The Blindeside

Some are calling the best movie of the year, one which I have not yet seen, The Blindeside. It's supposed to be one of those happy-feel-good movies, and better yet, it's based on a true story. My mom said, "It's a movie about how people are supposed to behave."

I haven't seen it, but I know the basic gist of it - a woman takes in a boy who has no friends, no family, and no future. She raises him as her own, and he has a glorious career. A movie about how people are supposed to behave.

After the earthquake in Haiti, I saw several news programs about American parents worried about their adopted Haitian orphans. Apparently the process takes a while, and they are unsure if their adopted children survived. Watching these programs, it occurred to me that if there aren't a lot of orphans in Haiti now, there soon will be.

Why can't we all adopt a Haitian orphan? Or an orphan from any underpriveleged part of the world for that matter, or an American? I have discussed the matter with a few people, and they have some good excuses.

1. They are too old to be raising a child.
2. They don't have enough money to take in another child.
3. (This is mine) Their lives affairs are not in order to take in a child (they would be a single parent, for example).

However, in any one of these three situations, these people would still be able to offer a child a better life than the alternative. Do you think a child plucked from starvation cares if his parents are older than all his friends' parents? Do you think not having college paid for or not having designer shoes is anything compared to the pain of starvation or neglect? And if I really could lift a child out of those situations, isn't a caring mom who is doing her best and has to use child care occasionally better than a crowded, dirty orphanage?

It's what we should do...it's how we should behave. And yet we don't.

The truth is, saving children is one of many noble causes that we can throw ourselves into. Why not work to feed the villages they come from? Provide clean water and shelter? Help out at homeless shelters and pregnancy crisis centers in our own country? Send money.

It's still not enough. Recently I was challenged to think about what the world would be like if every Christian lived the ideals of our faith again. What if each one of us took up the banner of a cause - any cause - and lived it with passion? But the problem is, most of us don't have that kind of passion. At most we have the volunteer a few hours a week and donate a percentage of our paycheck kind of passion.

And I am ashamed to think I don't have it either. I recently started to get involved in a cause I was passionate about, but work situations got in the way. Now that I have free time, I keep finding excuses not to jump back in. I am busy. They are not open. I need to call and forget. I deserve to relax a bit after the job I just got out of.

So this is my new commitment - to call those people this week and jump back in, and I challenge each of you to become passionate about a cause. If all of us did something big, the world really would be a better place. And go rent The Blindeside. It's a movie about how we are supposed to behave.