An SEP attitude

One of the challenges that we all face within private and public lives is what Douglas Adams described as the SEP field. Those of you that have not read Douglas Adams may not know the acronym SEP or Someone Else's Problem and the field of unknowing that it casts on everyone. It is a particular problem within the church and the parish environment let alone in everyday life. The writer to the Thessalonians puts this in perspective for us as bearers of the faith (2 Thess. 3.6-12).There are a number of forms that this imaginary field takes, often it is a blindness in people but at other times it comes out in pettiness and lust to create division as I do not get my way.

In our lives as a community together, should things not go the way we want we tend towards inaction in pettiness. We will draw attention to the smallest detail and draw attention away or create division within our communal life over the smallest disruption. Once we have brought up the smallest detail it de-rails the possibility of following an action to completion and thus nothing gets done. We fall into pettiness and un-Christian behaviour allowing our mouths to denigrate others. Why? Simply because what we considered to be the best way was not adhered to and so we caused disruption within the community.

Even in an emergency we think it is an SEP

The alternative is even more prevalent in organisations. The understanding that decisions are to be made but take no responsibility over those decisions. It is someone else's responsibility and nothing to do with me. In a way, this is procrastination in its finest form. It means nothing ever gets undertaken as it is always out of our purview. In church life and within the community of faith it becomes the task of the leader, the bishop, the arch deacon, the priest, etc. In other words it is never the people of faith's responsibility it is always someone else. A person in authority, a person we have decided is on council, etc. In casting the responsibility upon someone else we try to avoid the consequences as there is always someone else to blame or fire or denigrate. This is not the way of Christ in either case.

God calls us to move towards a place where the lambs will lie down with the wolves, a place where responsibility is on those who strive for peace and are long lived in the presence of God (Is 65.20-25). This is not some fantasy world or some reality for in the future. We hold this reality within our own attitudes and how we respond to the world around us. In everything we do is the possibility of the hope for the future if we allow God to do the talking in our lives. We are too quick to jump on our own bandwagon and allow ourselves to be carried away into a world where everything is not my issue. This is a game that is played for high stakes at the national and international level. The larger the issue the more likely it becomes that we will hand it over to someone else. We only need to look at the rhetoric from politicians around the catastrophic fires in NSW. It is not our problem, somebody else will take care of it and we can get on with our juvenile attacks against each other. By understanding that it is God's desire for us to take the responsibility of looking after each other and the whole of creation we begin to form the world in the vision of Isaiah. The moment we allow God to speak through us (Lk 21.15) we begin the journey of taking responsibility into our hands and we begin to understand that it is our challenge and not some else's. We are the ones that begin to see what has been obscured and realise that it is in our hands to resolve.