In Jewish tradition, every sin is ultimately atoneable, or forgivable in this life, except one, and that is the sin of desecrating or profaning God’s name, which can only be atoned after death. When we think of profaning God’s name, it’s usually something about taking God’s name in vain, or cursing, but according the Rabbi Rav, the core desecration occurs when those who are most closely associated with God act in ways that would be perfectly legitimate for other people, but that are not for those who proclaim faith. That is, when representatives of God appear to act in ways that do not adhere to the highest moral standards, their behavior reflects poorly not just on the faith, but more importantly their behavior reflects poorly on God, and consequently God’s name is desecrated. In the daily baptismal prayer we have talked about, and have available, we pray that everything we do that day would honor God, but what if we thought about that not only honoring God but also not dishonoring God to others, because what we do matters.
As we continue in our series on the kindness challenge, I had a number of people come to me to tell me that the person they were going to do the challenge for, the person they were going to work on practicing kindness towards, were not believers, which means it’s even more important that our actions match what we proclaim to believe, because it’s not just that we are setting a bad example and picture of Christians, and there are plenty of people who do that already, as we see on an all too regular basis, especially in trying to use scripture to justify bad, or even illegal, behavior, but within this understanding we are also desecrating God’s name, just to add a little more pressure for us all.
And so, we continue then in our Kindness Challenge, based on a book of the same name written by Shaunti Feldhahn. As a reminder, there are three rules or steps to the challenge, in reverse order, are to do a small act of generosity or kindness for the person you are seeking to be more kind to, for the person for whom you would like to have a better relationship. The second step is to find one positive thing that you can praise or affirm about them every day and tell them and one other person. And the first step, and what we will cover today is to not say anything negative about the person either to them or to anyone else. And it’s not to pick and choose which of these you want to do each day, but instead to do each of them every day for 30 days.
But, there is an option for rule one, a potential replacement rule, and that is for men who are doing the challenge for their partner, because what was found was that with many men, as soon as they were told not to say anything negative about their partner their response was “Well that’s easy – I just won’t say anything at all.” A common response for many men, and we’ll talk about that as we move along. So, to overcome just not speaking, the alternative rule for men is to give your partner your full attention, and that means no interruptions or multi-tasking, but your full attention in conversation with your partner for at least 15 minutes every day, and also listening just to listen paying attention to that scary word, feelings, and not trying to solve their problem. And when you are upset with each other, and are talking about it, to stay in the game for five minutes past when you want to escape, unless you know that in your anger you will say something that will upset them more, and then you are to say, “we’re okay” and take a time out, while also saying when you think you may be able to engage again. But men, you can also keep the first rule, which is to say nothing negative, or even, perhaps, add it as a fourth rule in trying to combine them together.
Now, most of us probably don’t think we’re negative people, or that we aren’t saying negative things about others, we might be thinking them, but we’re not saying them. But the truth of the matter is not that we probably doing them without thinking of them as necessarily being negative. There are seven types of negativity, in thought, word or action, that Feldhahn points out that we need to be aware of and work on in order to try and nix the negative, and I’m quite sure that everyone is going to find something here that you do, and so I ask you to first be honest with yourself about your behavior and second to be open to hearing not how you think about it, but about how it can come off to others, and third is to remember that being kind takes effort and intentionality about everything Richard Rohr says “If you don’t choose daily and deliberately to practice loving kindness, it is unlikely that a year from now you will be any more loving.” So here we go.
The first act of negativity is saying “this will be hard.” We’ve bought into the lie that making changes is hard to do. Now the reality, some changes are harder than other, but if we say that it’s hard, it’s going to be harder to do. Another way to look at this is to say that it’s what’s hard that makes it great, that if it was easy everyone would do it. And the reality is that we can change our behavior if we are willing to reexamine our priorities and paying attention to things we probably haven’t in the past, as well as exerting self-control. It’s not a mistake that in scripture kindness and self-control, or kindness and patience, are often mentioned together. Now the flip-side of this is that if we think it’s going to be easy, we’re going to have some problems. One woman who took the challenge reported to Feldhahn that she was doing the challenge for her husband, and by the afternoon of the first day was yelling at him, “I’m trying to do the kindness challenge, but you’re making it sooo hard!”
