I am reluctant to use the
title above, because your first response is likely to be that it is about
police and EMTs and firefighters. Since it is about their opposites, your
second response is to be mad at me for “pulling a fast one” on you. That’s
okay, but please hear me out.
I was having lunch with my
friend. I’ll call him Jerry. I had just gotten the news that the bishop was
appointing me as Directing Minister in a large and prestigious church. I wanted
to tell somebody in person, but that was forbidden, because the appointment had
not yet been announced either in the congregation I was presently serving or
the one to which I was going. I really wanted to tell someone, though, and I
knew Jerry would keep his mouth shut.
In a restaurant’s back
booth in the city where he was an associate pastor, over slightly droopy Italian
beef sandwiches, I whispered to him my good news. His face fell. He put his
sandwich down on his plate with two hands. “Why doesn’t anything good ever happen
to me?” he asked the sandwich, in a voice not unlike Eeyore’s.
He was a good friend. Still
is. He’s still a person I would go to first with good news, were we still
geographically close. I trust him. But his life had been difficult for several
years. His first response was not to think that something good was happening
for his friend, but that good things did not happen for him. When he finally
did recognize that he was there with me and not just his sorry sandwich, he was
genuinely happy for me. But it took a while.
That’s true with most of
us most of the time. Our first response to anything is how it affects me, what
it means to me, not to the person to whom it is actually happening. That’s why
we laugh so hard at Sheldon Cooper of “The Big Bang Theory” on TV. His constant
me-first first response is out there for all to see, and we recognize it. It’s
funny because, unlike Sheldon, the rest of us pretend we aren’t like that.
I learned from that lunch
with Jerry. I recognized something universal. It allowed me to make a step
forward in understanding that it’s not all about me, that if it is happening to
someone else, my first response needs to be not how I feel about it, or how it
affects me, but how she feels about it, how it affects her.
That’s called maturity. As
a group, a nation, a world, it’s called civilization. It’s possible to grow,
from being totally self-centered to being only partially self-centered.
So many folks these days
say that since it is natural—a part of our nature—to be selfishly
self-centered, to respond first to and for ourselves, that is the way of the
world and there is nothing that can be done about it so be yourself and let the
most ruthless win as we go about our first responding, because if you don’t get
yours first… and on and on…
They are right. It is
natural. It is what Christians call “original sin.” Original because it is from
the beginning of our lives. Christians also talk about redemption and
salvation, that we can grow and mature beyond original sin into creatures who,
although it may take a while, can do like the real first responders, the police
and fire firefighters and EMTs, and go first to those who are in need to care
for them.
Sure, we are never going
to outgrow self-centeredness entirely. But a family or church or nation or world
where our first response is to be kind and sensitive to one another part of the
time is much better than one where our first response is never kind and
sensitive to others. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
JRMcF
johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com
I tweet as yooper1721.
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