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Old people don’t like to change.
Perhaps better stated, older folks think they’ve done all the changing they need to do.
It fascinates G-Pop that we spend so much time trying to appease the tastes, mentality and standards of individuals who have basically retired their dispositions, and use much of their gray matter considering longevity.
Perhaps it’s the fact that once we’re given our first prescription for high blood pressure and cholesterol, we are forever lost to discussing our treatments. Is it because older folks accumulated all the savings bonds and property, and seem to be in power?
The wealth of our nation actually lies in the elasticity of young minds–the flexibility of those who have not yet determined what color they would like their den to be painted.
It’s why Jesus said that the message of the Gospel is geared to the child-like mind, and only those who are willing to acquire such thinking can truly comprehend it. It is also why Jesus said you can’t put new wine into old wineskins. When the fermentation produces expansion, the old skins literally explode.
Yet children are relegated to a status of property, propaganda and proof of our prowess and parenting. So we ask:
We trap our offspring into a prison of education and tell them not to contact us until they’ve graduated reformed. So they mimic us. It’s what they’re taught to do.
So rather than having a cultural and social revolution with every generation, causing us to grow in intelligence and openness to one another, we implant the prejudice and bigotry of the former generation firmly into the minds of those who are haplessly controlled by us because they live in our homes and feast at our tables.
We’re missing an opportunity. And because we’re ignoring it, we are condemning ourselves to more wars in the same areas of the world–just with new names.
Teach your children. Teach them well.
Otherwise they’ll end up with their father’s hell.
And here’s what G-Pop thinks we should teach them:
1. Love people.
There is no better species due to arrive. You can live with the monkeys or dine with the lions, but you will eventually find that their habits are even worse than your brothers and sisters living next door. People are the best that God offers us. If you’re upset about it, contact the Creator. He has not made a more magnificent contraption, and there is no sign that He’s upgrading the model. Love people or die complaining.
2. Respect people.
Get rid of your color charts. Get rid of your expectations. Keep your moral code to yourself. If you have a plan of salvation, enjoy it, but don’t force feed it to anyone else. Every human being is given three square feet of influence, and once you step out of your own, realize you are trespassing. Don’t be surprised if you get shot.
3. Work with people.
Working with people is easy. You listen, then you try. Just make sure that the trying is a test and not selling out completely. In other words, if you’re going to dye a piece of cloth, it’s a good idea to cut off a small unit and try the dye on it first, to see how it takes. As long as we’re willing to be wrong, working with people can be quite fun. But when we insist that we “have to be right” because we’re invested in the project and therefore need to make excuses for the failure–then we become obnoxious paper clip counters.
It’s rather doubtful that you can take anyone over the age of forty-five on a journey to love people, respect people and work with people.
Pick your target market. It will be the children of the Earth who still don’t have enough assets to sit on their asses.
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Feelings.
They normally travel around with a forlorn adjective: hurt. Hurt feelings.
It is the most common malady of humans–even more prevalent than the cold.
Feelings are hurt for one simple reason: each one of us feels that we are more important and valuable than what others may feel at any given moment.
99% of the conflicts between nations are based on hurt feelings. Some of those painful emotions go back generations.
And even though we try to use education and religion to tamp down our need for recognition, deep within our hearts, we want to be treasured instead of trashed.
So we fight.
We argue.
We struggle.
We promote our value in comparison to the worth of others.
So we start grasping at subtle differences like skin color, sexual orientation and even gender.
G-Pop wonders if his readers might want to become part of the solution instead of clogging up the train station heading to confusion.
It’s really simple: walk into your heart and fire apathy–as you hire appreciation.
Everyone needs the grace of gratitude.
The amount we receive determines how much fuel we have to fire up our engines toward success–or crash down in revenge.
G-Pop thinks it boils down to a sip, a cup and a bucket.
1. A sip: “Thanks.”
That just cools the dry, complaining, achy throat of anyone who is tired of being unappreciated.
2. A cup: “Thanks, we could not have done this without you.”
Not only cooled, but a quenching of the aggravation over a history of being used.
