This is my personal opinion piece as a result
from several weeks of thought, research, prayer, and devotion.
Recently, I spent some time reliving a conversation made with some good men. And savoring the feelings of a good start on opening personal views of potentially sensitive and fragile subjects! Understand? Fragile Eggshells. Firm when there are no cracks, but fragile to the crushing point when the cracks cause everyone to hold their breath!
You know the old saying, you don’t make an omelet without cracking a few eggs. And I love omelets!
Sometimes the egg shells are simply the results of approaching a subject that is fragile and difficult to address. Other times they are the results of hardening our past views that never change because it might rock our world. We are fearful of opening ourselves to other viewpoints, so we do not crack eggs, or the hardened fragments never fully crush under the weight of years of one-sided views.
Some look at eggshells as something fragile to protect, others want to crush ’em like a bug.
During our conversation, I thought to myself and said something along this line (at least in my mind) …
“When you isolate yourself from shared words then it is difficult to grow, or change.”
It is easy to reject, rather than attempt to understand. Lives today are lived in a constant state of change. It is difficult to accept one thing without being bombarded by a million other new things. Unless you deal with the changes head-on, then you will soon be overwhelmed by sheer volume.
"When you isolate yourself from shared words then it is difficult to grow, or change." ~me It is easy to reject, rather than understand the constant state of change. Deal with the changes head-on, or you will be overwhelmed … Share on XOne thought came to mind about changes, and it comes from someone in my past who had a philosophy of simply letting a subject “stew” for a while. You know. Let the coffee perc. Take your time and let it cook a while before diving in. But, again, the volume of changes might not give you time to address change by putting something on the back burner and letting it cook slowly.
You need to spend some time thinking and observing where others are, what they believe, how they act, the words and tone of messaging involved, the ramifications of legal, spiritual and family values… It’s a melting pot and you must take time with your absorption rate else you may accept a wrong premise.
I had to get a hair cut and my favorite barber was on vacation. I could not wait until she returned, so I dropped into another store in-route of some daily errand, a different part of town, but it was a known brand name store. Instead of getting antsy to get the deed over, I was willing to wait and watch the stylists perform – their own personal style, conversations with the client, tools they used, the order they approached the job, and the quality of the results. It allowed me time to ask myself a question: Which one do I trust the most?
Taking time with our choices may mean we are more apt to make a better selection! True? Perhaps…
Before I judge according to how good of a job you will do, perhaps another analogy requires me to walk in another set of moccasins and view life from a different point of view. Surely that will help me comprehend the world a little better! Different perspectives can be beneficial! Open conversations. Not loud and argumentive, nor being shouted down, but sane, rational dialogue. Facts, figures, and viewpoints. Give me time to digest and reapproach.
In the same way, I have taught for years and years that there are 40 sides to every story. Why 40? Well, to some 40 years equals a generation of time, so I like each year of a generation to each potential view of a story. Everything depends on your perspective, worldview, slants, culture, DNA, and abilities to interpret and explain. Knowing where you “come from” will help me comprehend your viewpoint.
When you constantly feed yourself the same arguments, then you are simply reinforcing your stance! Your viewpoint never has an opportunity to expand. Not that your expansion means you change! Rather, it gives you another angled view of some of the things we all deal with on a daily basis. Maybe it helps establish common ground for connecting to another person. Perhaps it opens up doors for a conversation that says we can agree to be different, but we can still be friends and friendly. Maybe. Just maybe you can learn how to be an influence because you now understand where another is coming from.
The one thing I will give you in this thinking process:
Not everyone can handle discussing change, or deal with the rapid changes we all experience, nor comprehend another point of view.
~My Personal Thought
What does it take? Lot’s of discussion. Thinking it through. Asking questions. Research. Analyze. Take a stance. Know your values and beliefs. Have a conversation. Re-think. Redo the entire process!
