Food for thought
Hello,
I had a pretty interesting conversation with one of my friends last night. I cherish these conversations with her because they are the few times that I feel I am able to actually talk about things. I know that a lot of situations and topics are complex and personal and I won’t pretend to understand the full extent of them. But I find it so sad that we are unwilling to hear each other out, with even the simple things. We are so insistent on having our way, on being right, we can not give each other the courtesy of listening. I’m definitely not perfect, but I’m working on intentionally giving people the chance to breathe. If I really think I believe the right thing, then attacking the other person isn’t going to help them understand. In the same way, if I’m having the conversation just to hear an opposing view, cutting the person off will not let give them the chance to express their opposing beliefs fully. I know that these self expressions can be offensive at times and I can only imagine how hard it would be to remain calm in times like that. But like Michelle Obama said, “when they go low, we go higher.” If nobody ever decides to be that person in the conversation who listens and processes despite what is being said, then I doubt we can ever get to a society where we coexist despite our differences or where we can make laws and decisions that are representative of as many people as possible. If not you, then who?
Another thing we spoke about was government. I was talking about how there are so many decisions about right and wrong to be made and how it’s so hard, maybe impossible, to decide who gets to make that decision. We’ve entrusted governments with this responsibility for a long time, but the truth is we don’t trust them to get the work done. This is understandable I guess, because things like corruption and greed have made us all very cynical. But if we can’t trust them, then who should be making the decisions? I vote God. A lot of the problems associated with government are human traits; greed, lack of trust; corruption. God doesn’t have any of that. My friend then went on to ask me how exactly having God as the ruler would work… and that was a pretty good question. The whole point of Christianity is to have a personal relationship with God…. If we all had that, we could cut down world problems in half, probably more. Another huge thing about God is love… if we all actually loved each other; more than just the feeling and stretching into the choice; maybe there would be less selfishness and greed. Not because these things aren’t close to the human heart, but because we would be serving Someone and something greater than us. Despite how I make it sound, I don’t think this would be an easy thing to do or that everything would change overnight, but I think we are coming to the end of our options. We might as well start all over at the beginning with God.
Hope this was some good food for thought.
God bless.
Dera
I had a pretty interesting conversation with one of my friends last night. I cherish these conversations with her because they are the few times that I feel I am able to actually talk about things. I know that a lot of situations and topics are complex and personal and I won’t pretend to understand the full extent of them. But I find it so sad that we are unwilling to hear each other out, with even the simple things. We are so insistent on having our way, on being right, we can not give each other the courtesy of listening. I’m definitely not perfect, but I’m working on intentionally giving people the chance to breathe. If I really think I believe the right thing, then attacking the other person isn’t going to help them understand. In the same way, if I’m having the conversation just to hear an opposing view, cutting the person off will not let give them the chance to express their opposing beliefs fully. I know that these self expressions can be offensive at times and I can only imagine how hard it would be to remain calm in times like that. But like Michelle Obama said, “when they go low, we go higher.” If nobody ever decides to be that person in the conversation who listens and processes despite what is being said, then I doubt we can ever get to a society where we coexist despite our differences or where we can make laws and decisions that are representative of as many people as possible. If not you, then who?
Another thing we spoke about was government. I was talking about how there are so many decisions about right and wrong to be made and how it’s so hard, maybe impossible, to decide who gets to make that decision. We’ve entrusted governments with this responsibility for a long time, but the truth is we don’t trust them to get the work done. This is understandable I guess, because things like corruption and greed have made us all very cynical. But if we can’t trust them, then who should be making the decisions? I vote God. A lot of the problems associated with government are human traits; greed, lack of trust; corruption. God doesn’t have any of that. My friend then went on to ask me how exactly having God as the ruler would work… and that was a pretty good question. The whole point of Christianity is to have a personal relationship with God…. If we all had that, we could cut down world problems in half, probably more. Another huge thing about God is love… if we all actually loved each other; more than just the feeling and stretching into the choice; maybe there would be less selfishness and greed. Not because these things aren’t close to the human heart, but because we would be serving Someone and something greater than us. Despite how I make it sound, I don’t think this would be an easy thing to do or that everything would change overnight, but I think we are coming to the end of our options. We might as well start all over at the beginning with God.
Hope this was some good food for thought.
God bless.
Dera
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