Attitude

This date has been reserved for focus on reaction and response in human experience.  Analysis of reaction to anything, but especially to persons and speech conduct – is a major matter for human consideration and education.  So much of life direction turns on our reactions, and that life is much improved when the matters related to reaction are understood and managed.  My wife told me one day that a sermon I delivered on Action and Reaction changed her in the management of her depressions.  From that day her life seemed changed, and it was changed, not only for her, but for me in detecting triggers that would set off some depressions.  She was visibly better to the point that some darkness she had experienced from her ‘teen years was greatly diluted, affecting better life for her and with her family – perhaps with others.

Reaction has much to do with attitude.  Charles Swindoll, eminent preacher/writer, wrote: The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life.  Attitude, to me, is more important than facts.  It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than success, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company . . . a church . . . a home.  The remarkable thing is you have a choice every day regarding the attitude you will embrace for that day.  We cannot change our past . . .  we cannot change the fact that people will act a certain way.  We cannot change the inevitable.  The only thing we can do is play the one string we have and that is our attitude.  I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it.  And so it is with you . . .  You are in charge of your attitudes.  On occasion I shared conference duties with Swindoll, and I saw him living out his positive attitude in relationships with everyone with whom he worked.  I do believe his statement here is sweeping, and would need some clarification in several areas.  However, with the compounds of life, the elements lose their separate and unique substance and become a part of the whole.  In that sense we have a strong statement of truth for attitude.  No one really knows what percentage is this or that in the course of human experience.  It is more for some and less for others, and either situation may work well, or poorly.  I want my attitude to be stronger to influence for the better circumstances, but also not to misrepresent the poorer ones.

Leslie D. Weatherhead, known for his insight into the spiritual life of mankind, wrote: It is not what happens to us that matters most; it is our reaction to what happens to us that matters.  Nothing would be allowed to happen if it had the power of itself – apart from our reaction – to separate us from God.  So the measure of calamity is the measure of the extent to which God trusts us to use it for good.  If it could not possibly bring blessedness, if no possible reaction could make it work out for good, it would not be allowed by a good God to befall us.  Here Weatherhead has moved our discussion a bit farther into the spiritual meaning of life experience related to reaction.  The accent of Swindoll to understand reaction for better life in the earthly sojourn is carried over by Weatherhead into the perception of life as it relates to faith in God in the human experience looking forward when mortality will have yielded to immortality.  Both are important, and both appear often in the understanding and meaning of Scripture.

To give something of a self-analysis to individuals about their reactions, they will need to look at their habits, fixations, realities, ideals, preferences, and their deliberate applications of such virtues as love, patience and the like as suggested in the Fruit of the Spirit discussed in several of these Pages.  Out of all this we gain a truly gratifying relationship with earth and heaven.  There is acceptance, flexibility, openness to ideas, ability to change conduct and a sense of authority about self.  Somewhere in all this there is maturity, both human and spiritual, that is a biblical objective for those who have faith in God.  One senses the differences in persons like the Apostles Peter and Paul, who when they saw themselves, in the reflection of Jesus Christ, became quite different men than the ones we meet at their introduction.  In human thought and conduct, that most to be respected is to be reported: spiritually and humanly mature.