c. 2007 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) I met recently with a 73-year-old man whose health was poor but whose eyes and spirit were alive.

Despite horizons and mobility limited by cancer, he reflected insightfully on his thoughts and activities. He seemed eager about upcoming duties. He radiated zest for living.

I also spent time with a much healthier 30-something whose eyes were dead, affect flat, and interest in life around her minimal. She radiated defeat.

I don’t know either of them well, and I’m sure their stories, like all human stories, are complex. But I sensed that one key difference between them had to do with making a difference.

One seemed to believe that his life made a difference in the world. He saw purpose to his days and impact from his efforts. The other, by contrast, seemed to be plodding along, dutifully buying what commerce wants her to buy, paying her taxes and obeying the laws, but not seeing her existence as essential to anyone but herself.

Making a difference isn’t a matter of fame or wealth. A physically disabled woman I visited falls short on those two measures, but she travels widely, thinks and speaks energetically, and believes that her contributions are valued.

Nor is making a difference a matter of intellect, skills or worldly success. How one makes a difference might be shaped by one’s talents, but the fact of making a difference originates elsewhere, primarily in an attitude toward other people.

The key, it seems, is exactly what Jesus said it would be: living for self or living for others. The life that is lived to itself seems empty; the life lived for others seems full.

The life lived for self _ self-referential, self-protective, concerned with comfort and appetite _ is widely encouraged by modern commerce and government. Such a life makes for abundant shopping, time devoted to passive entertainment, and compliant citizenship. Recent political movements grounded in rage, entitlement and religious elitism declare self as king, self as under assault, and aggression as the answer.

The life lived for others, however, brings an appreciative engagement with the world and provides a context where one’s impact can be felt. It opens the door to collaboration and compromise, two essentials of any healthy community.

The other-oriented life often is discouraged as disruptive and noncompliant, a danger to an economy driven by greed and self-improvement, and to a political apparatus that wants to perpetuate itself through marketing and deceit, not through performance.

Faith is the heart of the other-oriented life. In order not to be obsessed with looking out for oneself, one must have faith that another _ namely, God _ is actively caring. Self-denial puts one out of step with the world but close to God.

My frustration with modern religion goes deeper than disagreement with the theological and intellectual narrowness of fundamentalism, or the smugness and intolerance of progressivism. Both can be avenues to the same result: a life where self is the center, God is champion of self-improvement, divergent beliefs are a threat to self, and safety lies in clinging self-protectively to one’s kind.

Our way forward, it seems to me, is to help each other to make a difference. What specifically are we doing to make a difference in this world? Whom have we helped? Have we trusted in God enough to leave our cocoons and step off our self-defined pedestals?

In the Lenten spirit of self-examination, we need to ask how our own lives are being transformed. Making a difference in the world, you see, makes oneself different.

(Tom Ehrich is a writer, consultant and leader of workshops. His book, “Just Wondering, Jesus: 100 Questions People Want to Ask,” was published by Morehouse Publishing. An Episcopal priest, he lives in Durham, N.C. His Web site is http://www.onajourney.org.)

KRE/LF END EHRICH

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