What we have to remember is that our emotions are indicators, they are not dictators. That means that we can control them. sometimes it requires us to pause before we say what we are thinking, and sometimes it requires us to simply fake it, but what studies have shown is that faking something can have the same positive benefits as the real thing. If you smile, even if it’s faked, it triggers the same parts of the brain as if you were genuinely smiling. The same thing happens with faked laughter. That is, we think that our emotions will drive the behavior, but the opposite is also true that our behaviors can drive our emotions. And so, one of the questions we have to ask ourselves is “What’s my real desire? Do I want to prove I’m right or improve this relationship?” rarely can you do both at the same time.
The second way to be negative is through exasperation, irritation and pointing out mistakes. Perhaps it’s a role of the eyes, or the tone of our voice, or that face that we make that makes it quite clear that we are either disappointed, upset or disgusted or exasperated, and the more we work on it, the more we will realize how prone we are to doing it, without realizing that we are doing it. It’s correcting someone in an irritated fashion, or pointing out a mistake just to make sure they see it. It’s saying someone’s name in a frustrated way (Linda hates this), it’s escalating a situation when provoked, or saying things like “you always…” or “you never…” In most cases, Feldhahn says, these reactions come from losing perspective, and more importantly about making things about us and not about them, it’s about saying that I matter more than your feelings. Feldhahn tells the story of trying to deal with a customer service agent, and what she thought was going to take 5 minutes, ended up taking 45 minutes and dealing with four different agents, to whom she had to say the same story over and over again, and she had lost her cool, and at the end of the call the person she was dealing with said to her, “oh, by the way I want you to know that I really like your books.” Ouch. But we need to remember that others deserve our respect, deserve our kindness, even if they are doing something wrong, even if they are wrong.
The third is the one I have struggled with the most is sarcasm. Now I’m one of three brothers, and as brothers, sarcasm is how we relate to each other. Sometimes it’s all in jest, sometimes it’s a way of protecting ourselves, and sometimes it has the edge of truth in it that seeks to put others in their place. But having been raised with that, it has been a large part of how I interact with people, with all three of those attributes. But, Linda didn’t have that upraising, and was often hurt by my sarcasm, whereas I just saw it as humor. I know it sounds bad, but it really took reading this book to see it as negative behavior, as being unkind, of having to see that sarcasm does not have to be mean to be a problem. That it can be said with humor intended, and it can still hurt the other person. I still do it, but I think I’m better, and there are times when I’ll say something, because it’s sort of natural, and then have to come back with an apology shortly thereafter for what I said, and to be cognizant that our words have meaning. As Proverbs says, and as we heard in James today, our words have the ability to create life and also the ability to destroy it. They are small flames that can set the world on fire, but if we deprive it of fuel and oxygen, the flame will go out, so not using negativity causes the flame to be snuffed out. Now, there is a time and a place potentially for sarcasm or trash-talking to be used, but that should be the exception to the rule, and you can have a wit, but try and removing the cutting from it. But one other way we use sarcasm is to brush off other people, especially people trying to complement us. So, someone will say, “oh, your kids are so well behaved,” and our response is something like, “you should have seen them this morning.” What have we just done? We’ve just dismissed their complement to us. We’ve also dismissed their attempt at being kind to us. Don’t do that. Stop ignoring those compliments, accept them for what they are and celebrate the win.
The fourth negativity is grumbling. Grumbling leads us to have less enjoyment of what we have because we are focused on the negative things rather than the positive things. If we see a report card that has 5 a’s and 1 c, what are we most likely to focus on, and usually the first thing to ask about? It’s the C. Not that it shouldn’t be addressed, but all too often we focus on the negative before the positive, if we even ever get to the positive. It’s about discounting the good things that have already happened, because of the immediate, that is what have you done for me lately. This too can be using a dissatisfied tone. It’s wonder or saying, “what were you thinking?” or saying or thinking “if only you had done this, everything would be better.” It’s beating yourself, or someone else, up over what they did or didn’t do, saying “I wish I had…” or “I wish I hadn’t…” and it’s emphasizing the difficulties of the current situation. Now the current situation might be difficult, and we may be entirely justified in being hurt or irritated or even angry, but this is about the pattern of the response. Is our irritation and anger the exception to how we normally react, or is it the rule? If it’s the rule, then it should be changed. In his letter to the Philippians, Paul says that he has learned to be content in all situations, and by implication encourages us to do the same, but being content does not mean being complacement. Contentment is about having joy regardless of the situation. Do we routinely find ourselves filled with contentment or with discontent? If we are discontent, you can be assured that we are making others aware of it, and who’s to say that we are not already happy, we just haven’t realized it yet? Rather than obsessing on what’s wrong, let’s instead obsess on what’s right or on our blessings.
