If I close my eyes I could swear that I’m living in the Dark Ages. At every turn there is such negativity. Right against Left, Conservative against Liberals, and Christians against any other religion other then theirs … just one negative thought after another. I want to stand still and scream out loud – SHUT UP! Shut-up long enough to listen to yourselves, do you really believe what you are saying? Just listen to yourself long enough so that you can hear just how stupid and ridiculous all those words really are. And yet, the negative vibes continue with the basic concept that we’re right and everyone else is wrong. The crazy thinking goes like this: If they would simply do, vote, think like us then the world, country, life would be better and we would be emerging out from under the dark cloud that is blocking out the Sun.
The debate, concerning the New York Mosque two and half blocks away from Ground Zero, is being orchestrated and fueled by one angry woman who just happens to write a political blog. And, like the crazy “burn the Koran” pastor in Gainesville, FL she is receiving her 15-minutes of fame and quite a following of fellow “crazies” filled with hatred and anger.
On Monday morning I was sitting in the surgery waiting room. Just a few feet away, well within hearing distance, sat an older couple. If I was to believe his T-shirt they were members of a prominent conservative church here in town. The gentleman was sharing with his sister or sister-in-law that he “was trying to understand if Jesus came to save just the Jews or the just the Gentiles or everyone including the Muslims.” He had been searching the scriptures and could not find any justification for including the Muslims. I sat there completely dumbfounded at what I was overhearing.
I wondered what he thought 1 John 4:7-8 meant: My beloved friends, let us continue to love each other since love comes from God. Everyone who loves is born of God and experiences a relationship with God. The person who refuses to love doesn't know the first thing about God, because God is love - so you can't know him if you don't love. Or, John 3:16 meant: This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life. Both quotes are from The Message.
These thoughts were milling around in my head when I picked up the comics for Tuesday and read Holy Mole by Rick Hotton: “Some see differences … others see similarities”. The negativity of today is simply an emphasis on the differences while God and scripture summons us to see the similarities. Since both Jews and Arabs can trace their spiritual heritage back to Abraham wouldn’t that bring both the Jews and Arabs under the same Old Testament Covenant … a covenant that Jesus came to fulfill and not to destroy? In my mind that makes us all brothers and sisters of the same God – Christians, Jews and Arabs.
I also wondered how the conservative man would react to the statement made by E. Stanley Jones about Gandhi when he shared in the chapel service at seminary, “Gandhi was the most Christian non-Christian he had ever met.”
We are living in a divided world – them against us. It is not the world that God intended for us to possess. It is not the world for which Jesus suffered and died. It is not the world of peace and grace that is mentioned in scripture. Rather, it is a world of the Dark Ages where negativity, hatred, suspicion, anger, pettiness, and deceit reign supreme.
What is surprising is that I am beginning to hear more and more news commentators discuss this very issue. Why them instead of our preachers and church members – our fellow believers? I’m beginning to believe that it will be the secular news men and women, as well as a select few of the news makers who will help turn the tide towards a more positive and up lifting tomorrow. Actually, I’m not so concerned as to whom turns this ship around I’m just ready for it to happen … and soon. I’m just sick and tired of hearing all the negative speak.
It is hard and extremely challenging to live with a positive attitude when the world around you is filled with hate and anger, but what is the alternative ... simply to bow to the masses and succumb to the growing negativity ... I think not! The alternative is to spread the joy of the Lord whenever and wherever possible ... to lift your head, pull back your shoulders and say, "Enough is enough!" and declare a "No more negative thinking and speech" zone which will mean turning the TV off, watching different movies, reading different magazines and newspapers, thinking and acting differently. We can either become the change agent for the world around us or it will change us. It is our decision as to which way it will be.
Quote for today: As much as 77% of everything we think is negative and counterproductive and works against us. People who grow up in an average household hear "No" or are told what they can't do more than 148,000 times by the time they reach age 18. Result: Unintentional negative programming. Shad Helmstetter
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