By John Stallings
There is a knock at the front door.
Peeking through the window a mother sees a man & woman both in uniform. They are agents of health-care reform.
“Excuse me ma’am” says the man, “Our records show that your eleven-year old daughter hasn’t been immunized for genital warts.
“And your four year old still needs the chicken-pox vaccine” says the woman.
“He won’t be allowed to start kindergarten unless he gets that shot, you know” says the man—smiling from ear to ear.
“So can we please come in?” asks
the woman. “We have the vaccines right here,” she says, lifting up the medical bag. “We can give your kids the shots right now.”
Is this a scene from the over-heated imagination of a conspiracy theorist? Or does it actually exist in the health-care reform bill approved recently by the Senate?
The actual language in the bill says;--“Authorizes a demonstration program to improve immunization coverage. Under this program, CDC will provide grants to states to improve immunization coverage of children, adolescents and adults through the of evidence-based interventions that are recommended by the Community Preventive Services task force such as reminders or recalls for patients or providers or home visits.”
Can we say, “Forced immunization?”
Should Obama Care pass, it will mean slavery to a system that won't look like anything we've ever seen. Freedoms are already being lost left right & center. In a nut-shell—No more private sector insurance.
Other than our spouse, family members, & maybe a few close friends, what other relationship do we have closer than with our family Doc? In the not too distant future, should the door on Obama Care be passed we’ll never see our doctor again, & in all probability we’ll never again see the same doc twice.
If a restaurant near your home started advertising free food & beverages, what do you suppose would happen? Right! There would immediately be constant lines at that restaurant stretching for blocks.
This would go on for a short time. What do you suppose would happen next? Right again. The restaurant would start rationing their food. They’d have to because of the overwhelming demand. People who weren’t even hungry would nonetheless stand in that line. Obviously now the restaurant would start turning people away. If they persisted in giving away food, they’d have to find outside financial support to help them pay for it.
I could go on with that analogy but I think you see my point.
Let's take a close look at what the Democrat Party has waiting in the wings should they be successful at ramming this socialized health care down our throats. Most of the physicians I've spoken to are opposed to UHC, for one reason because they don't want to become Government employees. They'd also like to keep the medical profession something they even recognize & want to continue to be rewarded both financially & intellectually.
From what I’m able to glean, the road to becoming a physician is one of the most demanding & expensive among all the professions. The cost of eight years of college, then three to six years in residency would leave them about $140,000 in debt. Of course what the medical student looks forward to is the appealing salary they’ll get someday to compensate for all the hard work & money spent. That perk or reality would disappear after the enactment of Universal Health Care.
What would immediately appear however would be a huge new tax burden hung around the necks of already jaded & tapped out American taxpayers. By the way--if Obama-care is signed into law, the tax consequence will begin April 15, 2010.
Doctors who now get frustrated working within the guidelines of Medicaid, Medicare & HMOs, would find ever increasing aggravations with the adoption of universal health care. The way doctors would be paid now; “single payer” would be set by the federal government & would be appreciatively lower than they currently receive. Everything in America that pertains to health care would be paid out of one huge pot, thus the name “single payer.”
Now the doctors would be answerable to a group of politicians & the freedom they had to practice medicine as an art/science, i.e. treat patients as individuals, would leave & have in its place federally mandated guidelines for certain procedures across the board. Now you have a group of highly trained doctors being forced to treat each patient the same even though they might feel certain patients would benefit from an alternative type of treatment. We’re talking about a “one size fits all” approach. But people are different & don’t respond the same to medicines & protocols.
Let’s go back to our restaurant illustration when all those people came looking for that free food, stifling the place. Likewise, under “free-health care” now people would be jamming every medical facility. Because there isn’t a fee, people who before would have thought twice about going to a doctor, now will visit the doctor with minor problems that really don’t require medical attention. So you have people being turned away & you also have longer waiting lists.
Personally I need no further proof of the aforementioned than the experience I’ve had as a minister. From time to time my particular denomination would seek to secure group insurance policies for its constituents but the coverage would generally be discontinued after a few months. Though a letter would be sent to the ministers not to start taking their families to doctors for things that weren’t serious, invariably they’d do it anyway; and this in a church group that believes strongly in divine healing. It’s just human nature.
In 2007, in Canada where they have “free health care” the average wait was 18.3 weeks for surgical treatment. In the U.S the wait is just a couple of weeks. Under universal health care, Doctors will lose the fulfillment of being able to help every sick or injured person & the order of the day would become summarily turning people away due to full schedules.
Many jobs in the U.S would be eliminated by the removal of the current insurance companies. In short, in this writer’s view, “free” universal health care would be a bad deal for all America.
Another downside to “free” health care would be that the government would make decisions for the patient & make rules that the patient must follow. For instance, under this plan, a man could be told to report for a prostate examination at 7: am on Monday morning or risk losing further care. A woman could be told when to report to have a mammogram & if she failed to show, her medical care could be affected.
My wife & I are with an HMO & though we’re happy with the plan, we’re pressured to have more & more tests & take medications we don’t want to take, & won’t. This would be but a small sample of what the face of “free” health care would look like. I realize it sounds harsh to say anything the government runs isn't done very well but I would invited the reader to drive around to the public housing areas or "projects" in their town & look them over. These are government run. Is that the way we want our health care to look?
There are stories coming out of the UK, who’ve long been on free health care, that smokers are told to quit smoking or surgery will be refused. I’m not a smoker but if a government can make rules against smokers, they can conceivably refuse health care to individuals who don’t eat at least five or six veggies a day or get from 20-40 minutes of aerobic exercise at least three times a week.