The fifth way we are negative is with a tit for tat attitude, they hurt me, and so I am going to hurt them. While few of us would think that we are bitter, the definition of the word is “Feeling or showing anger, hurt, or resentment because of bad experiences or a sense of unjust treatment.” That means we rehash old hurts, when we are repeatedly irritated or annoyed by someone, when we vent off to others about what someone has done, that we are in fact being bitter. This also is shown with an inability or difficulty in forgiving someone else, or in pulling away or shutting off conversation with someone else, or impulsively expressing our irritation, anger or hurt to others. Again, there might be a significant reason, and you may well be in your rights to be angry, but is it helping or hurting the situation? Is it helping or hurting you? When we don’t focus on another person’s faults, and we’ll cover this a lot more next week when we talk about praise, then we are less likely to notice them, and when we don’t talk about those faults we are less likely to focus on them, or obsess over them. Among people who have done the kindness challenge for their partners, 2/3 of them said that their tendency to talk about their partner’s faults declined, because they were noticing other things, like all the positives. It also helped people, helps us, to notice our own faults, of the ways that we fall short and see that others are not the only people who have faults and cause hurts, which leads to greater compassion and understanding for others and ourselves, which helps to make us learn how to forgive.
The sixth form of negativity is suspicion, and this is another one that we can think is not negative because we feel justified in being suspicious. It’s saying things like “they didn’t forget to send me an invitation to that meeting, party, whatever, they just didn’t want me to be there.” “They said that because they knew it would hurt my feelings.” “They didn’t really mean that compliment, they only said it because they had to.” This list could go on forever, and negative mind-sets tend to feed on themselves. Again, there might be legitimate reasons for being suspicious, but normally when we are suspicious of someone it’s because we attribute the worst of intentions to someone else, we view their actions in the worst light rather than giving them the benefit of the doubt, or looking for a more generous explanation, which is certainly what we would want to happen for us. And the truth is suspicion ends up being extremely self-centered because it believes that everyone does everything else based upon you. If you look for a more generous explanation for other’s actions, you’ll liable to find it.
And the final negativity is catastrophizing everything, that “is such and such happens, it will be a catastrophe, or expecting gloom and doom from what others do, most especially from those whom we don’t like, assuming that something will never work or that the worst potential outcome is what will happen. If you ever say things like “they are ruining, x, y or z” “they are they worst ever” “this will be a disaster” or saying “That isn’t right” or “how dare they,” they you are probably catastrophizing, and while some things might actually be a disaster, that’s actually much rarer than we think, and it can lead us to be remarkably unkind because we think we can, or need to do whatever is necessary to stop it, which sometimes creates a worse actually problem that what was potentially feared. A lot of this has to do with trust and learning to let go, especially learning to let go of the comfort of feeling aggrieved. Learning to not do this also frees us to find constructive solutions, and, heaven forbid, maybe even working with the people we had just accused of trying to destroy the world. And when we aren’t focused on how the world is falling apart, or going to hell in a handbasket, which is my personal favorite phrase, then we can begin to focus on the things that are right and good, leading us to be more positive and lighthearted.
James tells us that the words we use matter. That negative words can set the world on fire, and we know they can destroy people. But similarly, positive words can also set the world on fire in the opposite way in spreading love and kindness. Jesus tells us that what we think will be what comes out of us, and which is why even being angry at someone leads us to judgment, the same as the murderer, because our thoughts become our words and our words become our actions. So, watch what you think and say and do. But the opposite is also true. That our actions can become our words which can become our thoughts. It’s okay to be angry, and there are things in scripture that we are told that we should be angry about, but the question is what are we going to do with that anger, and how we express it, and it doesn’t have to be done negatively. By focusing on practicing kindness and eliminating negativity in all of those areas that we can transform our lives, and we can even transform the world. Now please remember that perfection is a very high standard, and so we are going to fail and say or do something negative. It’s okay, learn from it and go right back to trying not to be negative, because kindness is only realized when we do it So, my brothers and sisters, I challenge you to focus on removing the negativity in your life and to focus on the positive and to learn not to think, say or do anything negative about or to others. I pray that it will be so. Amen.
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