The Community Becomes What it Models

The way to learn how to become what we desire to become is to see others modeling it. 

If, however, all we observe and experience, especially from a young age, is haughtiness, crudeness and defensiveness, how will we ever learn grace?

How will we grow strong if we only surround ourselves with weakness?

If our community, family or social circle sets a tone of victimhood, they leave no room for and are unsupportive of—even hostile to (out of jealousy, mostly)—the already-healed, those desiring to heal and those who are just beginning the process of healing.

When our community strongly implies that “if you’re not sharing something negative, you’re not sharing,” then petty mediocrity closes the road to maturity—and moving forward— for all.

In failing to heartily acknowledge and intellectually appreciate progress and recovery—be it in people and politics, history and health; in denying goodness and being uncomfortable with encouragement; in refusing to stand in ovation at overcoming; in stubbornly turning away from the visible righteousness of God; then we, as a community, are, and will remain, a glass half empty. 

Copyright Barb Harwood

Charles Spurgeon on Gossip

 

"I heartily wish that by any process we could put down gossip, but I suppose that it will never be done so long as the human race continues what it is, for James tells us that 'every kind of beasts, and of birds, and of serpents, and of things in the sea, is tamed, and hath been tamed of mankind: but the tongue can no man tame; it is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison.' What can't be cured must be endured, and the best way of enduring it is not to listen to it...

The talk of the village (and family, I would add) is never worthy of notice, and you should never take any interest in it except to mourn over the malice and heartlessness of which it is too often the indicator."

Charles Spurgeon

Taking Control of Our Conversations

One way we can honestly "make the world a better place" is to stop constantly finding fault with it in our conversations.

If we really want to, and train ourselves in doing it, we can become naturals at applying the brakes mid-thought in order to catch ourself from spinelessly going along with the complaining tenor of a group conversation.

We can do this by replacing the negative comment we were going to pile on with to a positive statement, or, think better of saying anything at all and remain silent.

The key is the “really wanting to” part, and the noticing of how much of how we talk is mere habit, and bad habit at that.

I’m increasingly finding, as I’ve been sitting back and observing more objectively, that the tendency to join in with, enable, or proffer my own rather dramatic tone on a topic is incredibly easy—if not expected. 

I’ve noticed how negative comments spoken about the world or other people, and the intentional bringing up of dour news (often gleaned from i-Phones held in one’s hand at the social gathering) is more common than the alternative of verbalizing sentiments of gratefulness, respect, appreciation and goodness.

I find that lately, when I am in the company of an Eeyore-infused Holding-of-Court by a group or individual, I increasingly find it awkward and distasteful, and don’t like myself afterward. Especially because I see now how often I have personally perpetrated histrionic perspective and details in past conversations.

So, in the hope of training myself to “not go there,” I’ve taken up the practice of the art of changing the subject—a very delicate art, to be sure, when in the company of vociferous malcontents. 

The way I’ve been able to summon the confidence to do this, though, is through the epiphany that, just because someone brings up politics, or begins griping about a relative or boss, doesn’t mean I have to become complicit, or volunteer similar gripes of my own.

And if my gentle steering into more constructive, “the sky is not actually falling” dialogue is not well-received, or even resented, I’m finally at the place of logically being okay with that: because if their initiating of constant handwringing is okay for them (regardless of what others think), my not going there, and instead countering with a more positive direction, is also okay for me (regardless of what others think).

We can’t control or change other people, but we can control and change ourself. 

Our attitude, approach, and what comes out of our mouth is the only thing we can take charge of one hundred percent. And when we do, we are no longer allowing other people to control us with negative, fault-finding comments that set a tone and perception that is often unnecessary and almost always tainted with sour grapes, boredom or bias. 

We find that the way the world looks to them, doesn’t have to—and oftentimes does not—look that way to us. 

Copyright Barb Harwood

In Dialogue, Do We Thrive on Dissension or Respect?

 

Yesterday I explored Charles Spurgeon’s concept of maintaining a deaf ear and a blind eye to ornery dissensions, gossip, hearsay, polarized-political complaining, and general malcontentedness among people who have more invested in keeping animosity alive than actually solving anything. 

These temperamental types are, as I quoted Spurgeon previously, best to “have nothing to do with” or there will be “no end to the strife.”

But what about discussions involving two or more perspectives on an issue, carried on in the motivation of constructively explaining, expounding, educating, or relating experientially? 

When the motivation is to solve, or begin to solve, or to elicit cooperation so that possible avenues towards betterment can be considered and perhaps adopted, what is our attitude then?