“Die in Britain, survive in the U.S” was the cover article of the February 2005 issue of The Spectator, a British magazine in which James Bartholomew details the downside of Britain’s free health care system;
“Among women with breast cancer for example, there’s a 46% chance of dying in Britain vs. a 25% chance in the U.S. Britain has one of the worst survival rates in the advanced world, while Americas has the best.”
He continues, “If you’re a man diagnosed with prostate cancer, you have a 57% chance of it killing you in Britain. In the United States the chance drops to 19%.” Again, reports Bartholomew, “Britain is at the bottom of the class & America is at the top.”
Explains Bartholomew, “This is why those who are rich enough often to go to America, leaving behind even private health care. The reason for that is in America you’re more likely to be treated & further, you’re more likely to get better treatment.”
In America, if you’ve had a heart attack, you are given beta-blockers compared to fewer than one-third in Britain. Similarly, American patients are more likely than British patients to have a heart condition diagnosed with an angiogram, more likely to have an artery widened with angioplasty & more likely to get back on their feet by way of a by-pass.
“In the main, Britain’s universal health care system has evolved into a ramshackle structure where even having a test, beyond an x-ray tends to be a rare extravagant event,” writes Bartholomew. “In Britain 36% of patients have to wait more than four months for non-emergency surgery. In the U.S 5% do. In Britain, 40% of cancer patients do not see a cancer specialist.”
Bartholomew tells about a woman named Peggy, an American radiologist who went to Britain to meet her English boyfriend’s family. While she was there, her boyfriend’s father found blood in his urine & went to a local National Health Service hospital in which no CT scans or cystoscopy tests were done. The patient had asthma & lay in his hospital bed with breathing difficulties but still didn’t see a specialist. He was told it would take six weeks. Short of six weeks he was discharged from the hospital. Back home before his appointment with a consultant he died of an asthma attack.
Bartholomew reports that Peggy was “surprised at how ‘accepting’ her boyfriend’s family was.” “What we saw was an unexpected passivity, a lethal submissiveness to systemic incompetence & tragedy, a reaction that seemed poles apart from how things happen in the U.S.” She didn’t say too much because she didn’t want to come across as a pushy, arrogant American but she was thinking that “in America we’d go nuts if we were told we’d have to wait six weeks to see a specialist. Expectations are so much higher.”
As far as the elderly, [and some have suggested that age would start at around fifty] they can just forget it if UHC becomes law. Obama himself has said that-" those old people will have to be given pain pills instead of expensive medical procedures."-Check this out on YouTube.
As a footnote on Canada, the average wait for a simple MRI is three months. In Manitoba the median wait for neurosurgery is 15.2 months. For chemotherapy in Saskatchewan patients can expect to be in line for 10 weeks. At last report 10,000 cancer patients who waited an average of two months for radiation treatment have filed a class action lawsuit against Quebec’s hospitals.
Anyone who has a heart will immediately think as I did; what about all those who can’t afford health care? Let’s take a look at the numbers we’re given.
We hear & read a good bit about the 47 million Americans who don’t have health insurance & anecdotal evidence usually accompanies the figure, dramatizing the tragedy. It’s implied if not bluntly stated that this denotes a scandalous shortcoming of our society, our government & our capitalist way of life. The message is – “these Americans are your friends & neighbors & they don’t have health care.”
But Census data shows that 9.5 million of the uninsured listed themselves as “Not a citizen”: they aren’t Americans. The number of uninsured now drops to 37.1 million, about 12% of the population. The Census data also shows that there are 8.3 million uninsured that make between $50,000 & $74,000 per year & 8.7 million who make more than $75,000 per year. That’s roughly 17 million people who ought to be able to “afford” health insurance. Should we count those who can afford health insurance among the uninsured?
So 37.1 minus 8.7 minus 8.3 now leaves us with roughly 20 million people without health insurance which is approximately 7 % of the population, a far cry from the 16% we’ve been told by the socialized medicine lobby & the compliant media who are obviously too lazy to examine the facts.
The Kaiser Family Foundation which is frequently a source for the mainstream media says that Americans who don’t qualify for existing government programs & who make $50,000 a year total actually no more than 5% of our population. Also the number of uninsured American “floats” & 45% will be uninsured for only approximately four months.
This information begs the question; if all this be so, & universal health care has been an abysmal flop around the world, why would intelligent & conscientious politicians want to try it in the U.S? I won’t presume to have that answer in its entirety, but a couple of answers come to mind. Many politicians feel with a more centralized, omnipotent government things work better. It also militates toward a grand design of getting the people more & more under government control. The proponents of universal health care feel that it has yet to be done by the right people; i.e. –them.
When Mr. Obama talks about change, you can be sure what he's always had in mind was some incarnation of universal health care. This, if it happens will be a quantum leap for America toward the abyss of socialism. Mr. Obama seems genial enough but we knew from the get-go--he’s far, far Left.
It’s a well known fact among serious observers that a major reason communism shriveled up & died in Russia is that people quit working. The reason they quit working is hard work only pays off in a free-enterprise system. But as you probably know, in the last few years, they've moved back toward the free-market system. As a matter of fact more millionaires are now being produced in places like Russia, China & India than in America. This sounds hard to believe but motor-car companies like Rolls Royce, Bentley etc. report that the lions share of their sales are coming from what we used to think of as third world nations.
