Hey Harbor Cov!
Have you heard about Jimothy? He’s a short-spined raccoon living in Seattle’s Ballard area, and he is currently taking the internet by storm. Take a look…
Let the record show, I am a Jimothy fan for sure! After all, I will always root for the short, little, round guys… we gotta stick together. But I am fascinated as to why so many other people seem to care about this little guy too.
Maybe it’s just because he’s just a cute little fluff ball?
Maybe it’s because spotting him “in the wild” is like a real-life version of Pokémon Go?
Maybe it’s because the name “Jimothy” just fits?
Maybe it’s just his scrappy underdog energy that is heartwarming to watch as he seems to be thriving against the odds?
Yes, these are the kinds of thoughts that keep me up some nights (like tonight)… and they don’t stop there. These fun and light-hearted thoughts often evolve into deeper ones for me. For example… I can’t stop thinking about what causes us to care about the well-being of anything or anyone in general! Let’s face it, we don’t have to. We can go about our days as usual. Caring for someone or some raccoon is a choice we make.
Here’s what I got so far:
It could be survival instincts. We want to create a world where if I can scratch your back and you can scratch mine… we can survive better.
It could be empathy. You ever watch someone in a painful situation that you have experienced yourself? You can almost “re-feel” what they are going through, and a connection is made you can’t avoid.
It could just be an addiction to dopamine. Caring for someone, especially someone in need, creates a “reward” trigger in your brain.
It could also just be the currency we use to gain trust in our social spheres.
But as a person of faith, let me adapt a line from my good friend, Dr. Suess: “What if CARING… we thought… doesn’t come from a chore. What if CARING, perhaps, comes from someone with more?”
We looked at a pretty tricky chapter of 1 Corinthians on Sunday, and my main takeaway was that we have a freedom in following Jesus, but if we use that freedom at the expense of others… we are missing the point. Alternatively, when we exercise that freedom to unite around Jesus as the object of our worship… that unity creates a love within me for those around me. To quote 1 John 4:19: “We love because he first loved us.”
So, I think, left to our own biology and psychology, I would say, yeah, there is a hint of selfishness in how we care and who we care about. Yet, with the Spirit of God at work in our lives… there is a deeper capacity and more holy motivation in the care and love we have for someone (or even some short-spined raccoon).
So… if you happened to hang with me through tonight’s “connect the dots” journey in my brain… We went from Jimothy, to dopamine, to Dr. Suess, to Paul, to Jesus… and now back to ourselves.
So, why do you care about the people you care about? What motivates you to see others the way Jesus does? How can you help unite our church community around Jesus as the object of our worship?
