29: Change I Believe In

The prompt is to write 500 words starting with...

If I had the power to change something, I would change the way we treat each other. I would get us all to understand, really understand, that God loves the world, and that God actually loves us.

So many times, we are more concerned with being right than with being loving. We would rather be heartless than naive. We can watch people starve rather than try something that might not work. I wish we could all change that.

We are so afraid of what's going to happen to us, so certain that all we hold dear, even our country, even our God, is on the verge of implosion like a condemned football stadium, that we pull the blankets up around our necks, convincing ourselves that anyone who's even a little different is a monster under our bed, ready to drag us down by our toes. And we never question whether a blanket is really a good defense against a horrible beast from the underworld.

I don't wish that we'd all share a hug and sing a song about teaching the world to do the hula or something. That's not what I would change. To be honest, if I were trapped in that kind of world, I'd be writing a blog post a lot like this one. That's as much "let's pretend" as the world we are in now.
What I wish is that we can all get past the stupid idea that people who disagree with us are aligned with the forces of Satan. I wish we could learn to finish nearly every argument with "I could be wrong."

I wish we could accept politicians and leaders who continue to learn, and therefore, to change their positions as new facts emerge.

I wish we could avoid treating people as enemies unless they prove otherwise.

I wish we could learn that we can prevent someone from hurting us without killing them, and that it's worth the effort, not for their sake, but for ours.

I wish we could seek first the kingdom of God, and the righteousness that comes from caring for the poor, the sick, the orphan, and the widow, and worry about impressing people afterward.

And when I say "we", I mean us. Me too.

I know that Christ has released us from the powers that imprison us, but I wish we could all quit acting like we're still behind bars.

I'm not sure if any of this is even possible. But I do know that the Bible says that with God all things are possible, and I do know that Arthur Charles Clarke once said that we can't know the limits of the possible without pushing into the impossible.

So I keep praying, for myself, that I might escape, but also for everyone else, because whatever lies outside, it won't be complete without all of us being there. And I keep fighting losing battles, because it's not about winning or losing. It's about freedom.

I could be wrong.

Copyright 2012. Timothy H. Ruppel. All rights reserved.

This work by Timothy H. Ruppel is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.