned spot in the ant colony. You have to go to church. And Sunday School.