There’s a joke in which a man asks his friend if he is aware that others think of him as both ignorant and apathetic. His friend replies, “I didn’t know and I couldn’t care less.” Ignorance is not good but apathy is even worse. In time an ignorant man may learn, but the indifference of an apathetic man makes him unreachable. (It’s easier to teach a dog than reach a koala.)
Apathy is defined as a lack of interest in things that other people find moving or exciting. It leaves a person unfeeling about the needs of others, and uncaring about their own condition. Jesus said of one church that was neither hot nor cold that he would rather it were one thing or the other. He said he would “spit it out” [as one does a lukewarm drink] if it didn’t change – harsh but necessary words for a complacent church (Revelation 3:15-17).
But complacency results from over-enjoyment of possessions that have brought comfort. A complacent person has feelings, even if they are of self-satisfaction. But an apathetic person has little or no feeling for anyone or anything. Apathy is indifference: to passion, emotion or excitement. An apathetic church is a dead church.
Lot was a righteous man who ended up in a city so “filthy” that he tormented himself every day for living there (2 Peter 2:8). Yet even though Lot had compromised himself, no one could accuse him of apathy. An apathetic person is not tormented by whatever it is that other people do. Abraham’s prayers moved God to send two angels to Sodom, and they rescued Lot and his daughters just in time.
But how is it possible for an apathetic Christian to become a caring, feeling person once again? Would not apathy itself prevent such a change? As we would expect, the answers to these questions can be found in the Bible: firstly, in the way God stirred up rulers for the future good of His people; and secondly, in the way God’s people stirred up themselves.
Whenever a time came for God to keep His promise to His people, He stirred up the spirit of the ruling king of the day. “Now in the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, that the word of the LORD spoken by the mouth of Jeremiah might be accomplished, the LORD stirred up the spirit of Cyrus, that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom, and put it in writing…” (Ezra 1:1)
“And the LORD stirred up the spirit of Zerubbabel…governor of Judah, and the spirit of Joshua…and the spirit of all the remnant of the people…” (Haggai 1:14)
The Hebrew word for stirred up means, “awakened”: God awakened Cyrus personally with a vision of what He wanted. Years later, He awakened the Jews from their spiritual sleep through the stirring words of Haggai the prophet.
In both cases, the time had come for God to bring to pass what He had promised. It was the kind of sovereign stirring that shows God’s initiative in a matter. This being so, we might conclude that there’s nothing we can do but wait for the time when He lets us know what he is going to do, and then reveals what our part will be in bringing His plan to pass. But Isaiah says this isn’t always so — that preparation can be our responsibility.
“There is no one who calls on your name, that stirs up himself to take hold of you…” (Isaiah 64:7)
In ancient Greek the word translated “stirred” in English conveys the thought of a sharp paroxysm of pain. Figuratively it refers to the pain we experience when our spirit is provoked by seeing ungodly things. The Apostle Paul’s spirit was provoked by the idols he saw in Athens. Paul’s spirit was “stirred within him” when he saw that the city was “entirely given over to idolatry” (Acts 17:16). This flew in the face of all that Paul, as a Jew, knew to be true.
Prophecies had said the Messiah would “love righteousness and hate wickedness…” (Psalm 45:7) Jesus was as passionate about what he loved and what he hated as people were about him. No one could ever describe him as apathetic. An apathetic person is indifferent, unconcerned, uninterested, unresponsive, uncommitted, disengaged, impassive, unmoved, listless, unemotional, unfeeling, cold and passionless. Jesus was concerned, interested, responsive, committed, active, stirred, excited, emotional, passionate, and had a burning zeal for the Lord!
Which word describes you? Which describes your church? An honest answer probably would be a bit of both: passionate about some things and unconcerned about other things. Apathetic unbelievers are indifferent to extremes.
If you are not stirred, provoked or pained by lewd advertising billboards, suggestive television programs and filthy language, you need to rid yourself of moral apathy. You can do this by making a clear distinction between what’s right and what’s wrong; the holy and the unholy; what’s acceptable to God and what’s not acceptable.
“Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter.” (Isaiah 5:20) Doing so is perverse but apathy is worse! A person who is apathetic just doesn’t care.
If you wish to rid yourself of apathy you need to make a choice. If you don’t you may end up like the idolatrous Athenians, who mocked Paul when he mentioned the Resurrection and the certainty of future judgement by a man that God had appointed and had proven it by raising him back to life in an immortal body.
The citizens of Athens were really more pathetic than apathetic in that, as insurance perhaps, they had erected a monument with the inscription: “To the Unknown God.” They were not so ignorant that they ignored the slim possibility that a god unknown to them just might exist. If they had been merely apathetic, they would not have bothered to erect an altar and have said, “Who Cares?”
God cares, and those who believe care — do you? Wake up, shake off that careless apathy! Where you and those you love will be forever depends on it!