June 01, 2012
Preaching to the Choir
I get a lot of politically charged email forwards from people who are
blowing the trumpet and trying to rally the troops for their cause. I’m not
against their efforts, but they are wasted on me because I’m already
politically pro-active and armed for battle. I think it’s like hearing a
salvation message preached each Sunday morning when everyone in the audience is
already a confessed believer. The message we put out, whether political or
spiritual, needs to hit the right audience. We can’t simply spend our time
looking for lost sheep amongst those who are already in the fold.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Gail;
-----Think about what a population is. 350,000,000 individuals, in our American case. Each one being an individual is an instructive thought. Each is a collection of uniquely mixed and matched character traits, beliefs, ideologies, personal tendencies, and right on through the list of countless aspects making up being human. So what? So any categorization of people necessary to understand the possibilities of an action or event or situation is possible. We know just by common experience that the population sorts into a generally leaning to the left category and a generally leaning right category, with a catch 22 category somewhere between the two. And you are correct about the effect of preaching to the choir by the circulation of messages amongst those we know to be in general agreement with us. They make a category to which we belong. Each category is a choir to which those within it preach. And within each category are sub-categories, also being choirs, also listening to sermons of their own. The circulated and re-circulated messages form cores of thinking to which individuals more likely attach more because they feel secure within the category of its circulation than they do because they've studied the messages assumptions and assertions and found them to be correct.
-----This Balkanization is sad. It ruins the perception the entire population should never forget: the whole population is itself a category deserving proper respect from all its sub-categories and owing proper respect to all its sub-categories right down to the level of the 350,000,000 sub-categories containing only one member each - the individual. And what is “proper respect“, since the term itself implies there is also an “improper respect“? Dictionaries tell us that “respect” is the state of showing esteem and admiration and deference to something. Then Charles Manson and Adolf Hitler probably would have had respect for one another. Barak Obama, Chairman Mao, Fidel Castro, and like thinkers share much respect. So also, many of us highly respect Billy Graham and Hal Lindsay and Ronald Reagan but don’t respect Little Barry-O much and probably Mao and Fidel none. The reason we respect some and not others? Their messages match or don’t match the categories to which we gravitate. That’s not necessarily proper.
-----Proper is about good. Good is made of true and beneficial. Proper respect is esteem, admiration, and deference to someone for the good in his or her message rather than for its alliance to the other messages of our own category. Then of course, we reach that time for the age-old question, “Who’s to say what’s true or beneficial?”
-----Nobody, really. “True” says plenty for itself. So does beneficial. And they both say it plainly, clearly, and loudly enough for any darned old fool who honestly wants to know true and beneficial to discover them. That is what the Bible tells us, too. “Seek and you will find. Knock and it will be opened.” And the fool will become wise through truth’s revelation of itself.
-----But don’t let the wise man go silent. We do not have enough wisdom in any choir today. Many messages circulating amongst the choir are important to keep circulating because they originate from properly respectable hearts. Other messages carry enough taint that your wisdom will show them their way to the trash can. In such a manner of passing on what is good and trashing what isn’t, you participate in elevating the respect of your own choir.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
Gail;
-----I was listening to Rush Limbaugh just now. A young lady caller related a story about a Marine she shared a commercial flight with. While boarding the flight she told him she was a very active Tea Party member, and she thanked him for his services. But he shelved her thanks for a moment and told her how the Occupy Wall Street crowd and other subversive elements create major doubt in a man while he stands in the path of bullets for the country and way of life against which such ones protest. He then told her that seeing the Tea Party defending their country at home more than restores the assurance of why they stand for us on the battlefield. In fact, he told her, it strengthens their resolve all the more. Then he thanked her for her service.
-----I too am mindful about choir preaching. But mostly I understand the effect is more importantly in just knowing good folks are still soldiering for the place of truth and human decency in our interrelationships (of which politics is merely a sub-category) than it is in whatever tidbit of information within an email. I think we all fight harder when we each perceive all are fighting. So, merely getting those emails shows me others are on the battlefront, even though I usually have known what their emails state long before I’ve gotten them. And I trust forwarding one will make the same effect upon another.
Steve
Post a Comment