There’s an ocean of material on the Internet about the pros & cons of so-called free universal health care so you need not take my word for anything. But consider this;
In Canada, while thousands of baby-boomers & the elderly wait for knee & hip replacement surgery, a dog can get a joint replacement operation at a veterinary hospital done in a matter of weeks.
But the real danger of adopting a system like the one in Canada & Britain is not just long waits for medical treatment. Americans would pay much higher taxes & lose important liberties while turning over personal, life-and-death decisions to government bureaucrats.
This article doesn’t presume to bore down particularly deep into the universal health care question because I'm obviously not an expert on the subject, but hopefully it will give some food for thought.
The ultimate question is; does it make sense to destroy, [though imperfect,] the best medical care the world has ever seen because 5 out of 100 don’t have adequate access to it?
THE MIRACLE OF CHRISTMAS EVE-2009
On Christmas Eve of 2009, “Tracy Hermanstorfer went into cardiac arrest & stopped breathing during labor” said Dr. Stephanie, a maternal fetal medicine specialist’s at Memorial Hospital in Colorado Springs Colorado.
“She had no signs of life. No heartbeat, no blood pressure, she wasn’t breathing,” said Dr. Martin. “The baby was… it was basically limp, with a very slow heart rate.”
She said she couldn’t explain the mother’s cardiac arrest or recovery.
“We did a thorough evaluation & can’t find what explains what happened,” she said.
While one team worked on saving Mrs. Hermanstorfer, another team of medics set to work on the child.
Moments later Mike Hermanstorfer was stunned when he saw his son show signs show signs of life & learned his wife has inexplicably started breathing again.
“My legs went out from underneath me,” he said. “I had everything in the world taken from me, & in an hour & a half I had everything given me.”
Mr. Hermanstorfer credits “The hand of God.”
This was a miracle given to us in 2009. I wonder, would this have happened if Obama Care was a legal bill?
When this mother was found with no pulse, heartbeat or any other sign of life, would a doctor have been quickly summoned & asked to establish the time of death? Would the “death-panels” have been consorted to decide if this woman & her baby would be denied life? Would a C section immediately be performed to save the child? I think we all know the answer to that question.
If you're getting anywhere close to mid-life & you feel UHC really doesn't involve you, & so you defer being pro-active in this effort because you can't see yourself needing things like cat-scans, MRIs, knee, hip or any joint replacements etc.- may God bless you & may you be correct in your assessment.
But if you see the dangers of all this, & you believe with the final passage of this unjust health care bill many of the freedoms will disappear that young men & women have fought & died to protect, & you just haven’t taken the time to write & call your representatives letting them know in no uncertain terms where you stand, I trust & pray you’ll reconsider & let your voice be heard.
If you & I work together & pray, God has promised to hear from heaven & heal our land.
Blessings,
John
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
The Pathology Of Misunderstandings
By John Stallings
Many of us can remember the “hippy” days of the 1960’s.
If you remember this era, you’ll also remember the hippies grew older, married & had children though not necessarily in that order. But they didn’t name their kids Melissa or Brett, Johnny or Susie. The schools & kindergartens soon became accustomed to, Time Warp, Spring fever, Moonbeam, Earth, Precious Promise & Sun Ray -etc.
That’s when the teachers & pupils of one kindergarten got acquainted with five year old, “Fruit Stand.” Every fall, according to tradition, parents bravely applied name tags to their children, kissed them good-bye & sent them off on the school bus.
So it was for “Fruit Stand.” The teachers thought the boy’s name was odd, but they tried to make the best of it.
“Would you like to play with the blocks, Fruit Stand?” And later, “Fruit Stand, how about a snack?” He accepted hesitantly. By the end of the first day his name didn’t seem much odder than the other strangely different names.
At dismissal time the teachers led the children out to the waiting buses. “Fruit Stand” do you know which one is your bus?” He didn’t answer. That wasn’t strange because he hadn’t answered anything all day long. Lots of kids are shy on their first day of school.
It didn’t matter. The teachers had instructed the parents to write the names of the children’s bus stops on the reverse side of their name tags. The teacher simply turned over “Fruit Stand’s” tag. There, neatly printed, was the word “Anthony.” Let’s hope little Anthony wasn’t too traumatized by the misunderstanding about his name & let us also hope “Fruit-stand” didn’t stick as a nick-name.
A great man has said that one of the world’s most pressing problems was the misunderstanding among people. Man’s problem has always been our inability to understand our neighbors.
Have you ever agreed to meet someone & had a misunderstanding about the time & place? I’ve had it happen many times over the years. It’s embarrassing as I think about it. Cell phones help a lot these days if we are wrong about the meeting place, but how did we make it without these little phones?
I remember, especially during my college years in the late fifties, how misunderstandings stood between me & what could have been many great friendships. Looking back I can see that is was basically a North/South thing. It’s hard to believe that even in a Bible college setting; there could be this type of divide.
I remember toward the end of my sophomore year, something fluky happened one day that brought several of my northern classmates to my room to hang out for a while. To me they were the “elites” on campus. I wasn’t exactly a “big man” on campus, that’s my point. Not a class officer, not most popular, nor most likely to succeed. Even from a perspective of over fifty years it still seems strange to me that it happened.
A group of fellow male students just sort of gravitated to my dorm-room & we sat around & talked. I don’t remember what the occasion was; I can just remember the incident. No one seemed to be rushed & everyone got a chance to talk. In retrospect, I can now see it was a God-thing, because in our own way we were reaching out, trying to get to know one another. From that day on things were different & we all seemed to see each other in a new light. As we talked, I began to realize that the northern guys were a lot different than I’d thought. It was obvious after that time of fellowship that they were seeing me differently.
