March 9th, 2010
I personally am a fan of building codes.
For instance, I like it that universally when you
walk into a building, if you reach on the wall next to the door, there
should be a light switch. What
a great idea. I imagine
some people objected at first to that rule being put into place.
But then they walked into a dark building one night and reached
over against the wall and gratefully flicked a switch.
Perhaps that is what is missing from our society today.
Where is the light switch?
It leads me to the second point that I would have
shared with my friend in
Because after we confront mediocrity, it is
important that we acknowledge
goodness. Turn on the
light.
As human beings, we are going to basically react
and therefore enact the majority of information that pounds or peppers
our brain. If that
majority is bad news, evil, deception or intimidation, we will
naturally begin to believe that the world is a dark, gloomy and ugly
place. If there isn’t an
instinct placed within us—no, let me change that—a decision
rendered in our souls to find
goodness, we will allow ourselves to be overwhelmed by the
disappointment that surrounds us.
On Sundays I read church bulletins and they tell
me about the upcoming events, meetings and spiritual possibilities.
But the bulletins never report on how these meetings and
conclaves turn out. We
threaten goodness; we even sometimes advertise that it might be in
proximity. But we never
report back the testimony of its effects.
Yet in every church bulletin, you’ll have a listing of the
sick, a write-up on a tragedy that needs financial assistance or a
posting of prayer requests of threatening doom.
Where is the goodness?
Without the ability to acknowledge goodness, we become
individuals who are constantly walking around with a crinkled brow or
flinching at the sound of approaching difficulty.
Yes—I think every church bulletin should contain a goodness
report. “This week we saw goodness
occur in the following ways.”
I think one of the weaknesses in the mainline
denominational churches I go to is that the worship services close
with a benediction and prayer instead of a time for people to
acknowledge the goodness and richness they just experienced during the
worship encounter.
We are people who need to acknowledge goodness or we will focus our entire thrust and mind-set
on badness. It’s the
same thing in the political world.
We do not hear of the victories of our democracy, but mainly
are bombarded by the ongoing arguments of the Democrats and
Republicans. The
most susceptible infection in the human experience is a loss of belief
in goodness. We all
catch it quicker than the common cold, yet there is no Vitamin C for
it and there is no attempt to ward off the germs of desperation.
If we are going to improve the spiritual and
political outlook in our country, we must have a means to acknowledge
goodness. I don’t really
care how you do it, but for everybody who brings up a piece of
disillusionment or frustration, there must be an assertion of hope and
purpose. If not, we begin
to open up our human-emotion crayon box and color our world with only
brown, black and gray.
Yes, we must confront mediocrity.
Because mediocre is the ice that we slip on that causes us to
break our spirit. But we
also most certainly must acknowledge the goodness we see in our world.
I don’t care if you report the news just as long as there’s
a portion of your broadcast that telegraphs the goodness that occurred
in the midst of the destitution.
We can’t have church unless goodness is
extolled. If we’re only
going to talk about sin, weakness, illness, frailty and failure, we
need to close the doors of our institution before we further inflict
our Doomsday-Danny philosophy on anyone else.
A
good news report.
Why don’t we start out with the fact that light
switches are usually right inside the door so you don’t have to walk
into the dark?
Interesting. Maybe
that’s true for everything.
.