CAN WE AGREE?

CAN WE AGREE?

Sunday, June 14, 2015

John MKJV 16:33 [Jesus said] … In the world you shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer. I have overcome the world.

  Believe it or not, there are people that disagree with me! And there are people that I disagree with.   

  Due to our diversity, especially differences in beliefs, and this certainly at times involving our maturity or lack thereof in different areas, and definite conflicts over our wants and desires, it happens and will continue to do so . . . and sometimes as with this sentence goes on too long. (Though more mature than was, I confess I am still both man and child. Anyone that knows me personally will readily agree to this.)

  In my last years of employment for pay, we were compelled to experience in-house 40 hours a year of classroom time. I liking the provision, along with my SC’s approval, traded with didn’t-want-to-goes, taking 50-60 hours until our little arrangement was caught, reprimanded, and cancelled. When wrist patting discipline complete, we agreeably laughed.

  All classes were designed to make one think, with disagreeing naturally being constant dynamic.

  One fun class would present us with an object, breaking us into 2-3 person teams with the assignment of limited time period to list alternative uses for the object. When the object was an old refrigerator, the winning team came up with over 70 alternative uses, including worm farm and coffin. Now that’s as green as it gets!

  Classes on self-expression included poetry writing. One inspired guy, when his turn, came forward, took the teacher’s hand, fell to his knees, and looking into her eyes read her a rather passionate love poem; moving her and some of us to tears and others to loud guffaws. Disagreement, unplanned, occurred.

  Other classes were extremely serious: In one, broken into 5-7 person diverse teams, we would be presented with an initial question. For example, once in a timed one hour we began with “There are 10 people trapped in a flooding cave. Because of conditions and the lack of equipment you will only be able to save one of them. You will have 5 minutes to decide which person it will be.” Then we were handed profile sheets of the makeup of the trapped group, they including medical doctor, priest, child, rapist, prostitute, and various other persona.

  A few teams immediately fell apart under the stress. The teams that were decisive reported in . . . only to be handed additional pages of persona files. Though I don’t recall the exact details, but it went developed something like this: The child was severely incurably handicapped. The doctor turned out to be a child molester. The prostitute was pregnant with twins. The priest was of different denomination than originally inferred. And so on the game went with its 5 minute segment timed limits.

  Believe me, it didn’t make for blood, but it did make for sweat and tears as emotions increased. By the end of the hour most of the finishers were exhausted, not all from despair though, a few were so from elation.

  These particular classes soon ceased as they, for some employees, made for disagreeable relationships afterward.

  Where am I going with this anyway this morning? I’m talking about forgiveness as attitude. I speak not of our clearly 10 Commandment trespassing against one another, I’m talking about when we disagree on priorities, positions, possibilities, potential, practicality, et al.  

  I like to believe that because we so commonly disagree that we’d agree wholeheartedly that attitude of forgiveness is necessary in the year, month, week, hour, moment we live in. Can we possibly overcome apart from the posture of pardoning? I think not.  EBB4 

PS. I’m taking a bit of a sabbatical to invest in another way. I’ll soon return.