Funny thing, almost all of us were preacher’s boys of the same denomination. But still we’d held back on being friends separated -I guess by our geographical origins. We’d spent nearly two years feeling estranged from one another & we may have spent another two years feeling the same had it not been for that get-together. After about an hour of yammering & yapping, we all left feeling, I think- lifted up. But simultaneously we all experienced a little let down because we saw how much time we’d wasted on our preconceived judgments of each other.
As I left college & went into a traveling ministry, I determined not to let foolish misconceptions & misunderstandings stand in the way of friendships.
We’re not in a perfect world, & obviously things won’t always go the way we’d prefer. But if we think “outside the box,” our world will open up & our coasts will be enlarged as we include others from all walks of life. Over the years I’ve ministered in churches in many lands where I was the only white face present but when I could touch their love with my love, all the differences melted into irrelevance.
There will always be misunderstandings. Sometimes we bring them on ourselves, sometimes they’re unavoidable. No matter if you’re “Mr. Mercedes” or “Mr. Prius,” there’ll always be those times when you’re misunderstood. Sometimes the consequences will be benign, other times they can be very traumatic, even deadly. Even if you & I are faithfully following God’s leading we may still become a victim of misunderstandings. Let me flip it & say it another way; it’s not possible for any of us to always be understood. It doesn’t get any better as we age, in many respects.
Three senior citizens were taking a walk one day & they all were a little hard of hearing.
One of them said, “Windy, ain’t it?”
“No” he second man replied, “It’s Thursday.”
The third man chimed in, “So am I. Let’s have a coke.”
WHAT CAUSES MISUNDERSTANDINGS?
1. Careless listening.
We misunderstand each other many times because we don’t really listen to what the other person says. This is a problem I’ve had to be on guard against most of my adult life.
If there are any restaurant servers among my readers, I hope I don’t offend them, but I have this theory that the overwhelming majority of servers only listen to a food order with about 80% attention. A few weeks ago Juda & I went to our favorite restaurant for Sunday dinner. The female server took my order first & as I spoke she was looking somewhere across the room. This lady knows us well so I felt free to say, in a very light & humorous way, “You’re not even listening to me.” “Oh yes I am” she said, & went ahead & took our order.
I felt pretty sure I was dealing with a woman with Adult Attention Deficit Disorder. I told Juda as the lady walked away that if she ever came back, our order would be messed- up. Lo & behold I wasn’t disappointed. Several items were missing when the food got to us. That, in the servers mind wasn’t a big problem because she slowly added little dishes incrementally during the meal. It’s great to end up with Cole Slaw as your desert.
To their embarrassment, two or three other servers had to help her serve us & this woman wasn’t a beginner. Anyway we left feeling that the lady did the best she could that day & we all have our “off days.” Though I use this personal experience as an illustration, I’m hardly in a position to criticize anyone for careless hearing.
Another vital factor in misunderstandings is;
2. Careless speaking.
Jeremiah compares our mouths to a sharp arrow. He speaks of the difference between a sharp sword & a sharp arrow. If one draws a sword, he can always change his mind & put the sword away & no harm is done. But according to Jeremiah, if one shoots an arrow at his target & then he changes his mind it’s too late. Once words are spoken, -like arrows, they can’t be stopped from hitting their target. When we speak abusively to someone we can do permanent damage.
Sometimes seemingly innocent comments can be stumbling blocks for us & to us. There are times, especially when our children are young, when our nerves are frayed & if we’re not careful we can say things that we’ll wish a thousand times we could get back- but the damage is already done. We can easily take out our frustrations on those we love.
Let me give you a poem that illustrates just how “friendly fire” at home can be so devastating. The author is unknown but the title is;
“THE HANDWRITING ON THE WALL.”
A weary mom returned from the store, lugging groceries through the kitchen door.
Waiting for her was her 8 year old son, anxious to tell what his young brother had done.
“While I was out playing & dad was on call, T.J took his crayons & wrote on the wall.
It’s on the new paper you just hung in the den, I told him you’d be mad at having to do it again.”
She let out a moan & furrowed her brow, “Where is your little brother right now?”
She emptied her arms with a purposeful stride; she marched to the closet where he’d gone to hide.
She called his full name as he entered the room, - trembling with fear for he knew that meant doom.
For the next ten minutes she ranted & raved, about the expensive wallpaper & how she had saved.
Lamenting all the work it would take to repair, she condemned his behavior & total lack of care.
The more she scolded the madder she got, then stomped from his room totally distraught.
She headed for the den to confirm her fears, what she saw on the wall made her eyes fill with tears.
The message she read pierced her soul with a dart, It said “I love you mommy,” surrounded by a heart.
Well the wallpaper remained just as she found it, with an empty picture frame hung to surround it.
The book of Proverbs says that life & death are in the power of the tongue. Life is filled with joy when our words are kind & loving but life is filled with pain & strife when they aren’t.
Another thing that can cause misunderstandings is;
3. Preconceived ideas.
This is a matter of a previous mind-set. A good example of this in scripture is the story of Naaman the leper in 2 Kings 5. When this powerful man arrived at Elisha’s house after traveling all the way from Syria to Israel, the prophet sent his servant to tell him to go dip seven times in the river Jordon. Remember Naaman’s words; “behold I thought…….”
