Conversations with Leaders: Uche Anizor on Overcoming Apathy
Thinking spiritually about how to care
This week our conversation is with Uche Anizor on his new book Overcoming Apathy. Uche Anizor (Phd, Wheaton College) is an associate professor of theology at Talbot School of Theology, Biola University. He is the author of Overcoming Apathy: Gospel Hope for Those Who Struggle to Care. He is married to Melissa and they have three children.
How do you define apathy?
In the book, I define apathy as “a psychological and spiritual sickness in which we experience a prolonged dampening of motivation, effort, and emotion, as well as a resistance to the things that would bring flourishing in ourselves and others. It is a sin that expresses itself as restlessness, aimlessness, laziness, and joylessness toward the things of God.”
As you can see, my focus is on indifference towards the things of God, which I think is the most perplexing form of apathy for the Christian.
In your book you write, “The greater the truth (or concept or calling), the less we care about it.” Why do you believe this is?
I imagine there are a number of reasons for this, including the basic law that familiarity breeds contempt. And we Christians are (rightly) very, very familiar with magnificently important truths. There may also be a lack of “tasting and seeing that the Lord is good.” What I mean is, many of us have not known by experience the reality of the things we profess as Christians. So, they remain as big, important ideas—but ideas can only inflame the heart so much.
What does it look like to have godly zeal?
While we need to acknowledge that how we express zeal may vary by age or temperament, the common thread is that there is an intensity and intentionality to the way we approach our Christian lives. When Paul says, “Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit” (Rom 12:11), he seems to suggest that zeal is related to a kind of fervency, an overflowing desire to carry out what God calls us to (also see Rom 12:8). Practically, godly zeal can take a number of forms, such as:
going to bed on time, so that we don’t just lapse into our morning
committing to being with God’s people every Sunday
being inclined to say yes when asked to provide meals for church members, be on the clean-up crew after a large event, or give someone a ride to the airport
working hard to find ways to feed on God’s word, particularly when one form of engaging Scripture begins to grow stale, (e.g., sermons, audio Bibles, Scripture memory songs, etc.)
dedicating ourselves to praying regularly for specific missionaries
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