Ideas and Attitudes

There are many ways to orga­nize, but all of them fail if the peo­ple involved are half-hearted about the project. Democ­racy is a good idea, if the peo­ple are rea­son­able, open minded, well-educated, and civil. Tech­nol­ogy can accom­plish great things for a great peo­ple, or merely be a tool of con­trol for a tyrant. Things in and of them­selves are pretty neu­tral. The men­tal­ity is more impor­tant than the procedure.

I once served a church that end­lessly reworked its orga­ni­za­tional chart, and it was very sur­prised that there was no dif­fer­ent end result. It played orga­ni­za­tional games with­out ever feed­ing a sin­gle hun­gry per­son or min­is­ter­ing to a sin­gle hurt­ing person. I have also served churches that were extremely effec­tive, but almost obliv­i­ous to any orga­ni­za­tional plan. The ener­gies spent orga­niz­ing can facil­i­tate the process, but as an end-result accom­plishes only words and lines on paper.

Jesus had a way of putting suc­cess into a suc­cinct for­mula: Spirit and truth. Truth has to do with accu­rate actions and rep­re­sen­ta­tion. Spirit has to do with the appro­pri­ate atti­tude. Get the right ideas and atti­tudes together and you can turn the world around — for the bet­ter. Spirit and truth work together. In fact, they are a con­tin­uum. In a mys­ti­cal sort of way, they are the same thing. Pour them together and you have Ulti­mate Reality.

Of the two, I have found that atti­tudes are more impor­tant than ideas, because they deter­mine the poten­tial out­comes from the out­set. A good hearted per­son will even­tu­ally find a way to do the right thing. A cynic will do the right thing for the wrong rea­son and thus under­mine the effort. Real suc­cess takes both right action and right atti­tude. Love is the per­fect idea. It is also the per­fect atti­tude. Now to put the two together and do some­thing for the world…