Naaman had a very clear misunderstanding of how Elisha would do the healing & was very upset. Naaman almost missed his miracle because of this. He was headed home driving like Jehu when one of his helpers said—“You know Sir, if he’d have asked you to something big you’d have probably done it wouldn’t you Sir?” That very wise statement culminated in one of the greatest miracles in the Old Testament.
A preconceived idea was behind the Jews’ rejection of Jesus as their Messiah. They had expected a Messiah who would lead them in establishing an earthly kingdom, in driving the Romans out of their land & ushering in a period of prosperity. When the Jews saw Jesus, His plan was so far from their plan that all they could do was reject Him. Think about this; all the miracles Jesus did & all His magnificent teachings weren’t enough to overcome their preconceptions.
From time to time the Apostle Paul had to stand before astute men, men of great power & authority. A careful reading of these appearances before judges & magistrates gives us a glimpse into the fact that there were some people who were just unimpressed with Paul or Jesus. The Savior of the world & the greatest Christian who ever lived barely made it onto their radar screens.
In Acts 18, Paul went before Gallio. Gallio wasn’t of a mind-set to spend his precious time making judgments about this Jesus man. It reads like the man was just irritated with the whole thing. Gallio kicked the whole kit-&-caboodle out of his courtroom because he deemed it all too trivial to waste his time on.
Much the same thing happened when Paul went before Agrippa in Acts 25. Here a Roman governor got no more of the essence of who Jesus was than to see it as a dispute whether a man was dead or alive.
What does this mean? To me it means that some people came from such divergent backgrounds they found it difficult to comprehend the teachings of Christ or to even conceive of the importance of this man in the grand scheme of things. In modern day colloquialism, they just “didn’t get the Jesus thing.” Christ to them was “a tempest in a tea-cup.”
WHAT CAN WE DO THE HAVE BETTER COMMUNICATION?
Most people are naturally sensitive & many of us are too sensitive. I can be sitting on the couch with Juda around 4 o’clock & innocently look at my watch & she’ll say-“Dinner will be ready in half an hour.” Sometimes this will happen when the last thing on my mind when I checked my watch was dinner. We can get in the car to go someplace & Juda might do something as simple as just glance around the inside of the car & I might say, “I’ll get the car cleaned up tomorrow.” She often says, “I wasn’t even thinking about that.”
Do you see the nature of the battle? When we consider all our relationships, we’ve got left-brain-right-brain stuff going on. We’ve got divergent backgrounds going on. We’ve got gender differences going on. Some of us might have racial differences going on. We have educational disparity going on. We’ve got generation gaps [our children] to deal with. We’ve got hearing deficits in people we love that’d rather die than admit their hearing isn’t what it used to be. We’ve got people who can “read our minds” to try to work in harmony with. What’s it gonna take to live in happy productive relationships with all this variety? Glad you asked! The first thing is,
HONESTY
If you want to get off on the right foot with others be upfront. Be honest & straightforward from the start. Sometimes when I’m browsing through the men’s section of a department store a salesperson will come up. Very often I’ll say, “I’m not in the mood to buy today, I’m just looking, but I’ll probably be back.” I find many time this takes the pressure off, just telling them how it is; just speaking the truth in a plain, respectful way. [sometimes this doesn’t work.]
TACT
Now I know some folk don’t know the word tact. Diplomacy doesn’t ring any bells with them either. Their tact & diplomacy resembles that of a Bull in a China shop. They have all the tact & refinement of a wrecking ball. I’ve often wondered, if an actual Bull did get loose in an actual China shop & tore it all to pieces, what analogy would we use to describe it? Just a thought.
WISDOM
Wisdom will help us be tactful. Wisdom is promised to us if we’ll just ask God for it. James 1:5. James also said;
But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, & easy to be entreated, full of mercy & good fruit, without partiality, & without hypocrisy. 3:17
LOVE
When people feel loved & cared for it puts everything else in proper perspective. You & I may do lot’s of things wrong, but if we’re motivated by love; big problems or misunderstandings will become small ones.
PRAYER
Jesus found it necessary to pray. Paul requested; brethren, pray for us. In the Bible men would pray & planets would be thrown into reverse. Men would pray & Lions mouths would be locked. Men would pray & prison doors would swing open. Men would pray until oceans & rivers would stand up to allow dry passage. Men would pray & famines & droughts would end. Prayer will bring prodigals home, open blind eyes & raise the sick off their death beds. If you’re wrestling with a problem, don’t stop praying until the answer comes.
God’s phone is Jer333. Jeremiah 33:3 says,
Call upon me & I will answer thee & show thee great & hidden things which thou knowest not. If you & I want to have hidden things revealed to us, we must call on the Lord.
POSITIVENESS
A man & his young son visited a new church one Sunday morning. The father was so negative that day that when he walked out into the Sun, he developed. As they walked back to their car after the service, the father was filled with complaints. The singing was bad, the sermon was boring & the service had lasted too long. Finally the son said, “pretty good show for a dollar though wasn’t it dad?”
Being upbeat with people usually elicits a good response. Sincere appreciation & encouragement are always appreciated.
You’d be surprised how often someone will write me or approach me somewhere & start off like this…… “Brother John, I know you don’t need encouragement- but”…..The idea is, I suppose, [& I’m sure most ministers can relate to this,] that because we carry ourselves with confidence & are never at a lack for words or opinions, that we get a lot of encouragement. The truth is, because of that kind of thinking, many times we get no encouragement. Just food for thought.
Open-mindedness, sensitivity, patience, approachability, a sense of humor, & just being willing to make an effort are other vitally important components in the pathology of dealing with misunderstandings.
