Purity Circles

I can understand the motivations for asking SLS participants to draw up the purity map. The understanding of who our "neighbor" is, by Jesus' definition, is crucial to the practical manifestation of our actions to others of all types of walks - race, gender, economic status, and religious differences.

If you consider a set of concentric circles with the most pure being the furthest inside, I would have to say that I consider the "Mother Teresa" types to be in that most pure circle. These people have chosen a life of self-denial, discipline, and service to others. They are marked by their lack of material possessions and their immense amount of joy in life. This joy tends to be found in the community with whom they dwell as well as the people in which they serve - who also, by the way, tend to be part of their community. Their commitment to loving God and loving their neighbor is evident by their day-to-day activities as they are seen in deep inner reflection as well as a significant out-pouring of their beliefs in service.

The next circle outward is pretty much everyone else. We are the ones that the inner circle is serving. We may, at times - whether or not we are Christians or some other religion, be marked by certain aspects of the inner circle. For example, ome may be pious and disciplined, but have no works to show as a natural outpouring of their inner, disciplined life. There may be others that have some disciplined inner life and some service, but no joy in any of life.

The outer circle is made up of all different types of lifestyles. Some may be filthy rich while others are dirt poor. There are Democrats, Republicans, straight, gay, white, black, Asian, those with diseases, those with handicaps, the city dwellers, the country people, and the suburbanites as well as many, many other classifications that supposedly separate us all in the outer circle. These classifications stretch across our country, our continent, and around the world.

For many, especially for those in the western world, the difference between those on the inner circle and outer circle is simply a matter of choice. For these people, a group that I am a part of, life is too busy to seriously consider trying to be a part of the inner circle. Many in this group may look at the inner circle as an ideal, but completely unreachable because of many commitments including their family and their job, but also their social status among friends and co-workers.

It should also be noted that there are many in this outer circle who cannot help themselves in being in this outer circle. Life has happened to them instead of them leading their own lives. These people may actually be in the inner circle, probably mostly depending on whether or not they have decided to allow bitterness to be prevalent in them because of their life's circumstances.

This exercise and trying to cleanly identify the "pure" and the "not-so-pure" is a difficult one for me. I think - I would hope - that any discrimination that I would participate in would be based someone's willingness to allow me to enter the inner circle and none of the other classifications that I list above that separate one group from another.

There have been many people who have tried to exert pressure on me to not only remain where I am in terms of social status and in climbing the corporate ladder, but also to not consider trying to move into any form or even a knock-off manifestation of the inner circle. I have always been able to shrug off this pressure mostly because these were people whose opinions I did not consider very worthwhile to listen to in terms of how I would live my life. While it is easy for me to shrug off these people's thoughts, it has been important for me to have support from my family - both my wife and daughter as well as my parents and in-laws. My life has inched incrementally towards trying to become like those in the inner circle over the past several years. At times, I think it has been easier for my family than others to go with me on new decisions that I have made based on new information that I have been given. However, there have also been times when this structure has been resistant to these decisions, mostly because they haven't understood the line of thinking that produced these decisions. These times of resistance have been good in that it has made me think through and be sure to that I am ready to make the decisions that I have wanted to make. On the other hand, my wife and I have both worried that to make these decisions is to attack everything that our families have known and to disenfranchise them from a certain portion of our lives - and, in the final analysis, the entire portion of our lives - instead of being inclusive of them.

Beyond this, my own propensity for being important, for being the one who is "in charge" many times stands in my way of moving towards the inner circle. At times, I worry that this café that I am looking to begin is growing out of this desire for the spectacular. Some of our plans for opening the café call for working in the rural areas and reaching out to the poor. But why do I have to go through the pretense of opening the restaurant to be able to befriend these people? Further, I haven't spent much time doing this up until now, so what makes me think that my motivations will change?

So we have the inner circle and the outer circles of purity. The ones who have discipled themselves after Christ and those who have not. My challenge is to work towards the inner circle but to do so within the outer circle. Its not as if I have one foot in one world and one foot in another, but instead act as a man on a journey from the inner circle to the outer and back again. Over and over this cycle continues.