We live in a time where the world is changing rapidly, and dramatically. To the which, a song title comes to mind from Bachman-Turner Overdrive (1974), “You Aint Seen Nothing Yet“. We got married in 1974, and this world has changed and adopted a new view faster than any of us thought possible! If we think the world is scary now, well, you ain’t seen nothing yet!
There has probably never been such a time of rapid change as we have seen in these past 100 years! The exponential growth of technology alone has opened a whole new world more quickly than we can leave the old world, and that was just yesterday! Imagine what might happen tomorrow!
Each change walks down untold pathways of new ways of doing things. I mean, after all, my career in IT began with data being stored on Keypunch Cards! In 45 years, we find data more easily stored in that nefarious cloud! What’s next?
Old guards are let down, and swept changes that make one cry out, “Enough, already!” Generational differences are strained as one generation teaches the next outside of the purview of the parents. Schools, Scouting, Classroom, Sleepovers, Sports and playground etiquette sway the young mind regardless of what parental figures hope the experience will produce.
When will the end ever get here? When will the change stop?
The one thing I can tell you that each change keeps punching out the walls of where we found our comfort. We knew the boundaries. We knew the barriers. Blow them out of the water and there will be no stopping what people will find to challenge the ancient ways. This will not end in my lifetime. I project that the boundaries we think exist today will be swept away like a tidal wave in the next few years. We will not even recognize today as any form of normal. It will be ancient history. Quickly.
Here’s my thought today. What is my reality? Where do I stand on change? How do I handle the insane pace that the world is caught up in? None of this has any impact on my spirituality. I was raised by good parents, in a good Christian upbringing, and that gave me the foundation I needed to live on my own. However, with all the changes we see, I do except to put more things under the microscope of scripture and analyze the message of Jesus vis a vis the Gospels.
How do we respond in light of the Gospel?
The pitfall of any action
that helps you question any solution or direction
is that you may not like the answer.
After some teaching that was different than the Pharisees had ever heard, the disciples came to Jesus and shared that the religious leaders were upset. Essentially, Jesus said they were blind leaders of the blind, and all will fall into a ditch. (Matthew 15:12-14) They had been looking for the Messiah, and could not even recognize that he had arrived. They were not willing to face the change that was happening in their very midst!
His teaching was not simply understood or accepted by the religious leaders. Though, it seems he expected that these leaders should know and comprehend his teachings. Listen as he queries Nicodemus:
“Are you the teacher of Israel, and do not know these things?” (John 3:10, NKJV)
Compare these two approaches to the leaders. Blindness and Ignorance.
In Bible times, there was no solution for blindness. Ignorance could be approached by helping someone learn, but blindness could not be remedied by any medical doctor. Unless there was a supernatural act of healing, then each blind person remained blind for life. Put them in a role of leadership of other blind people, then they could do nothing but wander, aimlessly, thinking they were okay. And the irony? They never realized it.
How can they be content with this kind of life? I’m sure there are plenty of examples of this, even today! It made me pause and think. Analyze and write. Think it through. Write again.
First. We are all blind to something. In our state of being, we seek out others similarly blessed to hang around and without sight, we follow the same path. It is difficult, even impossible, to expand our horizons. We are fearful of anything new, just like a person who has blindly adopted something new is fearful of anything old. A person with slight visual acuity could be their King! Have you ever heard the proverb? “In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man would be king.” (Credited to Desiderius Erasmus’s Adagia (1500 AD)). Which tells me this kind of conversation has been happening for years. Generations!
As the world changes, we refuse to see and blame our condition by declaring our blindness. Today that is no excuse. The changes I’m thinking through affect everyone! Not just the impaired. Today, it’s the rule of law, accepting things that were once relegated to the dark side of life, and knowing there is no way to put a stopper back into the dam… It must be addressed!