Would we say that we are open to, essentially, open dialogue? 

Or do we find ourselves automatically becoming defensive, alert for offense, or just plain fatalistic that anything can ever change (especially if we are forced to work with, instead of against, so-and-so or such and such group which we thus far have not wanted to)?

This would beg the question: 

Have we ever stopped to think how much we operate out of preconceived conclusions, and then seek, or listen to, only the sources that support them? Is our priority to maintain our assumptions and opinions, respect for others be damned?

When exposed to alternative viewpoints, do we hear with ears shut, or do we listen with ears open in order to understand, even though we may not agree? 

And if we do discover that we now agree—essentially changing our mind—are we confident and wise enough to admit and publicly acknowledge it?

Do we comprehend that a sincere seeking of a fair and balanced worldview is the necessary first step towards peace among people who claim to be of good will? 

And is that, ultimately and sincerely, what we honestly want? 

And if not, why not?

Copyright Barb Harwood

A Blind Eye and a Deaf Ear

 

Continuing on with the theme of positive ways to interact in conversations, Charles Spurgeon offers great beneficial insight.

About attempts by others to draw us into family, church, school, office, or political differences, dramas, quarrels and disputes, Spurgeon advises:

“Be deaf and blind to these people…If any flagrant injustice has been done, be diligent to set it right, but if it be a mere feud, bid the quarrelsome party cease from it, and tell him once for all that you will have nothing to do with it…”

If we engage their fault-finding, chronically-critical and gossipy narrative, Spurgeon warns, there will be “no end to the strife.”

Spurgeon writes that instead, we can, as he did, take “the wisest course by applying my blind eye to all disputes which dated previously to my advent.”

What he refers to here is that when he was young, and began as a new pastor at a church, he refused to listen to the hearsay and gripes church members bombarded him with regarding his predecessor, and paid no heed to manipulations to steer him into various “camps” which would turn him against other church members.

He goes on to say,

“It is the extreme of unwisdom for a young man fresh from college, or from another charge, to suffer himself to be earwigged by a clique, and to be bribed by kindness and flattery to become a partisan, and so to ruin himself with one-half of his people.” 

Therefore, he earnestly recommends, not just for pastors, but for all of us, young and old alike:

“Have nothing of parties and cliques…Blessed are the peacemakers, and one sure way of peacemaking is to let the fire of contention alone. Neither fan it, nor stir it, nor add fuel to it, but let it go out of itself.”

What a stunning bit of wisdom: stunning in that it is rare to actually see it in practice!

Think about our own family, where there almost always is one pot-stirrer who is constantly volunteering gossip, planting misconstrued seeds of doubt and dislike regarding other family members, and who will stop at nothing to create drama in an attempt to get-back-at, assuage their inner insecurities, and be the center of attention. 

In addition to a person’s general negativity, they can also keenly manipulate: one minute they are our best friend and confident; the next they are dissing us behind our back due to some perceived slight or offense. Beware of their fluctuating complements and chumminess, as these are most likely a scheme to steer us into their corner and turn us against another family member or mutual acquaintance. 

In other words, never trust a malcontent or instigator of drama.

Ditto for the office co-worker, neighbor, acquaintance and friend who, fishing for an accomplice, hopes that we bite and dine with them on their unfavorable perceptions of another. 

Don’t go there, Spurgeon says. 

Leave that morsel, no matter how tempting, to dangle, thus depriving the slanderer and whiner of their supply, and see if that doesn’t perhaps end their gadding-about-the mouth. 

Regardless of whether the person ever does actually cease their shenanigans, what these types of people say and think will stop at our boundary, hitting a once and for all Dead End, because we will it to stop, and go no further with us. 

Copyright Barb Harwood

We Don't Have to Listen to Everything We Hear

 

Charles Spurgeon has a great quote about tuning out the noisy negatives:

"You cannot stop people's tongues, and therefore the best thing is to stop your own ears and never mind what is spoken...

We would say of the general gossip of the village, and of the unadvised words of angry friends--do not hear them, or if you must hear them, do not lay them to heart, for you also have talked idly and angrily in your day, and would even now be in an awkward position if you were called to account for every word that you have spoken, even about your dearest friend."

What is the Narrow Gate?

 

When I began writing in this spot on September 23, 2008, the verse Matthew 7:13-14, which I chose as the founding guide for what would appear here, held a meaning different than what it does today.

Initially, in my very young and as-yet unexplored and inexperienced thought-world of God, the verse stood out in its focus on separation-from so as to deprive as much fallenness from life as possible. 

