Dirty Laundry Culture
As we launch into this topic, I felt that this would be the perfect place to start. We live in a dirty laundry culture that rushes to judgment constantly. We fixate on all the juicy dirt on anyone and everyone while not considering the consequences of this fixation. Don Henley's song might as well be the anthem of our time. All of this juicy gossip brings us momentary pleasure until it is our dirty laundry that someone has spread to the ends of the Earth. When will we ever learn that we reap what we sow? When you take delight in another person's sorrow and difficulty and do not give them the benefit of the doubt, you will someday reap the very same difficulty. It is built into the universe and you cannot escape it. Gossip comes with an enormous price. It is not a innocent sin that receives a wink from God. Gossip destroys people's lives and livelihoods. Unfortunately, most of us do not learn this lesson until we are on the receiving end of gossip.
The New Puritans
Mix our culture's tendency with other people's dirty laundry and the removal of absolute moral standards and you have today's version of Puritans. These new Puritans follow political correctness down to the letter. They are also extremely adept at twisting narratives to fit their politically correct agenda. They use our culture's tendency toward dirty laundry to destroy their adversaries through allegations. However, they excuse their own sins though virtue signaling. As long as they follow every politically correct cause, they feel themselves to be better than those that do not. However, the ever shifting foundation of social norms, like gossip, comes with a high price. On the surface, social norms seem harmless. A country should be able to determine its own moral standards, right? No. Social norms shift with the mob and you never know when the social norms will shift out from under you. It is imperative to keep up with the latest trends so that this never happens to you. If you happen to miss a new shift, you will quickly find yourself on the wrong side of the mob with your only option being extreme apologies and self-deprecation. Not only must you keep up with the ever changing narrative, but you must also not cross the wrong person. If you do, you will find out quickly how adept they are at twisting a narrative. Every act from your past that does not meet today's standard of political correctness will be paraded for all to see. Depending on how bad you have crossed the wrong person will determine your level of penance and sometimes you will be deemed irredeemable and declared whatever "ist" they find appropriate. The problem with living this way should be obvious. Political correctness shifts almost constantly. It is exhausting to try to keep up with it. Many well-meaning people suddenly find themselves on the wrong side of the mob for reasons they do not understand. Then just like the Puritans of old, these new Puritans excommunicate you or worse because you failed to live up to their standards. Mix this new phenomenon with our dirty laundry culture and it makes perfect sense that our suicide rate has skyrocketed. People, you do not have to live this way. Jesus provided grace for us because we will never be able to meet any kind of standards on our own. We will fail and failure is simply not an option in this culture.
The Ugly Truth of Our Success Culture
If you have taken a "success" course recently, you might have noticed that these courses paint life as if it should go from one success to the next success. Businesses should constantly grow and expand. Our careers should always go up and never down or sideways. They teach us that if we use the right systems and make the right contacts that our professional lives will be an ever increasing proposition. Real life does not work like that. Life is an endless series of hills and valleys. When success oriented people hit a valley, they freak out. One of the ways that many success oriented people deal with downturns involves pulling other people down to make themselves look better. Another way they mask failure is through virtue signaling. The first example reflects using gossip to make yourself feel better about failure. The second one uses the puritan culture to mask your own insufficiencies. Many people do not tie our cultural push for success with political correctness but it goes hand in hand. The new Puritans must always be right and therefore must always be successful. This causes people to hide their flaws at all costs and rush to judgment against other people to distract from their own failures. The name of this awful practice is projection. People very often accuse others of what they themselves have done in order to distract people from the real mistakes and sometimes outright crimes. They need everyone to rush to judgment on the other person so that they can quietly exit out the back door.
What Ever Happened to Forgiveness?
I hope the three previous sections have opened your eyes to the true state of our current cultural climate. People live in constant fear of doing or saying the wrong thing and finding themselves on the wrong side of the mob. Those that feel they have all the power direct the mob to hide all of their own insufficiencies. I do not know about you but I am sick of the mob. I want forgiveness back. I want to go back to a time when people understand that we are all sinners saved by grace. We all make mistakes. We all do stupid things. We cannot go from success to success. I want a culture that understands the hills and the valleys even the valleys of our own creation. This present reality cannot be sustained. We have reached a breaking point to where either we will come to our senses and dethrone the political correctness tyrant or we will find that we no longer live in a free society. That second reality will mean that this horrible state of affairs will go on and on and on.
How Do We Restore Sanity?
Number one, make a covenant with your soul that you will never be a part of the mob. Teach yourself to step back and understand that there is always two sides to any story. Be quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger. In other words, do not rush to judgment. Number two, refuse to play by their rules. Going along to get along does not work anymore. We have reached a point in our society where either you will step up or you will concede all of your liberties. We do not have to define anything by their terms and we do not have to apologize for it either. Stop apologizing for moral standards. The only way to stop a bully is to call their bluff and be prepared for some hurt in the process. When they see you stand your ground, they will freak out and require a safe space. Personally, I do not want to live like this anymore. I have faced the mob down before and it was ugly for a season. Then it turned into empowerment and liberation. Nothing comes without cost but our liberties are worth the fight.
Conclusion
Now let us take this into the early childhood realm. What are you modeling for the children in your care? Do they hear you gossiping about others? Do they see you bully parents into submission over differences? Remember you are surrounded by little sponges that soak up everything they see and hear. Are you very deliberate in getting to all the truth before you judge? The only way we stop this epidemic of rushing to judgment involves both teaching ourselves not to go there and teaching the little ones a different way.
I hope you have enjoyed this post. Goodbye and God bless!!
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