3. A bucket: “Thanks. You are just so freakin’ awesome.”
Now you’re tying generosity into the power of their character. It drenches them in joy.
Of course, you can overdo the bucket and you can under-do the sip. But if you’re wondering why human relationships don’t work, it’s because the fluid of thankfulness that should be flowing among us has dried up in favor of the desert of distance and ignorance.
G-Pop will tell you that most of us humans need at least a cup of appreciation a day. That’s a lot of sips–but certainly can be handled with one bucket.
The next person you meet will be parched from the lack of gratitude. He or she feels they’re important.
God has not given you the job to humble others, but instead, to moisten their feelings with legitimate appreciation.
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Every January 1st, a preacher friend sends me an email with his prophecies for the new year.
His predictions are always pretty general–and also grim. I guess he thinks it’s a safe bet in a world of tribulation, to foretell disaster.
It’s just too easy to be upset.
It’s way too predictable to continue to complain about the circumstances.
Yesterday morning when I arrived at Carteret United Methodist Church, I was looking for people who were fed up with being depressed.
I think Pastor Frank was pretty surprised at the turnout. After all, it was New Year’s Day and a tremendous opportunity for folks to use it as an excuse not to come to church.
But they didn’t.
We gathered, we sang, we mused, we laughed, we cried, we fellowshipped and we left–believing that certain things must be honored, or honor will leave our world.
1. Love your neighbor is not optional.
Although we spend much time in diplomacy and negotiations with countries which are determined to hurt one another, the truth of the matter is, our greatest possibility lies in the souls who still insist on loving and believing in each other.
2. Be of good cheer.
Nothing is ever accomplished from a defeated position of gloom. If knowing the facts upset you, then choose the bliss of ignorance–because in the long run, it is not intelligence or education that saves us, but rather, the wisdom we garner from the data that gives us the power to believe.
I so enjoyed the congregation in Beaufort, South Carolina–and may I tell them:
The good news is that there’s a song of praise that needs to be written every day.
And the better news is that I, for one, want to meet my Creator with that song in my heart.
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It is utterly amazing how many potholes on the highway of progress can be gloriously filled in with the marvelous cement of enthusiasm and repentance.
Although many people tout the power of thinking and prayer, our thoughts are often stuck in the past, and our prayers can be pious.
When I arrived in Marlette, Michigan, to meet up with Pastor Dave and the human beings who inhabit that region, I was looking for enthusiasm and repentance. Nothing of any significance is going to happen without this pair of miracle-workers.
Enthusiasm has a simple message: “I want to be happy.”
And repentance comes along cleansing the process by offering, “And I realize I may have to change to get it.”
Without enthusiasm. we eventually regress to complaining. And absent repentance, we always become “makers of great excuse.”
I was so pleased to encounter one friend after another in this gathered array of Michiganders, who expressed enthusiasm, and with tears in their eyes, realized the necessity of repentance.
Throughout my journey I have discovered that politics does not work because it’s so afraid of failure that it lies.
Education is limited because without the spunk of perseverance, it may not survive.
And religion is nearly comical because it pursues salvation without revering personal responsibility.
But the magic of enthusiasm followed by the anointing of repentance turns the human race into a livable sort, making folks able to co-exist with one another without gossip and murder.
I think this begins with how we answer the question, “How are you?”
We can decide to hide our feelings and say “fine” with varying degrees of apathy, or we can launch into a series of woes about our present condition, hoping for sympathy.
But I have found the perfect answer to “how are you?” Here it is: “At first, a little overwhelmed, but by nightfall, kind of surprised at how well things turned out.”
I shall always remember the folks in Marlette with Pastor Dave and his evolving outreach. They brought to the sanctuary enough enthusiasm to welcome repentance.
That’s the good news.
The better news?
It turns out that enthusiasm and repentance are much easier to work with than defeat and stubbornness.
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There is a quiet revolution bubbling in our land. You must silence the busyness of your mind to hear the rumbling.
But it’s there.
It’s a weariness over the lack of authenticity. For instance:
The music industry, which has marginalized itself to harmonics and beat, is once again yearning for melody and emotion.
