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I’ve spent the last 8 months or so, since shortly before the launch of A New Kind of Politics (now all but defunct), immersed in news and discussion of politics, social action and issues, energy, environmentalism, and education. I’ve logged countless hours reading up on everything that comes through the news or through my own life. But it wasn’t until yesterday that I realized that it’s all crap.

Not one of those things really matters. I’ll give you an example.

We can argue about abortion all day. One thing remains true: people will get abortions. We can slow it down, we can put people in jail, but whether it’s done with a vacuum or a coat hanger, abortion will happen. Politics is just the same. In 1995 the Republican Congress put in procedural rules that gave the minority party more ways to influence legislation and Congressional process, so that the majority wouldn’t just run roughshod over them. In 2007 the new Democrat Congress removed them. In the 80’s President Reagan instituted the global gag rule, restricting aid to organizations that counsel abortion. Bill Clinton rescinded it. George W. Bush reinstituted it. Obama rescinded it again.

I realized this while reading for The History and Philosphy of Christian Education. One of our first reading assignments is a timeline of events in the history of American education. What I found was that every thirty years or so the theory/practice pendulum would swing from left to right and back. Whatever one generation swore by, and said would revolutionize education, the next generation decried and said it would be the end if we didn’t change it.

“I hated all the things I had toiled for under the sun, because I must leave them to the one who comes after me. And who knows whether he will be a wise man or a fool? Yet he will have control over all the work into which I have poured my effort and skill under the sun. This too is meaningless.”

What do you dedicate yourself to? Education? The elimination of poverty? Social justice, through politics or action? I would suggest that there is no meaning in any of it.  Someone will come after you and reverse everything you worked for. Vanity.

The only thing that endures is Christ.

I put together a weekend conference for high school students a few years ago called “The One Thing”. It was meant to be two days of Jesus, and him crucified. I’d been to plenty of youth rallies and events, and they all seemed to be filled with spiritual disciplines and morality and behavior and music. All of those things are good, of course, but my students, at least, we’ren’t hearing it. I couldn’t figure out why, until I realized one day that they hadn’t really heard about Jesus. And if you don’t know about Jesus, all of that other stuff is just stuff.

Well, it turns out that I’m not a good sales person, and I’m also not good at holding people to their word (some other leaders committed about 100 kids to the event 8 weeks before, but bailed the week of) and it ended up being a full scale event for the 18 0r 19 kids in my group that were in town that weekend. But we went after it.

We talked about Jesus and only Jesus for the whole weekend and I was amazed at their response. They began to tell me in the following days and weeks that they had started reading their Bibles on their own and spending more time praying and just loving Jesus more. The more amazing part was that the chaperones and adult guests said the same things! And it wasn’t me, or our speaker, it was Jesus.

Jesus is all that lasts. If you’re doing social justice, but you’ve decided not to “proselytize”, what you’re doing is vanity. Proselytizing is what we do; it’s what Jesus told us to do. And it’s what will last long after the meal you served has gone or the money you gave has been spent. If you’re teaching and you aren’t using a distinctly Christian worldview, what you’re doing is vanity. What we know now may not be true in 20 or 30 years, but Jesus will be. Evil and waste and falsehood and poverty will dog humanity until the end. Every good we do will be met with an evil…or two. But Jesus will never be overcome.

So, as I move forward in my seminary studies and toward a career in education, I’m tempted to say, “Keep the main thing the main thing.” But the truth is, there’s only one thing.