Faith Gym

We have become a people without respect.  We demonstrate respect for no one, and are, therefore, not worthy of receiving respect ourselves.  We have become a people who lash out with violence against others who disagree with us.  We attack Muslim women in hijabs simply because they wear hijabs.  We riot with the intent to damage property and physically harm people when they dare to publicly voice opinions with which we disagree.  When we see people post contrary opinions, we respond with “you’re an idiot.”  We use the most vulgar language in public to disrespect our president.  We respect no one.

My school system has been studying an approach to running meetings.  That I had to practice paraphrasing what someone just said seemed complete foolishness to me.  I do this as part of listening to the ideas of other people.  I write down their main points, my questions, responses, so that I may better understand what is being suggested and decided.  This is what I’ve done in all the meetings I’ve lead.  This is what I’ve done in all the meetings in which I’ve participated.  I saw no need to practice this.  But as I think about the state of my country, I now get it.

Teachers no longer know how to listen to ideas that run contrary to their own.  They model this disrespect of other opinions for their students.  Then the students do this themselves.  I’m sorry to say, if the educated citizens of my country cannot listen to contrary opinions and have a civil debate of ideas without bringing in personal attacks, how can we possibly expect the population at large to respond differently?

One of the reasons we no longer treat people with respect is because we’ve lost our foundation in the Word of God.  When we no longer respect the Word as truth, it becomes easy to allow our lines that determine acceptable behavior to blur.  As a church, we have allowed those lines to be not only blurred, but erased, one verse at a time.

We, as a people, have given up honoring God.  If we don’t honor the Creator of the universe, it is a very easy matter to disrespect people.