Movies, once satisfied with merely selling tickets, have a rebirth of interest in entertainment that inspires.
The government, intended to be of the people, by the people and for the people, is struggling to move out of the madness of political disarray.
The medical field is pondering healing instead of stealing.
Education is focusing on teaching.
And the church…
Well, the church is in need of ministering to humanity instead of preaching a form of godliness.
Yesterday morning I found myself in Adrian, Michigan. It was a beautiful sanctuary. It was filled with people–mostly of retirement years–who listened to my Jesonian message with anxious hearts, but with brains retired to quieter thoughts. I could see it written on their faces: “You should have caught us thirty years ago. Now we’re too old.”
But it will be the repentance of the older saints which will convict younger believers to transform their lives.
In pursuit of worshipping the Christ, we have lost Jesus.
We need to find him.
With all my heart and soul, I enjoyed, loved and appreciated the people of Adrian. But early in the morning, when Jan took a picture of the church before the service began–when it was empty–I realized that this is the crux of our dilemma.
The church will continue to empty if we don’t empty ourselves of the emptiness of religion.
God never intended us to come and praise Him only with our lips. Jesus said the church is defined by our “love one for another.”
That is the good news.
The better news is that it will truly be much easier to attend a church that embraces human need and human desire than one that audaciously contends it can speculate on the whim of the Divine.
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A voice writing in the wilderness
Jonathots Daily Blog 
G-Poppers … August 17th, 2018
Today G-Pop wants to talk to his children about slippage.
In olden times they referred to it as “backsliding”–allowing oneself to retreat from principles once held dear–because the temptation of the times changes the atmosphere and weakens the faith.
In the past ten years, because we’ve allowed a streak of meanness to become acceptable behavior, there has been a slippage in the attitudes of the populace toward one another and in the passion for life.
It’s really quite simple.
Those who were once merciful have slipped into being merely open-minded, leaving mercy practically abandoned.
The open-minded people have slipped to being generous–and that normally only to people they know well or who are related to them.
The generous folks have backslidden to kind–hoping that flashing a smile and expressing a willingness to be helpful will be enough without having to commit to action.
And kind people, who used to think up ways to be contributors, have slipped to nice. If at all possible they will offer a pleasant countenance to the world around them–that is, unless something odd happens. At that point, nice people become careful. They will swear that the reason they become careful is because the world is screwed up and “you can’t trust anybody.”
And of course, careful people drop down a degree into suspicious. This is where you start to hear about folks loving their dogs more than people.
And those who were naturally suspicious before degrade to downright grouchy. They don’t even pretend to lead with a sweetness of spirit. It’s too risky.
Of course, there were people who were grouchy to begin with. They have become edgy–ready for a fight, and the edgy people usually find that fight, and end up being bullies.
Bullies have become fighters; fighters are more violent. Much of the violence has led to murder, and now murder has deteriorated to mass killing.
The political parties will blame each other for the problem, but long before there was a President Donald Trump, there was a President Obama, with all of the fussing, arguing and struggling that occurred during his two terms of administration.
G-Pop realizes that you may consider it a “conservative” problem, or perhaps an outgrowth of the liberal media. Since you can’t do anything to change either one of those organizations, G-Pop thinks it might be a good idea for his children to just work on themselves.
Where have you slipped to?
Where have you fallen?
If even 10% of the population would raise their human effort up one notch, to the position they occupied before 2008, there would be such an improvement in the climate of this country that the other 90% would have to take note.
G-Pop wants to tell his children that it’s time to stop backsliding.
There are no signs that the leadership in government, business, education or the church is going to lead a resurgence in civil behavior.
No–it’ll be up to us.
It’ll be up to G-Pop…and all his children.
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on August 17, 2018 at 3:38 pm Leave a CommentTags: backsliding, business, careful, church, civil behavior, conservative, edgy, education, G-Poppers, generous, government, grouchy, kind, liberal, mercy, murder, nice, open-minded, President Donald Trump, President Obama, slippage, suspicious, violent