Jesus is the hero of the story and we are the friends he made along the way. We’re the burdens he carries through the doors of death and into the heavens. It’s in following him and being empowered by his Spirit that we are able…to act ‘heroically’ because we know we’re not the hero.

We often hear people declare that they ‘didn’t want to be a burden’ to their loved ones, especially their immediate family. Right now, in the zeitgeist, people might be talking about why they might choose to commit suicide when they’re diagnosed with some sort of life-altering or life-ending illness. We hear it much wider than that though, often as an explanation for why someone didn’t ask for help before a problem got so bad someone else wanted to intervene.

In fact, those two things are connected. Thinking that ‘being a burden’ is a bad thing is upstream of thinking it’s a reason to kill yourself. Both are deeply wrong and confused understandings of humanity.

Sometimes we respond to the person who didn’t ask for help by saying ‘don’t worry, you’re not a burden.’ I’m sure I’ve said this. The impulse is understandable; what we mean is that we are really happy to help them and are not (right now) feeling burdened by it. Unwittingly we reinforce the idea that they might have been right to not ask for help if it would burden me. We also lay the road later for withdrawing when things actually become a burden for us.

I think that the church should push back against this. You are a burden. So am I. We are supposed to bear one another up.

Of course there’s a place for the imposing of boundaries, we don’t have to give everyone everything that they request. Except, I think we retreat there about as quickly as I shoved this caveat into my flow in this blog post. It’s a middle-classed attitude, of course I must protect ‘my time’ and ‘my resources’ for ‘my family.’ Well, sure. There are situations where that would be right and wise. I am suggesting we typically go there too quickly. We are supposed to be burdened with each other as we’re told to ‘bear one another’s burdens’ (Galatians 6).

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