Let’s face it; it’s quite common to have tension in relationships because of the realities of heredity, background, experiences, attitudes & values. It’s not the end of the world or for that matter, the end of our relationships if we just admit that there will be times when spouses, neighbors, friends, associates & those in our church will have misunderstandings & we’ll even find ourselves with feelings of estrangement from each other.
One of the world’s biggest problems is man’s inability to get along with his fellowman. Absolute peace & harmony seem to be an illusive dream until we someday find it in another world. The human element; Competition, pettiness, jealousy, & just the nature of man to want his/her own way will make this a certainty.
However, as Christians you & I must realize that God expects us to grow & mature & maintain sweetness in our dispositions especially as we relate to other Christians. Jesus gave an enormous amount of time to laying down His methods of how to resolve conflicts.
We’re told;
Let all bitterness & wrath & anger & clamor & slander be put away from you long with all malice.
It doesn’t take much for one of these cords to begin to fray & our closeness & unity will be the first causality. A home, a church or even a nation that loses its unity forfeits the blessings of God.
Behold how good & how pleasant it is for brothers to dwell together in unity! It is like the precious oil upon the head, coming down upon the beard, Even Aaron’s beard, coming down upon the edges of his robes. It is like the dew of Hermon, coming down upon the mountains of Zion; for there the LORD commanded the blessing—life forever.—Psalm 133
Blessings,
John
Many of us can remember the “hippy” days of the 1960’s.
If you remember this era, you’ll also remember the hippies grew older, married & had children though not necessarily in that order. But they didn’t name their kids Melissa or Brett, Johnny or Susie. The schools & kindergartens soon became accustomed to, Time Warp, Spring fever, Moonbeam, Earth, Precious Promise & Sun Ray -etc.
That’s when the teachers & pupils of one kindergarten got acquainted with five year old, “Fruit Stand.” Every fall, according to tradition, parents bravely applied name tags to their children, kissed them good-bye & sent them off on the school bus.
So it was for “Fruit Stand.” The teachers thought the boy’s name was odd, but they tried to make the best of it.
“Would you like to play with the blocks, Fruit Stand?” And later, “Fruit Stand, how about a snack?” He accepted hesitantly. By the end of the first day his name didn’t seem much odder than the other strangely different names.
At dismissal time the teachers led the children out to the waiting buses. “Fruit Stand” do you know which one is your bus?” He didn’t answer. That wasn’t strange because he hadn’t answered anything all day long. Lots of kids are shy on their first day of school.
It didn’t matter. The teachers had instructed the parents to write the names of the children’s bus stops on the reverse side of their name tags. The teacher simply turned over “Fruit Stand’s” tag. There, neatly printed, was the word “Anthony.” Let’s hope little Anthony wasn’t too traumatized by the misunderstanding about his name & let us also hope “Fruit-stand” didn’t stick as a nick-name.
A great man has said that one of the world’s most pressing problems was the misunderstanding among people. Man’s problem has always been our inability to understand our neighbors.
Have you ever agreed to meet someone & had a misunderstanding about the time & place? I’ve had it happen many times over the years. It’s embarrassing as I think about it. Cell phones help a lot these days if we are wrong about the meeting place, but how did we make it without these little phones?
I remember, especially during my college years in the late fifties, how misunderstandings stood between me & what could have been many great friendships. Looking back I can see that is was basically a North/South thing. It’s hard to believe that even in a Bible college setting; there could be this type of divide.
I remember toward the end of my sophomore year, something fluky happened one day that brought several of my northern classmates to my room to hang out for a while. To me they were the “elites” on campus. I wasn’t exactly a “big man” on campus, that’s my point. Not a class officer, not most popular, nor most likely to succeed. Even from a perspective of over fifty years it still seems strange to me that it happened.
A group of fellow male students just sort of gravitated to my dorm-room & we sat around & talked. I don’t remember what the occasion was; I can just remember the incident. No one seemed to be rushed & everyone got a chance to talk. In retrospect, I can now see it was a God-thing, because in our own way we were reaching out, trying to get to know one another. From that day on things were different & we all seemed to see each other in a new light. As we talked, I began to realize that the northern guys were a lot different than I’d thought. It was obvious after that time of fellowship that they were seeing me differently.
Funny thing, almost all of us were preacher’s boys of the same denomination. But still we’d held back on being friends separated -I guess by our geographical origins. We’d spent nearly two years feeling estranged from one another & we may have spent another two years feeling the same had it not been for that get-together. After about an hour of yammering & yapping, we all left feeling, I think- lifted up. But simultaneously we all experienced a little let down because we saw how much time we’d wasted on our preconceived judgments of each other.
As I left college & went into a traveling ministry, I determined not to let foolish misconceptions & misunderstandings stand in the way of friendships.
We’re not in a perfect world, & obviously things won’t always go the way we’d prefer. But if we think “outside the box,” our world will open up & our coasts will be enlarged as we include others from all walks of life. Over the years I’ve ministered in churches in many lands where I was the only white face present but when I could touch their love with my love, all the differences melted into irrelevance.
There will always be misunderstandings. Sometimes we bring them on ourselves, sometimes they’re unavoidable. No matter if you’re “Mr. Mercedes” or “Mr. Prius,” there’ll always be those times when you’re misunderstood. Sometimes the consequences will be benign, other times they can be very traumatic, even deadly. Even if you & I are faithfully following God’s leading we may still become a victim of misunderstandings. Let me flip it & say it another way; it’s not possible for any of us to always be understood. It doesn’t get any better as we age, in many respects.
