On being a good human

Sunday one of the readings at church struck a chord in me.  I know I must have heard or read this biblical passage before, but I guess my heart was just open to it this time.  The reading was from the letter of St Paul to the Ephesians, and the text was from chapter 4.

This is the passage, as presented by ebible.org:

Don’t grieve the Holy Spirit of God, in whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. 4:31 Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, outcry, and slander, be put away from you, with all malice. 4:32 And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving each other, just as God also in Christ forgave you.

If you follow my blog, you know that I'm out of sorts with the Catholic Church, and specifically my parish right now, but I still go.  I'll be honest, after the readings, if the homily is going in a direction I don't endorse, I just tune it out and meditate on the readings.

This one really got me to thinking.  For Christians, this is a direct instruction to be nice.  To be perfectly honest, many professed Christians seem to have missed this instruction.

Then I thought about how just about every organized religion has some sort of instruction like this, and for the non-religious, we have the ethic of reciprocity.

So why is there so much anger and malice in people?  Why is it so hard to be kind to one another?

It kind of breaks my heart that so many good people who are doing incredibly good things are still judgmental and unkind to others.

Just because someone makes a decision that doesn't fit into your personal belief system, they are not a bad person.

There are people that do things that are almost universally regarded as bad, evil or wrong, and I'm not talking about those things.  I'm talking about mistakes, or desperate decisions, or terrible indecision that leads to a bad outcome.

Why is it so hard to find compassion and tenderheartedness for each other?

I have made many mistakes in my 55 years on earth.  I have made decisions that I thought were the right decision at the time, that I now regret.   I avoided making decisions that I should have made, and that avoidance brought more pain and disharmony into the cosmos.  I did the best I could imagine sometimes, and in retrospect, I should have done better.

I can't change my past, but I can use my mistakes to make me more compassionate and tenderhearted in my present and future.

I truly believe most humans are doing the very best they can at any given moment.  Everyone's best looks different.  Everyone is coming from a different normal.  With compassion and tenderheartedness, we create the opportunity to help others see a more loving path.  With anger and malice we close the door on communication.

The more each of us do to bring good karma, compassion and tenderness to the universe, the greater the pool of good to draw from will be.

I am going to try my best to "Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, outcry, and slander, be put away from you, with all malice."

This does not mean I will not speak out against injustice.  It simply means I will try to stand up for what I believe is a more loving and compassionate answer without bringing harm to the human I am trying to help see a different path.

We are all going to make mistakes.   Let's try harder to meet those mistakes with compassion rather than anger.