Focus on the Postive

Based on what I'm going to be doing, I've gotten a lot of questions from people about my faith. Today, I was asked if I was a Christian. As a Catholic, I consider myself Christian, so I responded that yes I was. However, the person I was speaking with apparently does not consider Catholics Christians and what came next was a rant about the faults of Catholics, and why his denomination was correct. He continued to praise his denomination and the amount of good works that they do. As a Filipino, he was also thrilled I was going to go serve in the Philippines. He had the best intentions, and was very happy that I apparently fell in with his beliefs. I didn't stop him in his rant. I didn't correct any of his overstatements about Catholics. Rather, I was brought back to my recent thoughts on the importance of perspective. I believe that GK's work is significantly more important than difference in religious beliefs. Its about focusing on the needs that everyone can legitimately, positively change - bringing about healing and wholeness instead of ill will and division. We can certainly, and probably easily, focus on the flaws and faults of lots of things around us - be it a different religion, different ethnicity, different income levels - the list goes on too far. But Life is not about what is easy. It is about what is right. For me, what is right, is doing the best that I can for everyone. This encompasses knowing my own strengths and weaknesses, and those of what I commit myself too. We cannot allow our idealism to blind us to our weaknesses. Without honesty on where our weakness lie, we cannot move forward. And as perfection can be found in God alone - everything can be improved. Rather than face our critics with defensive attitudes of self-righteousness, let us be humbled and truly search within ourselves for those areas that we can truly improve. Pray for me as I attempt this - Humility is not always one of my strong points. ;-) God Bless.