Character

Character

June 6, 2016


I've stopped watching television coverage of the elections - too painful.  Our local paper and what is gleaned from news apps on my phone and computer have sufficed.  Still, it's painful.  A father defending his son for what some - apparently Dad is one - would say is a minor indiscretion.  Others object, saying what he has done is particularly egregious.  Parents on trial in the court of public opinion for lax supervision; yet others for making an emotional, rather than logical decision in discipline.

It's the finger pointing which makes it all painful.  Politicians hurling vicious accusations against one another.  By the way, is a lie still a lie when despite proof otherwise, one still believes the charge against another to be true?  I wonder if this is the real casualty in a relativistic society.  Have we reached the point that we destroy each other because we have abused truth to the point not that there is, or is not, absolute truth, but no one has the capacity to trust anyone else to tell the truth? 

So, the measure of a man, or a woman, suffers.  Character has little meaning.  It is no wonder we wallow in the cesspool of shifting values.  Mankind has come full circle from the ancients whose gods were all too human.  Today, our heroes have soiled capes.  

So, Jesus' parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector appears to be an indictment not against a small segment of society, the Pharisees, but against most of mankind.  I doubt that few are so deluded as to believe they are absolutely righteous.  I warn you, they are out there though.  Know them by their arrogance.  No, the mark of the Pharisee today is subtle.  We are more likely to think, "I'm not always right, but I'm more right than you."  The other casualty in a relativistic society?  Each of us feels fully qualified to define the standard of right.

The older I get, the more I am convinced that all of us are like the tax collector in the nature of our sins.  We need to be more like the tax collector in a far more important aspect - humility.  I wonder what would happen if there were more people with the attitude of the tax collector?   

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