Three senior citizens were taking a walk one day & they all were a little hard of hearing.
One of them said, “Windy, ain’t it?”
“No” he second man replied, “It’s Thursday.”
The third man chimed in, “So am I. Let’s have a coke.”
WHAT CAUSES MISUNDERSTANDINGS?
1. Careless listening.
We misunderstand each other many times because we don’t really listen to what the other person says. This is a problem I’ve had to be on guard against most of my adult life.
If there are any restaurant servers among my readers, I hope I don’t offend them, but I have this theory that the overwhelming majority of servers only listen to a food order with about 80% attention. A few weeks ago Juda & I went to our favorite restaurant for Sunday dinner. The female server took my order first & as I spoke she was looking somewhere across the room. This lady knows us well so I felt free to say, in a very light & humorous way, “You’re not even listening to me.” “Oh yes I am” she said, & went ahead & took our order.
I felt pretty sure I was dealing with a woman with Adult Attention Deficit Disorder. I told Juda as the lady walked away that if she ever came back, our order would be messed- up. Lo & behold I wasn’t disappointed. Several items were missing when the food got to us. That, in the servers mind wasn’t a big problem because she slowly added little dishes incrementally during the meal. It’s great to end up with Cole Slaw as your desert.
To their embarrassment, two or three other servers had to help her serve us & this woman wasn’t a beginner. Anyway we left feeling that the lady did the best she could that day & we all have our “off days.” Though I use this personal experience as an illustration, I’m hardly in a position to criticize anyone for careless hearing.
Another vital factor in misunderstandings is;
2. Careless speaking.
Jeremiah compares our mouths to a sharp arrow. He speaks of the difference between a sharp sword & a sharp arrow. If one draws a sword, he can always change his mind & put the sword away & no harm is done. But according to Jeremiah, if one shoots an arrow at his target & then he changes his mind it’s too late. Once words are spoken, -like arrows, they can’t be stopped from hitting their target. When we speak abusively to someone we can do permanent damage.
Sometimes seemingly innocent comments can be stumbling blocks for us & to us. There are times, especially when our children are young, when our nerves are frayed & if we’re not careful we can say things that we’ll wish a thousand times we could get back- but the damage is already done. We can easily take out our frustrations on those we love.
Let me give you a poem that illustrates just how “friendly fire” at home can be so devastating. The author is unknown but the title is;
“THE HANDWRITING ON THE WALL.”
A weary mom returned from the store, lugging groceries through the kitchen door.
Waiting for her was her 8 year old son, anxious to tell what his young brother had done.
“While I was out playing & dad was on call, T.J took his crayons & wrote on the wall.
It’s on the new paper you just hung in the den, I told him you’d be mad at having to do it again.”
She let out a moan & furrowed her brow, “Where is your little brother right now?”
She emptied her arms with a purposeful stride; she marched to the closet where he’d gone to hide.
She called his full name as he entered the room, - trembling with fear for he knew that meant doom.
For the next ten minutes she ranted & raved, about the expensive wallpaper & how she had saved.
Lamenting all the work it would take to repair, she condemned his behavior & total lack of care.
The more she scolded the madder she got, then stomped from his room totally distraught.
She headed for the den to confirm her fears, what she saw on the wall made her eyes fill with tears.
The message she read pierced her soul with a dart, It said “I love you mommy,” surrounded by a heart.
Well the wallpaper remained just as she found it, with an empty picture frame hung to surround it.
The book of Proverbs says that life & death are in the power of the tongue. Life is filled with joy when our words are kind & loving but life is filled with pain & strife when they aren’t.
Another thing that can cause misunderstandings is;
3. Preconceived ideas.
This is a matter of a previous mind-set. A good example of this in scripture is the story of Naaman the leper in 2 Kings 5. When this powerful man arrived at Elisha’s house after traveling all the way from Syria to Israel, the prophet sent his servant to tell him to go dip seven times in the river Jordon. Remember Naaman’s words; “behold I thought…….”
Naaman had a very clear misunderstanding of how Elisha would do the healing & was very upset. Naaman almost missed his miracle because of this. He was headed home driving like Jehu when one of his helpers said—“You know Sir, if he’d have asked you to something big you’d have probably done it wouldn’t you Sir?” That very wise statement culminated in one of the greatest miracles in the Old Testament.
A preconceived idea was behind the Jews’ rejection of Jesus as their Messiah. They had expected a Messiah who would lead them in establishing an earthly kingdom, in driving the Romans out of their land & ushering in a period of prosperity. When the Jews saw Jesus, His plan was so far from their plan that all they could do was reject Him. Think about this; all the miracles Jesus did & all His magnificent teachings weren’t enough to overcome their preconceptions.
From time to time the Apostle Paul had to stand before astute men, men of great power & authority. A careful reading of these appearances before judges & magistrates gives us a glimpse into the fact that there were some people who were just unimpressed with Paul or Jesus. The Savior of the world & the greatest Christian who ever lived barely made it onto their radar screens.
In Acts 18, Paul went before Gallio. Gallio wasn’t of a mind-set to spend his precious time making judgments about this Jesus man. It reads like the man was just irritated with the whole thing. Gallio kicked the whole kit-&-caboodle out of his courtroom because he deemed it all too trivial to waste his time on.
Much the same thing happened when Paul went before Agrippa in Acts 25. Here a Roman governor got no more of the essence of who Jesus was than to see it as a dispute whether a man was dead or alive.
