Jonathots Daily Blog
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Come listen, my children, and you will hear
How we’ve learned to hate and live in fear.
G-Pop wonders.
Will his children fall victim to the negative pundits who spin every news story into a situation which cannot be resolved, lending itself to despair?
Does G-Pop have the fortitude to step in and say that our problem is not as complicated as presented by those who seemingly make a living out of baffling us?
There are three approaches to people. If you use the wrong one, you can end up with disastrous results. Finding the correct attitude is the doorway to the possibility of peaceful coexistence.
Even though this week, two people took guns and killed their neighbors, hundreds and thousands did not. That seems to be lost in the discussion.
Do we really believe that the millions of us who would not harm anyone cannot effectively address the tiny handful who are determined to be destructive?
It all revolves around our approach. Here’s the first school of thought:
1. People are good.
For you see, if people are good, all they really require is praise and encouragement. Yet I will tell you, people are not innately good. Every thing born with an appetite over-consumes. Human beings have too many lusts, apprehensions and greedy moments to ever be classified as good.
Therefore praise bolsters the insane while often being insufficient for the saint.
2. People are bad.
If this is true, they should be punished. They should be degraded. They should be viewed as expendable.
Religion and politics certainly cannot survive without maintaining the philosophy that human beings suck. Once we believe that “bad” can wear a human face, killing it off can almost seem heavenly.
3. People are people.
They’re not just good, they’re not just bad. Having consumed the knowledge of good and evil, they are constantly torn and teased with the options–without ever arriving at a true conviction. So praising them will be fairly unsuccessful, and punishing them will limit their scope for angelic deeds.
Because people are people, they need to be motivated.
You can’t simply make new commandments, new laws, new restrictions and think you’re going to stop the bad part of people.
Likewise, you can’t assume that every mortal is filled with demonic proportions, and should be locked away and disconnected from their passions.
We need to be motivated.
- Why should I love my neighbor?
- Why should we encourage the Jew and the Palestinian to get along?
- Why should we take care of our children?
Give me reasons that have benefits and I will listen. Give me demands with no obvious personal value, and I will rebel.
G-Pop hopes his children understand. People are not just good or bad. This thinking leads to a dead-end of discouragement.
People are people.
So be prepared to motivate them–or stand back and watch as they choose good or bad, solely based upon convenience.
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Jonathots Daily Blog 
G-Poppers … January 5th, 2018
Jonathots Daily Blog
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G-Pop has a heart to share something with his children.
There is a certain hint of sadness that settles into a life filled with goodness–goodness, in this case, being defined as a willingness to learn and adapt to the ways of Earth instead of ignoring, rejecting or refuting them.
Once we make our peace with the planet of our birth, and cease to turn our backs on its beautiful, natural ways, some goodness makes its home in our hearts. This is not always permanent, but it visits enough that we should always keep the guest room ready.
But finding the goodness of life does introduce brief periods of melancholy.
After all, if you do decide to “love your neighbor as yourself,” you might actually begin to have empathy for people, even though they don’t love you the same way.
If you pursue becoming “the salt of the Earth,” you might shed a tear over a tasteless society.
Discovering ways to be “the light of the world” just punctuates the darkness.
Contentment sweeps through your soul when you cease to judge others, but realize that their paths will contain sadness and struggle, and find joy in living instead of acting like the whole journey is about making heaven, and speculating with too much revelry about who occupies hell.
There is a certain sadness that accompanies goodness; a mourning that follows being blessed, which requires comforting.
It does not leave us inconsolable–we are not without remedy. God will need to dry our tears.
Rather, it is the sense of yearning to continue to find the grace of God by simply complying with the flow of Earth, and feeling pain for those who continue to rebel.
The Twenty-Third Psalm phrases it best:
“Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life…”
Yes, when the sweet blanket of forgiving goodness covers our wounded souls, it is our mandate to feel deep, heartfelt mercy for those who are chilled by reality.
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on January 5, 2018 at 2:06 pm Comments (1)Tags: contentment, darkness, earth, G-Poppers, goodness, goodness and mercy, guest room, heaven, hell, inconsolable, light of the world, love your neighbor as yourself, melancholy, mourning, peace, reality, rebel, refuting, remedy, sadness, salt of the earth, struggle, tasteless, Twenty-Third Psalm, wounded