Second. We seldom comprehend our own blindness. Regardless of your beliefs, you are blind to the flip side of a two-way street. Liberals do not comprehend conservatives. Vice Versa. Name calling and labels seem to be the solution. Language, emotions, shouting… this and worse replaces the normal conversation path. Still, all are blind if you cannot comprehend the condition of the others around you. Even “enlightened” you are blind to others not in your position. Once leaving a position of your past, you become blinded to the way you “once were”. You talk yourself out of your prior position and then pretend it was a wrong position! That’s just being blinded differently!
Third. We do not realize our own condition because we refuse to seek for sight. We seem to be content with who we are, and where we are. And when there is no change around, then this is just fine! But let the world change as it is doing today, then dramatic changes challenge us with every decision we want to make. Being blind paints us into a corner. It is not always our own choosing to limit our reach because other blind people want to restrict us worse than they once felt restricted themselves.
It’s the “push me and I’ll push you harder” syndrome. It reminds me of a movie script from over 30 years ago. A young Kevin Costner starred in the movie Untouchables. The goal? Stop Capone! The old beat cop (Sean Connery) tells Costner how to do this…
You wanna get Capone? Here’s how you get him.
He pulls a knife, you pull a gun.
He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the Morgue! That’s the Chicago way, and that’s how you get Capone!
It’s playground brutality at it’s worst. Did it work? Perhaps. Capone was stopped on Tax Evasion, but not because he was selling illegal booze. Is it working today? I suspect so. The pendulum of time sweeps left and right, and it’s not the traditional weight strung beneath a pivot point… It’s a scythe and it’s brutal. With each swing, it gets lower and lower… What happens when it reaches you in the center? A brutal ending, I suspect…
A Final Thought: Just because our sight may fade, it does not mean we will change our viewpoints. I still believe in life a certain way as taught from principles and dictates thousands of years in the making. The world may get more confused daily, but there is still a foundation I build my house on. Only, I’m able to see the flip side and understand more clearly because I choose this path.
How do I deal with the change? It was St Jude who described the role of the church. “…hating even the garment spotted by the flesh…” (Jude 1:23) but focusing on saving souls! Sin is simply that which separates one from God. Love the sinner, hate the sin. It’s simple.
Does this concept prevent me from change? No… If anything, I’m all about change. Technology sort of forces this on us every day! Everything has changed because of technology, and “…we ain’t seen nothing yet!”
I remember Kindergarten, maybe first grade. Seabrook, Texas. About 1960, or 1961. We were at a school carnival event. Night time. Wandering through without the parents. I’m sure I was by myself. Some kids were walking around with a new-fangled gadget. It was a player/recorder. Something portable and fantastic! It was a portable reel-to-reel!
Here… Talk into the microphone and I’ll record you. Now… Let’s play it back… Have you ever heard yourself speak?
It was totally riveting! Outside of my price range, but I remember that day. Vividly. It was not the end-all device… The 8-track was on the way, and then the cassette tape. CD’s give way to DVD’s and BlueRay, and then nothing to buy except the license to watch and listen to something stored in the cloud!
Change! Happens!
Today? I have boxes of cassette tapes just waiting to be converted to digital recordings so I can recover space in my garage! But no 8-tracks…they were quickly replaced as outdated!
This is one avenue of change that we can all accept. Technology has evolved and it has changed us.
What is impossible to accept are those things that are in opposition to the spiritual arena of my life. This foundation of mine is older than the hills. But humans do adapt, or change in huge swings. We see it time and again in biblical stories. God would allow Israel so much rope, and eventually, challenges would come and they would return back to the center. A generation or two go by, and they would slip away again. It’s a Pete and Repeat moment…
It’s also a generational thing and the scythe swings ever so closer to the ending of it all… Where will we be when that last breath on earth occurs? That’s the tragedy of the moment. Generations and hope for the future will be lost. There will be no way to twist time backward. The end will have occurred. Then, the big question will be. What’s next?
I reach the ending of my opinion piece and I wonder… Does anyone care? What are your thoughts? Will you connect back and let me know where you are in your journey?