Wed, Apr 28th - 5:10PM

What is wrong with people?

What is wrong with people?  It seems that no matter who I run into and try to befriend they show their good side just long enough to become friends then you get to know the real person.  That is when the trouble begins.  About 95% of the people that I try to be friends with wind up just wanting something from me but make themselves scarce when I need something.

Recently I have had problems with some people that just constantly wanted me to drop everything and do what they wanted me to do.  Well fine, but what do I do about getting my wife to the doctor appointments that she needs to get to?  Just who do I get to complete all the chores and responsibilities that I must complete?  Well the stress and strain grew and grew in dealing with these people until I lost it and told them to get some one else to do it while I attended to my wife and my responsibilities.  That went over like a lead balloon.

The more people that I encounter the more I notice really have no concern for anyone but themselves.  Surprisingly this is to include those who have children.  There is a generation of people that have abandoned there children.  Have you ever noticed the increasing number of grandparents that are raising their grandchildren?  It is a sad thing, a generation of children raised by their grandparents because their parents just couldn’t handle it.  Sad but true.

More and more people are constructing walls around themselves in order to remove themselves from those around them.  This may be a self preservation mechanism or not.  It may even be in response to some type of abuse.  This in itself is not a bad thing but when one can not lower those defenses or worse yet chooses not to it is not healthy.  Husbands and wives who cannot lower defenses enough to be trusting and honest with each other.  Parents who cannot lower walls enough to be close to their children.  This all leads to people who cannot relate to one another in any setting.  What can fix this?  I can’t tell you.  I do not know all of you and the solution while it is the same the path to that solution will be different for all of us.

We need to start by asking questions of ourselves.  What are we missing in life?  What is really important to us?  Human beings are social people believe it or not.  We were created that way.  Why else would we congregate in groups?  We seek the company of others.  But why can we not get relationships right?

One problem is most of us have trouble admitting that we are flawed individuals.  We are not perfect and that bothers us, never the less it is the truth.  Being a man of Christian faith I look back to the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.  After they had eaten the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil they attempted to cover themselves up and hide from God.  This was not because the were unclothed, it was that the know had selfish sight.  They now saw things from a different perspective, they began to see that they were now flawed individuals as they had broken the only law of God at the time.  They had a new emotion, guilt and they sought to hide that guilt.  All mankind since Adam and Eve have had that emotion of guilt and it has led people to judge others in order to make themselves feel better about themselves, ‘I’m ok because you are worse than I am’ is the new mindset that we need to stay away from.  It leads us to care more for ourselves than for others.

The flaw in all men and women leads to the concept of “keeping up with the Jones’”.  The feeling that ‘they are not better than me’ permeates the minds and hearts of people leading to the ‘I want it all’ attitude to fill what is missing in our lives.  We did have it all once, back in the beginning.  The side effect that came with the knowledge of good and evil was a big hole with in ourselves that only a renewed fellowship with God can fill.  The problem with all of this is that we are still flawed and it takes all we have to maintain that fellowship with God because we are all still flawed.  Part of maintaining that fellowship with God is to maintain the right and proper relationships with the others that God has created.  The catch in relationships with others is that they may not have regained that relationship with God or they may be at different place in that relationship.  The best of us can still fall, especially if we forget our place in creation.  We must be humble before God.  Part of being humble before God is to be humble in our lives.  The word humble being an adjective carries positive and negative meanings, however it is the positive that we are talking about here.  Dictionary.com list among definitions of the word humble as these; not proud or arrogant; modest: to be humble although successful, and courteously respectful. These definitions do not point to a lowly person, instead they point to a person that is respectful of others who is willing to serve others when needed without recognition or praise.  Can you honestly say that you fit that description? Sadly most of us cannot.  What needs to happen is the mindset of ‘looking out for number one’ needs to be modified.  The number one that we should be looking out for in God, He should be number on in all our lives not me first and everything else second.  If we all lived that way it would be a better place and I do believe that people would get along better.

These are my observations and thoughts offered up for you to think about.

Sat, Apr 3rd - 7:24PM

What if?