“The Good Old Days” in America?
Stop building the Mosque in New York City United States
We are living in times when our words and actions expose our collective values and personal identities like mirrors reflect a country or us as individuals. It is reasonable to say that these reflections let us and others see our morals, wisdom and ignorance, as well as, our love and hate measured by living lives of good, bad, and evil.
While this is true, we still have a clash of denial and blame. Are we living in a world of change energized by conflicts between good and evil? First, the word evil must be understood because so many of us claiming to be good, truthful, loyal, and patriotic do many cruel, destructive acts perpetrating pain and trauma that are bad or evil by definition. If that is evil, then what is good?
Another way to understand what good, bad, and evil are is to begin by asking ourselves, “What would Jesus Christ say or do in this moment of decision and action?” God’s words and behaviors essentially would be good; in other words, loving, compassionate, and charitable. This is what He said and did two-thousand years ago and what the Holy Spirit is saying and doing today. There should be no confusion about this because His words and actions were and must still be the same as the Eternal taught us in the Beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount, the Golden Rule, the Our Father, as well as, other lessons and modeling found in the Scriptures and many of the Apocrypha. This means that if our living is not loving, compassionate, or charitable, we are not living as God directed; therefore, how we live is not good. Of course, what we say and do may be a combination of good and bad, which is to be sorted out at our final harvest. So, what is this good, bad, or evil construct? Perhaps, bad acts are destructive mistakes requiring justification by their correction and our remorse. If what we do and say are clearly bad with no good in them, executed definitely or tentatively, and are meant to be destructive and painful to others with no intent for redress and remorse, they are evil.
Consider the reality of what we do knowingly, speaking and acting in opposition to the way Jesus lived and directed us to live. Examples of this in today’s cultures being expressed by our words and behaviors could include: giving to the rich at the expense of the poor, meek, and mild; spreading hate instead of being peacemakers in search of justice; defying His telling us to be innocent and trusting like, “these little ones” as Jesus presented children who will inherit heaven, warning anyone who would harm “these little ones” by such as, neglect, deceit, attacks of terror, shock and awe, and depriving them food or healing. He said that what you do to the least of my people, you do to Me.
Where does one begin to reexamine our individual and collective motivations and behaviors recognizing that such a list would be very long and common including: war, starvation and torture, performing evil to increase power and profit for the rich, man’s part in destroying the earth by global warming and contamination, as well as, personal abuse and trauma driven by ignorance and hate. What a short list this is when considering all the chaos, the pain, and the stench of evil that we create and must breathe in every moment of every day.
Oh, for “the good old days”! This saying is expressed by some in a sigh with feelings like those belonging in a dream, or a desire for those times that were so pleasing we hold on to them dearly, these revered memories. Then there are other meanings for the good old days that are more pragmatic sighs coming out of phenomenological fatigue, particularly if we think about current conditions of bad and evil as just another place or period in a historical continuum. We must continue to long for “the good old days” and protect those special moments of sharing and happiness, and not give into the belief that life must consist of continual conflict and senseless stress.
From a historical perspective, were there ever times without war, tolerated abuse perpetrated by one or more humans or their institutions directed at other humans and their institutions? Does any young or old adult remember times without wars, domestic and community violence, financial, ethnic or class conflict? Were there ever universal good old days except those times and relationships that were set like diamonds in human settings of intimacy?
These are depressing polemics. We humans, our understanding and wisdom, or to the contrary our ignorance and hate are in constant change. Nothing is fixed in the physical universe or psychological and spiritual reality except for love and compassion. The inverse to thinking and behaving contrary to loving and being compassionate creates ever growing realities of conflict.
Our emotions can easily become enmeshed in the continuum of hate and evil, which can cause us to forget how it truly was in “the good old days”. There are so many things to overwhelm us today that, when looked at closely, are the same troubles man has created over and over again over millennia that blind our minds to wondrous moments of togetherness and peace. They can remain ours to live, but not passively. Those special moments of “the good old days” truly existed during marriages, births and other intimacies in our collective family lives. They are made to come alive in us and our brothers and sisters through love and compassion. Ah, but what about this world of ours full of hate and evil? We must knowingly resist its decadence by awareness through the grace of God.
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