What does this mean? To me it means that some people came from such divergent backgrounds they found it difficult to comprehend the teachings of Christ or to even conceive of the importance of this man in the grand scheme of things. In modern day colloquialism, they just “didn’t get the Jesus thing.” Christ to them was “a tempest in a tea-cup.”
WHAT CAN WE DO THE HAVE BETTER COMMUNICATION?
Most people are naturally sensitive & many of us are too sensitive. I can be sitting on the couch with Juda around 4 o’clock & innocently look at my watch & she’ll say-“Dinner will be ready in half an hour.” Sometimes this will happen when the last thing on my mind when I checked my watch was dinner. We can get in the car to go someplace & Juda might do something as simple as just glance around the inside of the car & I might say, “I’ll get the car cleaned up tomorrow.” She often says, “I wasn’t even thinking about that.”
Do you see the nature of the battle? When we consider all our relationships, we’ve got left-brain-right-brain stuff going on. We’ve got divergent backgrounds going on. We’ve got gender differences going on. Some of us might have racial differences going on. We have educational disparity going on. We’ve got generation gaps [our children] to deal with. We’ve got hearing deficits in people we love that’d rather die than admit their hearing isn’t what it used to be. We’ve got people who can “read our minds” to try to work in harmony with. What’s it gonna take to live in happy productive relationships with all this variety? Glad you asked! The first thing is,
HONESTY
If you want to get off on the right foot with others be upfront. Be honest & straightforward from the start. Sometimes when I’m browsing through the men’s section of a department store a salesperson will come up. Very often I’ll say, “I’m not in the mood to buy today, I’m just looking, but I’ll probably be back.” I find many time this takes the pressure off, just telling them how it is; just speaking the truth in a plain, respectful way. [sometimes this doesn’t work.]
TACT
Now I know some folk don’t know the word tact. Diplomacy doesn’t ring any bells with them either. Their tact & diplomacy resembles that of a Bull in a China shop. They have all the tact & refinement of a wrecking ball. I’ve often wondered, if an actual Bull did get loose in an actual China shop & tore it all to pieces, what analogy would we use to describe it? Just a thought.
WISDOM
Wisdom will help us be tactful. Wisdom is promised to us if we’ll just ask God for it. James 1:5. James also said;
But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, & easy to be entreated, full of mercy & good fruit, without partiality, & without hypocrisy. 3:17
LOVE
When people feel loved & cared for it puts everything else in proper perspective. You & I may do lot’s of things wrong, but if we’re motivated by love; big problems or misunderstandings will become small ones.
PRAYER
Jesus found it necessary to pray. Paul requested; brethren, pray for us. In the Bible men would pray & planets would be thrown into reverse. Men would pray & Lions mouths would be locked. Men would pray & prison doors would swing open. Men would pray until oceans & rivers would stand up to allow dry passage. Men would pray & famines & droughts would end. Prayer will bring prodigals home, open blind eyes & raise the sick off their death beds. If you’re wrestling with a problem, don’t stop praying until the answer comes.
God’s phone is Jer333. Jeremiah 33:3 says,
Call upon me & I will answer thee & show thee great & hidden things which thou knowest not. If you & I want to have hidden things revealed to us, we must call on the Lord.
POSITIVENESS
A man & his young son visited a new church one Sunday morning. The father was so negative that day that when he walked out into the Sun, he developed. As they walked back to their car after the service, the father was filled with complaints. The singing was bad, the sermon was boring & the service had lasted too long. Finally the son said, “pretty good show for a dollar though wasn’t it dad?”
Being upbeat with people usually elicits a good response. Sincere appreciation & encouragement are always appreciated.
You’d be surprised how often someone will write me or approach me somewhere & start off like this…… “Brother John, I know you don’t need encouragement- but”…..The idea is, I suppose, [& I’m sure most ministers can relate to this,] that because we carry ourselves with confidence & are never at a lack for words or opinions, that we get a lot of encouragement. The truth is, because of that kind of thinking, many times we get no encouragement. Just food for thought.
Open-mindedness, sensitivity, patience, approachability, a sense of humor, & just being willing to make an effort are other vitally important components in the pathology of dealing with misunderstandings.
Let’s face it; it’s quite common to have tension in relationships because of the realities of heredity, background, experiences, attitudes & values. It’s not the end of the world or for that matter, the end of our relationships if we just admit that there will be times when spouses, neighbors, friends, associates & those in our church will have misunderstandings & we’ll even find ourselves with feelings of estrangement from each other.
One of the world’s biggest problems is man’s inability to get along with his fellowman. Absolute peace & harmony seem to be an illusive dream until we someday find it in another world. The human element; Competition, pettiness, jealousy, & just the nature of man to want his/her own way will make this a certainty.
However, as Christians you & I must realize that God expects us to grow & mature & maintain sweetness in our dispositions especially as we relate to other Christians. Jesus gave an enormous amount of time to laying down His methods of how to resolve conflicts.
We’re told;
Let all bitterness & wrath & anger & clamor & slander be put away from you long with all malice.
It doesn’t take much for one of these cords to begin to fray & our closeness & unity will be the first causality. A home, a church or even a nation that loses its unity forfeits the blessings of God.
Behold how good & how pleasant it is for brothers to dwell together in unity! It is like the precious oil upon the head, coming down upon the beard, Even Aaron’s beard, coming down upon the edges of his robes. It is like the dew of Hermon, coming down upon the mountains of Zion; for there the LORD commanded the blessing—life forever.—Psalm 133
Blessings,
John
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