Now Play Nice!

Apparently there is no lack of ignorance in Hollywood. Big shocker there, right?

Here is a snippet from an Internet posting regarding actress Sharon stone

"I'm not happy about the way the Chinese are treating the Tibetans because I don't think anyone should be unkind to anyone else," Stone said Thursday during a Cannes Film Festival red-carpet interview with Hong Kong's Cable Entertainment News. "And then this earthquake and all this stuff happened, and then I thought, is that karma? When you're not nice that the bad things happen to you?"

Now I don't want to compound ignorance by making an ignorant comment about an ignorant comment made by what appears to be an ignorant person. But what does the Chinese government's treatment of the Tibetan people have to do with the thousands upon thousands of innocent people killed in that quake and the hundreds of thousands displaced from their homes?

And how in the world did "karma" get dragged into the whole mess?

Yes we reap what we sow and perhaps no one should be unkind to another person or people groups. But does the Chinese government give a rip about what Sharon Stone thinks?  I venture not.

Often times I forget that there is a world outside the continental US. I forget that there are cultures different than mine, belief systems incongruent with mine, and governments more corrupt than ours. Nevertheless, life is what it is.

My heart hurts for both people groups, the Chinese and the Tibetans, but bad karma? I don't think so.  God's judgment? I'll not judge that. Population control? No comment. An act of nature? Now we're getting somewhere.

Playing nice is a hard thing to do when people don't see eye to eye on basic issues. If you're involved in a local church, you know that's true. If you pay any attention at all to politics you definitely know that is true. Compromise is a hard thing to achieve when basic ideologies are in conflict.

Almost every book in the New Testament deals with relationship issues in one form or another. On more than one occasion we are implored to love one another, deal kindly with one another, speak respectfully of one another, forgive one another and uplift one another. Talk about playing nice! Yet those very concepts continue to be the biggest thorn in the side of contemporary churches and our ability to live out our faith effectively, for the world to not only see, but admire.

Father God, help us to play nice with one another."