How to start a revolution
Never stop doing things that seem insignificant
And behold, a leper came to him and knelt before him, saying “Lord, if you will, you can make me clean.” And Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, saying, “I will; be clean.” And immediately his leprosy was cleansed. And Jesus said to him, “See that you say nothing to anyone, but go, show yourself to the priest and offer the gift that Moses commanded, for a proof to them.”
~Matthew 8:1–4
Authority in action
I recently wrote about the difference between teaching with authority, and teaching without it. Teaching with authority means teaching that’s not just theoretical, but tied to both action and reflection.
This week, we see Jesus’s authority in action.
After the Sermon on the Mount, we know crowds of people followed Jesus. After the remarkable teachings to so many, these crowds must have been eager for whatever surprise awaited them next: perhaps more teaching, but to even larger crowds. Throwing away old institutions, creating new ones from scratch. Whatever it was, surely it would be even more massive—something revolutionary, something that would change their world.
Do you think they expected Jesus to take his own words so seriously?
A single, solitary man approaches Jesus, and Jesus condescends to heals him.
“Oh, well, if that man tells 10 of his friends, then each of those friends tells 10 more friends…”
No. Jesus instructs the man not to tell anyone, but to simply return to his community and reintegrate himself into it, not overturn it:
“See that you say nothing to anyone, but go, show yourself to the priest and offer the gift that Moses commanded, for a proof to them.”
Jesus simply restores one man to the place in the world intended for him.
Alan Jacobs has written about how we live in a world of scale: each of us, thanks to the Internet, can reach millions, build a billion-dollar business, transform society. Yet, Jacobs says, we don’t really understand scale very well, which is why so many of our massive-scale institutions, especially social media, are broken.
In the broken world of social media, noise leads to power. Draw massive amounts of attention to yourself, and you can monetize it to no end. Does it matter whether what you’re doing is good? Of course not! It actually matters less than ever, because you’re effectively anonymous, and don’t have to answer for your actions to your neighbor. It’s a much easier world, one in which you don’t have to worry about embracing the burden of others, or even about the long-term consequences of your actions.
Sure, you might have to answer to the media. You might have to mumble an apology. You might spend a minute as the scapegoat in a world hungry for victims. But this, too, shall pass: you’ll be on the far side of the pretend-apology tour before you know it.
If that vision doesn’t entice you, what’s the alternative?
Jesus shows us, and it’s pretty simple: help the person who’s right there in front of you.
The entrepreneur and essayist Paul Graham counsels you to do things that don’t scale. His advice is sound: to figure out what many people need, you first have to start with figuring out what just a few people need. How often is his advice followed, in our impatient world? I’m not sure, but it’s a good starting point.
I’d take Graham a bit further, though: do things that don’t scale—and never stop. Let’s not pretend that the best way to fix the problems that face us is with more of the same poisonous medicine that got us here in the first place.
If this prescription seems insignificant, that’s just because our judgment has been warped to fit the warped world we live in. The actions that seem insignificant matter more than any other, because you bring the fullness of your self to the encounter with one other person. Writing a post on social media is fine but a post is just a fraction of what we can give to someone face-to-face.
Perhaps some people in the crowds following Jesus were appalled at the time and attention he gave to this one sick man. Throughout Jesus’s life, people were impatient and appalled at how seemingly poorly Jesus used his time, energy, and attention. “Overturn this empire! Establish a new one! That’s how you change things—not by giving this leper the dignity of your love!”
But in the end, the empire crumbled and Jesus transformed the world.