Words from WW Blog

WORDS FROM W.W.                                                   December 9, 2018

NOTE: My friend, Jim Newsome, that I wrote my November 25 blog post about, entitled “Sitting Bedside With Someone Awaiting Glory”, went on to glory on November 30. Jim lived by the title of today’s blog.  

                               

I’m sure you’ve noticed it. People in all walks and occupations of life seem to find it easier to say something negative, critical, or unkind much more than they can speak words of affirmation and positivity. 

Social media has made it easy to be mean spirited. Schools now do presentations to their students about “cyber-bullying”! School counselors now counsel students who have been bullied in text messages and had cell phone videos of them being pranked going viral. 

Recently The Today Show had a feature about celebrities who have been ridiculed because of such things as having their picture taken without makeup on (Julia Roberts), looking too muscular (Serena Williams),  and looking too much toned body-wise a week after giving birth (Jana Kramer). 

Let’s face it! If Jesus suddenly showed up at a wedding reception that was running low on wine and touched a few water glasses there would be people today who would criticize it. One of my old seminary professors, David Augsburger, wrote that when two people meet there is a natural tendency to try for “one-upsmanship”, the longing to feel more superior or important than the other person. With social media that tendency has been amplified. Being mean-spirited seems to be thought of as a way to climb up the pecking order. 

It’s a complicated web of actions and verbiage, all linked to the tendency to want to be seen as being more important than someone else. Today you will see NFL players score a touchdown and strut as if the six points they just scored is on the same plane with discovering a cure for cancer. A defensive backs will break up a pass and glare at the receiver as a non-verbal way of telling him he’s weak and no match for the DB’s skills. 70,000 people will applaud his antics!

Saying something nice about someone or doing something nice for someone raises that  person up…and there are some who are threatened that such an elevation will bring them down a notch.

The thing is…we get reputations! And those reputations are well-deserved. There are people, who when their names are mentioned, bring a smile to my face…and there are other folk whose name brings a taste to my soul like spoiled milk!

A lot of us don’t think about that before we tweet! Spoiling rather than sweetening defines us!

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This entry was posted on December 9, 2018 at 4:01 pm and is filed under Bible, children, Christianity, Community, Freedom, Grace, Jesus, Parenting, Pastor, Story, The Church, Uncategorized, Youth. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.

Tags: being critical, being positive, bringing others down, criticism, cyber-bullying, Jana Kramer, mean spirited, mean spirited people, negative people, negative thoughts, negative words, reputations, seeing the downside, Serena Williams, social media, speaking harsh words, tweets, words of affirmation

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