With age comes apathy, so it seems. The Church is filled with the apathetic, the people who think doing the least amount of work is acceptable. The people who are content to sit in the pew and do nothing; to never improve or progress. These are people who utterly and completely lack zeal in every aspect of their faith. They do not share the faith, they do not talk about the faith. You can count on one hand the contributions they have made to the Church over the past 50 years.
“So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth.”
Revelation 3:16
“Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord.”
Romans 12:11
These individuals put the “pathetic” in apathetic.
You must not be this individual. You must be the person who is focused and improving himself. Does this mean you are always going to feel like doing what is right or feel like sharing the gospel? Absolutely not. Emotions are for women and weak males. Zeal is focused effort on a task, and it is divorced from emotion.
Gather all your skill and remember why you are doing the things you are doing. Apathy is born out of a lack of reason and purpose. Make sure you have a purpose. Ensure that you have a reason. Apathy is a slow-rot disease, you will not notice how much you have decayed until you are destroyed by the small, trivial matters of life. You will be like a rotten tree that is blown over by a gentle breeze.
Apathy will continue to exist until it is opposed by an outside force. Men will be content in their ways until some event large enough to disrupt normal life knocks them onto their heads.
Mantra
Apathy is for the dead.
Application
The best way to face apathy is to recenter your focus on your goal. Take your mind and aim it at the end state that you want to achieve and focus on it. If you truly want to achieve that goal, you can be reignited mentally to get there. If you do not truly want to achieve that goal, you will experience burnout, lack of motivation and apathy.
Find out what your skills are.
“Following your passion” is a moronic phrase because most people do not know what their “passion” is. I say follow your skills and natural inclinations. What are your natural talents? Identify the goals that really motivate you to take action. Not everyone is going to be motivated to do what is right by the idea of heaven, many will be motivated by the fear of hell. To rid yourself of apathy you have to identify what really motivates you to take action.
Identify your true goals.
You will become apathetic if you spend your time trying to achieve your parent’s goals. Do not become a doctor or lawyer just because your friends and family tell you that you would be good at it. You must make a decision for yourself based on what you truly know about your own skills and what you want to achieve and spend your time doing in life. Creating an intrinsic purpose is the way to defeat apathy.
Conduct yourselves like men.