Distortions

Some years ago there was an attempt to find out why so much was said, focused and written about persons and relationships that were or seemed to be distorted, conducts that reduced the force of good out of the issues of life under discussion.  Why, for example, do we give so much more time to the distortions of marriage than to the beauty, love, safety, fulfillment of family life?  Why do we not spend more time in identifying and cultivating that which is good and how to achieve it in this or that than to give so much space to the troublemaker, the selfish, the rebel, the drunk, the misfits, the angry, and the irresponsible?  There is a significant movement that alleges the model of marriage and the family is now outmoded.  We are fed a lot about celebrities, politicians, business persons and others that may be out-of-step in their own contexts of life – even some church ministers or parents of dependent children than we hear or give attention to those who carry themselves well in the professions and families they represent.  As this is being written, a young celebrity in the entertainment business is almost daily in the news for bad conduct and disregard of social responsibility.  He was arrested the other night for racing his expensive car far beyond the limits, and was severely impaired by drunkenness.  For a few hundred dollars he was released from arrest.  His pouting approach to life and responsibility is an embarrassment to his generation.  Even so there are masses of young persons, especially young girls, who swoon over him and his antics.  The stories can be multiplied.  He needs to study Ecclesiastes, and pass an examination on the assignment.  At least then we may hope he understands the dangers of his attitude and conduct.  His current rebellion is against life, in particular his own life, but threatens others.  His beliefs are his own, not those lived by the vast majority.

According to persons studying about how to achieve a better society, a common problem has been that so many published results were from dysfunctional situations.  For example, much of what was being taught about marriage and the family was taken from the gleanings found in troubled and broken families.  Happy and effective persons and families seldom came under scrutiny – although there is current shift in approach.  Finding the right is so much more than evading the wrong.  It may be easier to access troubled persons and not so easy to get into affirmative and peaceful orientations.  The public in significant percentage is attracted to the distortions, oddities, excesses, and the risqué.  Some presentations even warn listeners/viewers against trying what is presented to them in graphic terms that may be magnetic even if in ordinary and undramatic contexts.  Police are well instructed in the copy-cat conducts in society.   Currently we are going through the copy-cat conduct of shooters in schools and businesses.  Law enforcement personnel are waiting for the horror to wear out – perhaps to yield to some other deviant series of ill conduct.  Although effort is being made to discover how the happy and untroubled families and persons live, much of what appears in the press continues to focus on the crime contexts, dysfunctional, accidents, loss of respect and life.  The wholesome approaches, some of which can be syrupy, are laughed at, and made into jokes like: She acts like a goody two-shoes.  Persons making such put-downs are likely following a pattern that the listener/reader would not find satisfactory for children.  The critic implies that he or she is not a goody two-shoes.  What conduct do they favor? Right conduct may be lost in distortions.

Perceptive persons know that some of the good things in life seem like near secrets in advertised society.  Go tell it on the mountain is not only good advice for the Christian gospel witness, but for a number of other champions of good things for mankind as well.  To live and tell the good is reason enough for living in common grace.  It follows us into divine grace.  This is what the writer is trying to get at in Ecclesiastes.  I have just reviewed more than thirty testimonies found in a public source of elderly persons, ages 96 to 114, who responded to the query about how they lived so long.  As I read them I was taken to Ecclesiastes which states from ancient language context what these seniors also had to say.  They implied that they followed the affirmatives of life from their young years and found life worth living.  They avoided distortion which is excess, negativism, and bad habits in living.  They affirmed life.  Life is a gift of God.