By Pastor Greg ...
If you permit me, I’d like to talk about how troubled I am. No, seriously. I have been troubled about something for a
while now, and I need to get it off my chest.
It deals with airplanes and boarding and being bumped from a flight.
I think you know the incident I’m
talking about.
When I first saw the video of a passenger
being removed from his seat, I remember thinking that there must be more to
this story than we are being told. There
has to be more. Surely no business that
wants to stay in business would treat its customers so cruelly without
provocation. There had to be more. I wanted there to be more to the story. I simply don’t like it when someone or some
business fails. I like to see people
standing strong – doing the right thing.
I am a champion for good. But in
this particular case, it seems we were left with no choice. A person, or perhaps a business, made a bad
decision that day.
Now, I don’t want to debate how the situation
was handled. I don’t even want to debate
the whole practice of “overbooking” (Hey, if you want the responsibility of
keeping an airline profitable, then apply for an open CEO position). However, what I do want to talk about is our
fascination with deplorable behavior.
We are people fascinated with the despicable behavior of others. We celebrate the bad side of people. We learn of these situations and announce our
shock ad-infinitum (over and over and over again).
Why?
Why are we drawn to stories or videos
that depict society’s “vilest offender”?
Why are we so quick to label someone as the bad guy? Doesn’t it seem odd that we learn of someone’s
hideous behavior (or some business), and then huddle together around the water
cooler (or around Facebook) telling stories of other people’s failures?
I think deep down inside, these
stories make us feel a little better about ourselves.
Surely, we would have never treated an airline passenger this way. We
would have been courteous and understanding.
Faced with this passenger’s refusal to comply, why, we would have simply selected someone else (teaching that a
person’s degree of importance increases when they protest loud enough). And we make sure everyone knows just how riled
we are about someone else’s behavior.
In our world today, we like it when
someone fails. Oh, don’t sit there with
that shocked look on your face. You know
it’s true. Our society has a fascination
with failure. Our society likes others
to fail because our weaknesses don’t seem all that bad when we compare them
with the failures of others. We stand on
the back of those who have fallen and announce triumphantly, “See! I didn’t stumble. I didn’t have a moment of weakness.” We self-justify ourselves against the fallen,
even though their life was impeccable the other 364 days of the year (Tell me,
how many other similar situations did this airline handle properly? We don’t know, do we? We’re not interested in all the things they
did right. We only care that the gate
agent and airport security handled this one situation poorly).
I am deeply troubled by the amount
of self-justification I see in our world today– the tendency to measure our
morality against the most wicked person we can find. Since we
don’t commit those kinds of sins (dragging a passenger off an airplane), we
feel good about ourselves. But,
according to Paul, we are not safe. We
are not immune to sin, even if our
morality is one or two steps better than the rest of the world.
In Galatians 6:1, Paul says, “Dear brothers and
sisters, if another believer is overcome by some sin, you who are godly should
gently and humbly help that person back onto the right path. And be careful not
to fall into the same temptation yourself.” [1] He doesn’t tell us to gloat. He doesn’t tell us to feel good about our
godliness. He says to be compassionate
and careful. It’s Paul’s way of warning
us that we too will have a bad day.
My friend, I want to see you succeed. I want to see you overcome. I want to see your righteousness shine like
the sun in the Father's Kingdom (Matthew 13:43). I don’t want to see you fail. But if you do, be sure of this; I will not
gloat. Instead, I will gently and humbly
help you back to your feet.
Please do the same for me.
[1] Tyndale House Publishers.
(2007). Holy Bible: New Living Translation (3rd ed., Ga 6:1). Carol
Stream, IL.
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