Faith Works How To Live Your Beliefs And Ignite Positive Social Change

Lesson Two: Get Out of the House More Often You are the salt of the earth....you are the light of the world. (Matthew 5:13-14) There is a story about a young priest who was very nervous about his new responsibilities. He was especially worried about leading the Eucharistic liturgy. The priest has to say the right words in the right order-for instance, "The Lord be with You," to which the congregation duly responds, "And also with you." The new cleric was concerned that he might foul up his parts of the liturgy, causing the congregation to get their parts wrong too. The whole thing might fall apart, and he would feel like a failure. So you can imagine the young man's panic when he got up before the gathered parish that first Sunday morning, only to realize that his microphone had gone dead. Frantically, the rattled priest began to tap his finger hard on the silent microphone and exclaimed, "Something is wrong with this microphone." The congregation replied, "And also with you!" I sometimes start with that story when I'm on the road speaking because it's always fun to begin with a good laugh. But the story also helps me introduce my next point. After the laughter dies down, I suggest that something is wrong in our society, and that most people feel it-all across the political spectrum. At that point, the heads begin to nod in agreement. Despite the constant claims by politicians, Wall Street's elite, and the media pundits about what "good times" these are, most people sense that some things have gone wrong at the moral core of our society. Something about our values just doesn't seem right, and sometimes, things really seem to be unraveling. But what is actually happening to us, and why, and what can we do about it? That we're not quite so sure about. To figure it out, we are going to have to understand our problems at a deeper level. Raising questions is a good start, but we soon have to decide how far we're going to pursue the answers. To go farther, we need to get some new perspectives. We learn that we can't just take this journey in our heads. We have to reach out to broaden our experience, to move beyond familiar places, and even cross boundaries we never have before. So, our second lesson is "Get out of the house more often!" The Journey Begins To change our world, or our community, we first have to understand it. To understand it usually requires a change in our thinking. And for that to happen, we have to experience more of the world than we can know inside the comfortable confines of our lives. We have to cross the barriers that divide people and, indeed, that separate whole worlds from one another. Most of us are deeply programmed not to venture past those invisible but powerful signs that silently scream at us: No Trespassing! You shouldn't be here! You don't belong here! It's not safe! You won't be accepted! Stay where you are! But I've found that those very powerful cultural messages are usually false, designed in part to keep us from seeing and experiencing people and parts of life that may change our perspective. Oh, it's not a big conspiracy; rather it's all ingrained cultural conditioning that keeps people in their own world and prevents them from experiencing another one. Most of the people I've met who are deeply committed to social change will trace their own transformation to the time when they first went to a third world country, or even just across town to the inner city. There, in a world very different from their own, they had "conversion experiences" that would shape the rest of their lives. It wasn't so much reading a great book or hearing an inspiring lecture that changed them but rather their experience in a war zone, a refugee camp, a youth center, a women's shelter, or an urban church trying to hold a community together. Time studying at theWallis, Jim is the author of 'Faith Works How To Live Your Beliefs And Ignite Positive Social Change', published 2005 under ISBN 9781400064793 and ISBN 1400064791.