My three year old son, Sev, proudly gave me his set of Alphabet Flash Cards and urged me to test him. He got most of the alphabets right with the corresponding image. But when it came to the letter "R," he said,"R is for flower." The image on the card was a Rose. I then said, yes Sev, that's a flower but it's a Rose flower. What was important to Sev was his familiarity of the image rather than the relevance of the letter's sound to the object.
We often respond to what is familiar to us. The challenge of building a society to embrace morality is that we are exposed to much negative influences. At first we find it logical that certain behaviors are unacceptable. But later, the more we become familiarized with these immoral exposures, it slowly becomes acceptable to society. Our concept of morality is then distorted, until it becomes misrepresented. Take Playboy magazine as an example. Just three years ago, who would ever expect that they would be in magazine stands of malls and convenience stores? We would have been even scandalized to see it plainly in these public areas. But now, Playboy and the rest of the so called men's magazines are just a shelf apart from Kids' Magazines like Disney or K-zone. What about noon time shows for the family? Since when has it been acceptable to see almost naked women dancing with much sexual suggestiveness, in front of our kids while having lunch? What about corruption? Is it already a norm to bribe in exchange of not being penalized of a street violation? Contraceptives are much advertised on TV already, going even further to be put in the context of being single.
Many of us are aware of the analogy of a frog being put in hot water. When a frog is directly put in high temperature water, it reacts and naturally jumps out of the water. But when you place a frog in normal temperature, and slowly increment the heat level, the frog will not realize that it is being cooked to death already. If this phenomenon of moral degradation will continue, slowly our society will not recognize what is moral or immoral until it results to moral breakdown. People will respond more to what is familiar, to what others are doing anyway, to what is profitable and to what gives them pleasure.
So what are we to do? First, we have to disturb the mindset. Second, we have to be creative in our advocacy as not to repel people. Third, we have to collaborate.
Disturbing the mindset means that we pose questions and perspectives that will challenge the negative social norm. It is not preachy, but thought provoking and interesting. It makes people reflect. Then it makes society realize that it is indeed wrong. We interrupt the normal way of thinking by injecting arguments. The way Jesus disturbed the mindset of the Pharisees was by means of parables and analogies. Instead of bluntly pointing to the main issue, the Lord used stories and symbols that were also familiar to the people of that day. The parable of the Good Samaritan must have struck a strong chord to the ears of the high priests. The story of the poor widow who gave her two coins taught us about true offering.
Be creative in advocating. The usual pitfall of advocacies is that it tends to repel and turn off people, instead of focusing on the goal and getting people to buy in. If immoral social norms were creatively mainstreamed, the way to counter is also to creatively reverse them. We want to make righteousness hip and cool. We aim to attract them to what we have to say.
When all the people heard of Jesus' arrival, they flocked to see him... (John 12:9)." We make society more familiar of what is truly moral. I'm not only talking about doing a one time concert but to bombard society with continuous influencing over TV, radio, print, internet, and specially word of mouth. We find ways to mainstream. There are Christian bands that are already mainstreaming. To affect change in governance, Christian leaders through the laity must also mainstream in politics, but in a most credible and creative manner. The author of the Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien, was a known devout Catholic and reflecting his faith in characters and plot of his book. Malcolm gladwell, in his book "Tipping point," talks about how certain behaviors become an epidemic and reach to a tipping point when it becomes mainstreamed. He mentions that there are three types of people that greatly help in spreading an epidemic or an idea. These are the
connectors (knows a lot of people),
mavens (knows a lot of information) , and the
salesmen (knows how to persuade people). To advocate change, we need people like these. We might find ourselves in one of these categories, and greatly help in creatively overcoming immoral societal practices.
Collaborating is the greater challenge. When our convictions arrive at the process of translating it into actions and results, we come to realize that we cannot do it alone. We are humbled by this idea, and we submit ourselves to the goals of our cause. What other groups or organizations have the same cause as ours? What are our "sweet spots" wherein we can work together, even amidst some differences in opinions and backgrounds? How big a force should we organize to achieve our goals? John Maxwell says that, "The size of the team should be as big as the size of the dream." The more we connect and work with groups who have the same vision, the faster we get to our desired change.
We open our eyes to the evil that is eating up our society. There is much poverty, immorality, environmental degradation, and greed. Let us not allow the devil to deceive us by conditioning our minds by familiarization to what is sinful. Instead, let us start to disturb the mindset, be creative in our advocacy, and collaborate to create a movement of change. We call upon the Holy Spirit to empower us as He has empowered Jesus' disciples 2,000 years ago.
But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8)."