Charles Spurgeon aptly describes the manner in which I applied the verse:

“When you only stand at the door of virtue, for nothing but to keep sin out.”

That is something I rather needed back then, with sobriety from chronic binge and dependent drinking having recently taken root. At that time, I required a wall of protection from anything associated with my past drinking: its establishment, prolonging, encouragement and romanticization. That included the music that had embellished, the family of origin that had curated, the towns that had normalized and the thinking that had justified.

All of it had to go in the sense that I could not relate to or include those elements in my life in the same way as before, or, sometimes, at all. 

The narrow path, then, was my line of demarcation upon which I stayed the course—like the bar that steadies our taking of a pano photograph on an i-Phone. The minute I wavered off that line, a black edge appeared and threatened to swallow the entire picture if I did not quickly correct and re-align.

Over time, to my dismayed hindsight—the verse about the narrow path became more about judgement of those not on it. 

In that negatively other-focused way, I sourced a warped sense of spiritual pride and personal superiority: a getting back at all those people and places I was convinced had been the reasons for my drinking and its subsequent sabotaging of the maturity, integrity and accomplishment I could otherwise have attained. This disdain extended to what the corporate church perceived and led one to believe was “wrong with the world” and those causing it.

But, as God would have it—in a turn I can hardly explain or put my finger on in the details, and only came to grasp in His progressive revelation of reality—He reigned-in the long leash he had loosely gripped which had allowed me to indulge—for a time—“the ways the world has been, and is, against me,” and then began convincing me that victimhood or martyrdom isn’t exactly the point of the Matthew verse, or of faith in general. 

God said, (and of course I am merely giving voice to His meditative feedback here. For the record, God has never literally spoken words to me):

“Look: you’ve lived the militant, keep-your-Christian-nose-clean interpretation of this verse. And you sustained victory over drinking. 

But then, as you progressed to a more confident mindset, and began to live in your new-normal of relationship with Christ, you “got-it” that those not on the path are missing out, but you got it with un-helpful animosity and an un-called for and disturbingly high regard for yourself.”

When I saw and faced into this, I absolutely agreed with God and was readily willing to not stay in that phase. 

So God said: 

“Let’s take a closer look at Matthew 17:13-14, and as we do, see if we can fathom what the verse actually conveys and ultimately hopes to instill.”

So that’s what God and I did. 

It took several years. 

It took exiting any and all corporate church and “para-church” organizations. 

It meant jettisoning labels of all religious movements and established practices. 

It meant jettisoning labels of all secular movements and established practices.

It meant, not monkhood—which I was cerebrally tempted by—but just living as the person I had become thus far with God, but now in a practical, objective and logical manner, and starting there. 

It was a bit like beginning all over again, only this time maintaining the foundation of love, compassion and impartiality for all of the Triune God—the very underpinnings of the Gospel which I had lost site of, and perhaps never internalized. 

And now adding the mind.

What the Matthew verse began to reveal about itself during these years of clarified contemplation of God, with God, is the prediction that, what very few will find is purity of God, Jesus, the Spirit and their word. Not just their word written in the Bible, but written upon each individual heart. 

Alternatively, a broad road also exists, one the verse points out as being quite readily tread, so therefore, must be easy. 

This opposing option of travel I envision as spacious lanes paralleling a boulevard adorned, not with life-enhancing landscaping, but constructed of resentment, animosity, jealousy, pride, religious high-regard, malcontentedness, self-absorption, selfish ambition—all of which stem from a lack of God-imbued inner conviction matched with inner reflection—and all of which breed ill will and hatred. 

And a majority, even of the religious, will experience some aspect of this wide road’s destructive impact as they self-justifyingly and willingly—albeit perhaps ignorantly—traverse upon it.

The degree to which we desire and grant to navigate with those dark and defeating motivations and attitudes, we exist outside the small gate that unlatches to the heart of God, and thus, to His heart within each one of us. 

This is the heart God is concerned with and in fact, I believe based on Scripture, the only thing, in the reality of life and faith, God appraises. 

The narrow gate, then, the constricted path—purity of God—is difficult only in its being finally arrived at.

It is shattering in its destructive simpleness. 

Which is why, perhaps, so few find it, and for those who do, can take a very long time.

Copyright Barb Harwood

What's Wrong With the World

 

What’s wrong with the world is those of us who are focused solely on what’s wrong with the world, solving only our infantile-like need for self-importance, superiority, and/or victimhood, and nothing more. 

copyright Barb Harwood