It’s been a long 11 months.
Dad passed away last December unexpectedly and many of the years’ traditions have been understandably through the spin-cycle. It reminds me of a Gretchen Rubin’s quote, “The days are long but the years are short.” One of my father’s many great attributes was when he believed in something he stood his ground.
The biggest gift of turning 60 is having a more clear picture of seeing situations and people for what they are.The older I get the more I appreciate the ability to look at others and the attachments they cling to in their lives and push them out of my life if I fully see they are destructive. I love people, I really do but I can be the world’s most friendly, unfriendly person.
Add to this, I abhor being manipulated. In my more baser humanity, I have a standing PhD in the age old mythical art of exploitation, deceit, and hoodwinkery.(sp). This means I can smell it miles away when someone is trying it on me.(Never play a player) This last election cycle is an example. I don’t think I fell prey once to the impending doom each side projected and predicted. I’ve been around long enough to know JFK was going to be taking orders from the Vatican! Every presidential cycle is fighting for the ‘soul of the nation.’
Really?
Yea, and ‘We the sheeple’ fall for it every 4 years. When I say fall for it I mean we take it so seriously that we literally ‘storm the castle’, divide and conquer and overall look to the world like a bunch of spoiled idiots. My dad told me years ago “Follow the money.” Politics is business.
Unfortunately the church delivers the same ‘style’ message. We’ve tried so hard to convince, cajole and yes manipulate people into Heaven. We’ve turned church services into a sales pitch for Jesus. I call it ‘Red Alert’ Sunday. You can hear the claxon’s sound as we take this eternal message of God’s love and turn it into a warning.
Ask most people who have fled the pews of our churches in the last few decades what they receive from attending services. It’s typically a set of rules and warnings. Encouragement, yes sometimes but listen carefully and it’s encouragement based on performance formulaic thinking and teaching. Follow the rules and you are part of the ‘in crowd’. Don’t follow the rules, well you, indirectly or directly are the topic of most Sunday sermons.
Why are we like this?
It’s human nature baby,… and by the way, fear sales.
We Love Drama.
We love crooked lines.
Yet, we complain about the drama and try to straighten out every crooked path that we’ve creatively come up with. It seems we are our own authors of destruction and construction. We break it to fix it. This falls in line with my age-old feelings that being right is okay but finding and being good is much better. Good is almost never a straight line which makes it much harder than being right.
Andy Andrews says in his book ‘The Noticer’, “Whatever you focus upon, increases.”
Look at our political ads, look at our church ads. Notice the similarities? We focus on ‘marketing the message’ and scare tactics. Why do we fall into this so easily? We are a broken people in need of a savior. If I can say it kindly, we would rather have a formula though…almost every time.
Part of my disillusion with politics and my partial distrust of the church is we are still putting our hope in mankind and formulas. Over the years we’ve increased the hyperbole because what ‘used to work’ doesn’t. A great orator, no matter where he or she uses his skills, becomes a person of focus and ‘guru-type thinking.’ If I said it once I said it 100 times during the last election cycle, ‘some trust in horses, some in chariots but I will trust in the Lord. Not because I am better than the average bear, it’s because I have to remind myself of the truth. Though I can smell the trap a mile away, I am still susceptible. The second we look to mankind to be our savior is the second we find ourselves lost. Sooner or later mankind will fail.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s hard being human. It’s hard to hold our emotions in control when someone is screaming at us that ‘bad things are going to happen’. I understand, but I fall back on one thing where I will stand my ground. There is one, who walks on the water, heals the blind, makes the lame walk and there is one who defeats death itself. I will do my best to trust in Him.
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