Are we really going off the rails like a crazy train?
Crazy, but that’s how it goes
Millions of people living as foes
Maybe it’s not too late
To learn how to love
And forget how to hate
It’s kind of bizarre to me that of all people Ozzy makes the best point about our current state of affairs. We have become so divided in this land that we have lost our ability to disagree without automatically verbally destroying those we disagree with on a whole host of culture war issues. What’s worse is that no matter who gets elected, or how the courts rule, the temper and rhetoric gets amped up with each new year. IT IS CRAZY!
So what is the solution? Mandatory courses on civility in our public, private, and internet discourse? Ask the “haters” to take a verbal, written, and technological year of silence?
No. As much as it would be really good for all of us to simmer down, take a cleansing breath or two, the reality that mandatory anything will not change hearts. I look at it from personal experience when I was in training for the pulpit and I was told by advisors that I had to take a mandatory retreat to “relax, retool, and refocus.” I don’t know if you have every been on something like a “mandatory” anything for your work, but if you have chances are the objective did not automatically happen. You participate, but you also have to make the decision “I will relax, retool, refocus, or have fun.”
Mandating changes will not sufficiently change the heart; the seat of our actions, our speech, and our lives.
Only when we submit ourselves to serving others, not for our benefit, or for a better public image, or to meet the status quo, but out of the love in our hearts we have for them that the Lord placed there can we begin to get off this “Crazy Train.”
Rev. Shawn J. Smith 