running in the same direction
My cousin, who is a hospice nurse and administrator, was having some difficulty with a social worker who lied about her to her superior. Her uncle asked, “Shouldn’t lying lead to an automatic dismissal?” I then shared with them my husband’s three rules of Hollywood, based on his experience working in television: 1. Nobody knows anything, 2. Everybody lies and 3. Nobody cares about you.
I know this sounds cynical. But here are some examples:
- Nobody knows anything. (Example: Every studio in Hollywood passed on making a book into a movie because they thought no one would want to watch it. The movie? “The Godfather.”)
- Everybody lies. (One example: his company was told that their #1 hit TV show would never be moved from their winning time slot. Guess what happened the next season!)
- Nobody cares about you. (The recent firings of late night comedians, one temporary, one permanent, because their presence puts corporations’ merger opportunities at risk shows that people, and even principles like free speech are expendable in service of a bottom line.)
Of course, these are not universally true, certainly not the way David and his partners ran their company. There are other notable exceptions. (My husband was told by one of his employees that he was the second nicest producer in Hollywood. Who was first? Ron Howard.)
However, as I talked with my cousin, we agreed that if these rules are often true of two industries as varied as hospice and Hollywood, they probably apply in banking, manufacturing and many other areas of business as well.
Another of my cousins suggested that that is why we need government to regulate our behavior. To which I simply gave her a wry smile and replied that “everybody lies, nobody knows anything and nobody cares about you” is just as true of government.
What this proves is that what we really need isn’t a what at all, but a who: Jesus Christ who never lied, knew everything about the ways of God and the world and cared about everyone. I wish I could say that the church as Jesus’ body could supply all that Jesus was for a broken world. Unfortunately, over my five decades as a Christian in many congregations made up of human beings, I can attest that everybody sins (and lies to cover up their sins), nobody truly knows God’s perfection and no one truly cares about all their fellow humans, especially the ones that don’t act or think like them. The best faith communities are the ones who admit to this reality.
If you find a church that says, “Nobody here lies, we know everything about everything, and we know how to care for you (usually by telling you how to behave), then RUN the other way! It would be much better to look for people who say, “Through the Holy Spirit of Jesus Christ, we want to be better, more truthful people, we want to learn more about God, and we want to do a better job of loving our neighbors as ourselves…loving our enemies, too. We don’t need to BE right; we need to be MADE right.” That kind of humility can change the world.
On the first morning of our trip home, we were in Chicago and just below our window the Race for Wrigley was being run by 5,000 Chicagoans. Young and old, black, white, Asian, runners, walkers, babies in strollers, were all happily going in the same direction. The announcer sent the groups off with these words: “Stay safe, look out for one another”. I think Jesus would approve.
Seeing this event certainly made this spectator feel more hopeful!
Love, Liz
“Keep your hopes high and be patient, for the presence of the Lord is drawing closer. Since each of you is part of one family (God’s!), never complain or grumble about each other, so that judgement may not come on you!” James 5:8-9
