Skip to main content

Godpiling


  Will Rodgers said, “There is nothing as easy as denouncing ... It don’t take much to see that something is wrong but it does take some eyesight to see what will put it right again.”  Dale Carnegie's take was “Any fool can criticize, complain, and condemn—and most fools do. But it takes character and self-control to be understanding and forgiving.” Ben Franklin remarks a similar refrain, “I will speak ill of no man, not even in matter of truth; but rather excuse the faults I hear charged upon others, and upon proper occasion speak all the good I know of everybody.”

  What were these wise men trying to tell us? That if we think we are helping a problem by pointing it out to others, we’re not.

  If all you want to do is all your two cents to the mess, please keep the change.

  It is among the weakest, pettiest, and unproductive pursuits to dogpile on a problem. Anybody can see the problem. Anyone can show outrage against a wrong action. Everyone can lay blame.

Therefore encourage one another and build up one another, just as you also are doing
1st Thessalonians 5:11

  But it takes a leader to find a solution. It takes someone of high character to try to make things right again. It takes a bigger person not to dwell on the wrongs and look for the rights.

  You see that in God. He didn’t just condemn man; he gave a path of redemption. He doesn’t just bemoan sin; he gives us a better way. He shows us the problem and then shows us the way out of it.

and let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds,
Hebrews 10:24

  Worldly people love to dogpile on a problem, Let me coin a new term, Godpile. It means instead of on jumping on the issue to find more fault, means finding a way to make it better. Instead of criticizing, complementing. Instead of finding fault, finding favor. Rather than venting, volunteering. If we spent half as much time righting as we did ranting, how much better would our world be?    

 So next time the chorus of boos start, how about we start the cheer. When everyone is yelling about the wrong, let applaud the right. Turn on the light rather than curse the darkness.



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

I Know All Those Words, But That Sentence Makes No Sense To Me

  Let’s say you travel back in time six hundred years or so.  Luckily, you happen across a fellow that speaks English.  Upon hearing your tale, he describes you as nice, smart, and handsome.  Wouldn’t you feel good?   You shouldn’t.  As Sol Steinmetz in his book, Semantics Antics , explains; Nice originally meant someone who was foolish, ignorant, senseless, or absurd (middle English 1300). Smart for the first 300 years of its use meant causing pain, sharp, cutting, or severe, a sense that survives in the idiom "smart as a whip.” Handsome wasn’t complimentary. When coined around 1425, it just meant easily handled; it didn’t have its current positive connotation until 1590.   You might think he said you were a kind, intelligent, good looking bloke, when in reality he said you were a foolish pain easily dealt with.   Words have an annoying habit of changing meaning over time in the same language and it becomes even more compli...

Master Your Self

  In a contest for the toughest president of the United States, it would be hard to go against Theodore Roosevelt.  He was known for his “manly” pursuits hunting big game, climbing the Matterhorn, participating in boxing match while president. (These weren’t play fights, he lost the vision on one eye because of them!)  Once before he was about to give a speech an assassin shot him in the chest.  Roosevelt refused to go to a hospital and insisted on giving his speech, still wearing his blood-soaked shirt!   Teddy might have become tough but he wasn’t born that way.  He was a sickly child that suffered from severe asthma that almost proved fatal.  As was a young boy, doctors discovered that he had a weak heart, and advised him to get a desk job and not strain himself.  He was homeschooled because of his many illnesses and spent most of his time indoors.   But then as a teen his father, whom Teddy Roosevelt revered, told his son, “ ...

The Gift You Give Yourself

    I always hated buying gifts for my Mom. If I got her something like a new set of pans, it was like saying “Here’s something you can use to go make me something to eat”. A gift for her was seemingly a gift for me.   There are however gifts you give that benefit you more than the receiver. For example, forgiveness. When you give it, you are giving it to yourself as much as you are giving it to them. Jesus said that when we forgive others it means God is forgiving us our wrongs (Matthew 6:14-15).  I once read: “ Heaven is where everyone's forgiven. Hell is where nobody's forgiven.  So, when we forgive we pull heaven down into our lives.  When we withhold forgiveness, we pull hell up into our lives ” Give yourself something nice today, Forgive.