I've been in newspapers for 26 years now. And newspapering is a career that can put a dent in your optimism.
Down the years, people have disappointed me, deceived me, and — in one case — roasted me on a spit. I remember the column I did about a youth counselor who had a magical way with the state's wayward youth. He could take a tattered kid and turn him into gold. I praised him to the sky.
Two weeks later he was arrested for selling drugs to the troubled teens he counseled.
I once raved on and on about a spiritual soul who loved children.
He ended up in the middle of a sex abuse scandal.
I tend to turn people into heroes — and regret it later. My eye for sincerity isn't always that good. I'm often disillusioned.
I need to learn my lesson.
I'm not talking here about a lesson that says "be suspicious of everyone." That amounts to giving up on people. No, the lesson I need to learn is this: Instead of praising people for being good, I should praise the source of all good things and just love the people.
I need to take the old expression — "Love the sinner but hate the sin" — and set it on its head. I need to focus on the good and not the do-gooders. Just as people are never evil to the core, they're never saintly to the core. We are all simply struggling souls who need to be loved and understood. Our disgust —— and our praise — should never be directed at others, but toward the ultimate sources of both. It's what Jesus must have had in mind when he said, "Why callest thou me good? There is none good but one, that is God." (Mark 10:18)
I suspect if we could all keep our eyes on the source of all goodness, we'd weather life's storms better than we do. We wouldn't get knocked off our pins when we get double-crossed or discover someone we admire is living a double life.
"Believe in magnetism, not in needles," Emerson cautioned.
If we could just focus on magnetism and not on all the individual needles, we'd never lose track of true north. Even when the clouds thicken and our eyesight dims, we would always be able to glimpse the polar star. If you put all your trust in human beings, you soon get tangled in a web of human flaws and frailty.
It's a lesson I keep learning over and over and over.
Several years ago, a conscientious man I know caused a stir by always speaking out against intolerance in his church. The head of his church banned him from the pulpit.
I asked the man how he could remain a member of a church where the leader refused to let him speak.
He looked at me as if I'd asked the oddest question he'd ever heard. Then he shrugged.
"It's not his church," he said.
My friend didn't put his faith in needles, he put faith in magnetism.
He didn't see people as "good" or "evil," he saw them as people.
Like a running back leaping at the goal line, he could rise above the pushing and shoving and land lightly in the end zone.
I'd like to say how much I admired him, what a hero he was. But that would be undermining the lesson he was trying to teach, the one I keep trying to learn: There is none good but one.
Everything else is just needles.
E-mail: jerjohn@desnews.com