Catalyst Week 1: Perspective and Passion

Are you familiar with the Moonwalking Bear? If not, hit up YouTube and search “moonwalking bear.” If you are, then just keep reading. The moonwalking bear is the title of an awareness test resulting from an MIT study which focused on the perceptual phenomenon known as inattentional blindness. Inattentional blindness is the technical name for our ability to miss seeing what is in plain sight, i.e. the moonwalking bear.

At this point, you may be wondering what in the world moonwalking bears and inattentional blindness have to do with a blog about catalytic leadership. To help answer that question, we will turn our attention to the story of Nehemiah – as recorded in his own journal.

The words of Nehemiah the son of Hacaliah. Now it happened in the month of Chislev, in the twentieth year, as I was in Susa the citadel, that Hanani, one of my brothers, came with certain men from Judah. And I asked them concerning the Jews who escaped, who had survived the exile, and concerning Jerusalem. And they said to me, “The remnant there in the province who had survived the exile is in great trouble and shame. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates are destroyed by fire.”As soon as I heard these words I sat down and wept and mourned for days, and I continued fasting and praying before the God of heaven.  (Nehemiah 1:1-4 ESV)

Nehemiah’s story begins in the year 445BC. He was a Jewish man living in the pagan capital of the Persian King, Artaxerxes. He was a relatively important man who worked in the palace as a cupbearer to the king. As cupbearer Nehemiah was like a high level executive; he was most likely responsible for managing and overseeing the collecting, storing, preparing, distributing, and serving of the king’s wine.

The reason that Nehemiah, a God-fearing Jewish man, was living in a pagan capital and serving a pagan king can be summed up in one word: EXILE. Following decades of sinful idolatry, God punished his people’s betrayal by giving them over to their enemies. This exile began with the Northern Kingdom of Israel being defeated by the Assyrians around 720BC. Then, a little more than a century later, the Southern Kingdom of Israel, a.k.a. Judah, began a twenty year process of defeat. In 605BC and again in 597BC, the Babylonians attacked Judah and took some of their best and brightest young minds. Eventually, this powerful nation grew tired of Judah’s continued rebellion and collusion and in 586BC, the King of Babylon marched against Jerusalem and burnt it to the ground.

Now we fast forward 141 years … Around the month of Chislev (November – December), an acquaintance of Nehemiah’s named Hanani returned from a trip to Jerusalem. Nehemiah innocently asked how things were in Jerusalem. That fateful question changed the course of Nehemiah’s life. Hanani explained that things in Jerusalem were bad and Nehemiah responds in dramatic fashion.

Nehemiah falls to the ground and begins weeping and mourning. The problem is that Nehemiah’s response is completely over the top when we consider that Nehemiah must have known about the sad situation of Jerusalem. This was old news, a century and a half old. In Mark Driscoll’s study of Nehemiah, he likens this scenario to a modern man or woman collapsing in grief upon hearing the news of President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination.

But why, why would Nehemiah respond like this? I think Nehemiah was a victim of inattentional blindness. Nehemiah had spent his whole life missing the moonwalking bear. He was obviously aware of the fact that Jerusalem had been defeated and God’s people had been exiled; after all, he was living in exile. Yet he seems to have somehow missed the gravity of this fact. It is similar to the way that we are aware of human trafficking, child slavery, the AIDS epidemic, the millions who die from preventable diseases caused by drinking dirty water, or the extent of global poverty, but we fail to realize that these are HUGE problems. Then, all of a sudden, Nehemiah’s comfortable blanket of “ignorance” was ripped away.

God replaced Nehemiah’s old information with a new perspective. Jerusalem was no longer a distant city populated by a distant people; this was now Nehemiah’s city and Nehemiah’s people. God gave Nehemiah the gift of perspective and allowed him to see Jerusalem with the eyes of Jesus and to love this city and her people with the heart of the Savior. Nehemiah’s old information had led to apathy, but his new perspective ignited a new passion. Nehemiah had just become one of the most catalytic leaders in the history of God’s people.

Catalytic leadership begins when God changes us; when he replaces our information with His perspective and our apathy with His passion. Catalytic leaders see what God puts in front of them; they have their Father’s perspective and their Savior’s passion.