The People Journal
Incremental change leads to no change at all?
Posted by: Jim Mondry
Friday, August 7th, 2009 at 5:26 pm
One of my favourite novels that I read in high school was To Kill a Mockingbird. I’m not sure what it was that I enjoyed, whether it was an ambiguous novel about right and wrong, or that it had a twisted not-so-happy, but good enough ending, or whether I just enjoyed the story.
I also love Malcolm Gladwell… (stay with me here, I am going somewhere)
On the New Yorker, Gladwell has written a really interesting review of To Kill a Mockingbird. He comes at it from an angle I haven’t heard before-actually comparing the social issues occurring in Alabama at the time it was written to the story itself. In his review though, there was something that really jumped out at me:
Dickens thought that large contradictions could be tamed through small moments of justice. He believed in the power of changing hearts, and that’s what you believe in, Orwell says, if you “do not wish to endanger the status quo.”
[If you want to understand the context of how it went from talking about Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, to talking about George Orwell and Charles Dickens, you'll just have to read the article.]
This idea, that small changes will only maintain the status quo is running roughshod through my mind. One of the things that I understand about Christianity is that we as people are slowly transformed through our relationships with God and with Jesus (and the Bible and other Christians and…). While some folks have the clear repentance moments where there is a drastic change in their lives, most seem to only live with the incremental changes. [As a point of reference, I have never experiences any of these life changing events, only gradual changes in my person]
Does this mean that we’re just maintaining the status quo in our lives? Are we selling ourselves short, to avoid the pain of drastic change?
As I’m thinking of stories from the bible about people interacting with Jesus, there are clear monumental changes that occur for many of those who meet Jesus. The disciples: they leave their jobs and follow around this odd Rabbi. The bleeding woman: is healed. Zaccheus: pays back all those he has cheated, and lives to become an honest tax collector (honestly, I really wonder how long that lasted). The list goes on.
One example where drastic change didn’t occur is the rich man in the gospel of Mark. He comes up with an honest, but probably selfish question: what must I do to inherit eternal life? Jesus gives him the obvious answer of follow the commandments. When the man responds saying he’s kept them all his life, Jesus then replies with what he needs: “Go, sell everything that you have and give to the poor. Then you will have treasure in Heaven. Then come, follow me.” (Mark 10:21).
But what does this man do? He sulks off. It’s too hard. He can’t handle the drastic change, or is unwilling. There was no suggestion to gradually sell your things, and give more and more to the poor, it was a clear call for drastic change. The tension has been created between this man’s things, and the poor. The resolution of the story isn’t the happy ending of him selling everything and following Jesus, but the opposite, he lives on as usual. He probably didn’t like the idea of eternal life anymore, without all his stuff.
Dicken’s believed in changing hearts through gradual change (or at least that’s what I’m getting from Gladwell, who got that from Orwell). It seems Jesus is more interested in drastic change. For those of us who have never experienced that “drastic change” in our lives, are we missing something? Is there something holding us back?
Is drastic change the only way to bring about what we need in churches, in communities, and in our lives? Is this the only way to break out of our habits, and grow?
How does someone determine what the drastic change that’s required must be?
3 Responses to “Incremental change leads to no change at all?”
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August 21st, 2009 at 5:05 am
Ohhh man… I really don’t know but that kind of stuff has been on my mind lately.
These days everything is about “if each of us take a small step we can change the world and things will be better!!!” and that’s a little farfetched. Often it feels like the day-by-day, step-by-step thing is fruitless. BUT in reality how else can us humans do it?
Seems like there’s a small percentage of people who make drastic 180 degree changes that actually seem to stick, and all the slow ponderous ones of us are in awe of them (myself included). The rest of us slowly chip away at the iceberg, knowing from experience that if we try to swallow it whole all at once it just won’t go down.
I don’t know about that metaphor…
August 26th, 2009 at 2:48 pm
This is a tricky topic, because it is impossible to defend incremental change without feeling like you’re just trying to justify minimizing discomfort, BUT . . . I agree with Ben that incremental change is usually all we can handle, and I would hate to discourage people from making small changes, because it seems like they are too small.
Maybe the issue is more one of realizing that incremental change is a continual process. You can’t take one small step and say “alright, now I’m done” and rest on your laurels. If that were all anyone ever did, it’s true that nothing will ever really change (hence the criticism of “make poverty history” campaigns, because there is concern that people will feel like they’ve fulfilled their quota of caring by attending a concert, for example), but if you take one small step, and then look for the next step that follows, etc. etc, you’ll get somewhere.
August 26th, 2009 at 6:28 pm
I agree with Ben and Carolyn but would add one thing. There is a distinct difference between the little steps that are involved in ‘changing the world’ and the little steps that are part of ‘changing ourselves’. In the long run we can make changes big or small and they will affect the people around us and even our world, and these changes can be hit and miss in the lasting effect on ourselves and others, but I believe that as followers of Jesus the most important changes are the ones He works in our lives.
I believe that most of the positive changes in my character over the last 27+ years would not have been possible without the power of God’s Spirit in my life and the lives of those around me. His power to change us is real, it is a promise He most definitely keeps and one we should count on. I’m not saying these things because I’m ‘the Pastor’ and it’s my job to use Godspeak, I’m sharing them because it’s what’s happened in my life, it’s my story.