A Different Approach

"Every rational activity aims at some end or good." - from Aristotle's Ethics

In response to my last blog entry about questioning the intentions of my complaining/criticism, I found this quote to be somewhat helpful. I have been reading Aristotle recently. The section that I started reading with was about "goodness", and that each person is in fact aiming "at some end or good". This means that the only thing different between an honorable person in society to someone like a murderer, rapist, terrorist, or bank robber is how they go about attaining their own personal "good". Another variable that Aristotle talks about is that "good" is relative to each person and that those views of what "good" is are far and wide in definition. This last year I have very actively tried to separate myself from what I saw as being "bad" in the church. I saw the shift as being a good thing for me to do, but not until recently have I begun to look back at how things could've been handled differently. The easiest way for us to significantly distance ourselves from God without even knowing it is to never question how we are doing things and see if they are really what we should be doing as followers of Christ.

The conversation that I had with my sister along with the follow-up conversation I had with my father has brought me to realize that although I may have a noble goal in mind, I may in fact be going about it improperly. Maybe all the "good" that I thought I was doing was in fact all undone by the way I went about it. Criticism is a great way to lose respect for something, and if you go about criticizing the same thing for too long you lose all desire to associate yourself with that something. That's the process that I've at least partially been a part of these past few months. My father is always the one in our conversations to look for the good, regardless of how small it is. I have always rolled my eyes at this "positive" comment, usually with me being the "negative" one in our conversations. But I realize now that without him counterbalancing every negative thing I had to say, I would have slipped much farther away from the church than I am even now.

In order to get back to where I wanted to be in the first place, I'm going to have to do a little bit of changing. The church-building should not be my example of what God had planned. That road leads to inevitable frustration. But I need to realize that I cannot leave it, especially in light of the fact that I want to be a pastor...which will certainly have me in the church for quite a while. A quote that I've held onto for a while now says that, "the church is like Noah's ark...sometimes it stinks and smells like *cow manure* but if you get out you'll drown."

Regardless of how noble a goal is, if it is not constantly being assessed and modified, you will lose track of where you're going. The worst thing that you cacn do is lose track of where you're going, because if you wait long enough, you won't even know where you ended up.