| I don't even know where to begin with this... this may be scattered, but so is my mind at the moment. Here it goes. I know, how about a story?
In this story a prophet speaks to a king. "There were two men in a certain town, one rich and the other poor. The rich man had a very large number of sheep and cattle, but the poor man had nothing except one little ewe lamb he had bought. He raised it, and it grew up with him and his children. It shared his food, drank from his cup and even slept in his arms. It was like a daughter to him. Now a traveler came to the rich man, but the rich man refrained from taking one of his own sheep or cattle to prepare a meal for the traveler who had come to him. Instead, he took the ewe lamb that belonged to the poor man and prepared it for the one who had come to him." The king was very angry, and said to the prophet: "As surely as the LORD lives, the man who did this deserves to die! He must pay for that lamb four times over, because he did such a thing and had no pity." As a whole, humanity is all too ready to judge and condemn others, but we are very reluctant to admit out own guilt.
Over the past several weeks I have seen much finger pointing, lambasting, and conflict. This ranges from the conflict between Palestine and Israel to a homeless man being told that he may not stay at a coffee shop any longer than half an hour after buying a coffee (while I was allowed to sit for several hours). It ranges from the controversy over the President-elect's choice for the inauguration to an unreasonable exchange of words between atheist and theist scholars in "scholarly" works (both sides taking cheap shots and low blows).
To push my point even further, you can just turn on the tv and watch the news. Odds are high that you will just see people yelling at each other in a most uncivil manner. Ugg.
Ugg-ug.
Grah! UGG ug UG!!
Such a lack of compassion and understanding, such a lack of attempts at communication, and such dishonest charades at 'sincere discussion' really make me sick. Now to the wise prophet: when he came to the king to show him his guilt, he did not point at the king. Instead, he told a story, he pointed elsewhere. His wisdom in doing so was great, and I think there is something to be learned from it. He did not come to the king and say "you are wrong because you did x." Instead, he said "someone did x" (he chose to use a story involving sheep, because the king was a shepherd who knew what it was like to care for sheep) and the king passed judgement, "that man is guilty for doing x!"
By doing this, the prophet pointed at the wrong and named it, without pointing at the wrongdoer. He got the king to point at the wrongdoer with him. I don't really know exactly how to tie this up and neatly summarize it except to say that I think the world would be better off if more people spoke as the prophet spoke when showing people the error of their ways. When you point at a person and accuse them, the walls go up and your words fall on deaf ears. You will not get the result you hoped for. When you go to a person, stir their sense of justice and compassion, and allow them to pass judgement on an act; then they will hear you. |
