Be The Change That Changes The World

Many of us desperately want to change our world. However have you considered what you are really wanting? In wanting to change the world most often what we are wanting to change is people and how they act, react and interact with their culture. My question more and more is to ponder how well that’s working for most of us because it’s my observation that this desire to change people has had a negative impact on our relationships with one another.

Mahatma Gandhi once rightly said: “You must be the change you want to see in the world.”

There are a number of challenging concepts that come out of that thought. But likely the most challenging thought is that it is an illusion to think that we can change anybody else but ourselves. We know that in our heads but it seems to me that many have difficulty embracing it in their hearts. In our heads we say that we cannot change people, we can only change ourselves but because of unmet expectations the reality is that many relationships are built on manipulation and conditional love. More than most would care to admit, we need to remember the alternate version of the Serenity Prayer, and repeat it regularly: “Lord, grant me the serenity to accept the people I cannot change, the courage to change the one I can, and the wisdom to know it is me!”

But now with that as a backdrop let me share something that I’ve realized lately, and have seen in others and myself. It’s the crazy truth of how unrealistic we can be about ourselves. Why is it that even when we realize we need to change ourselves, our aspirations are often too grandiose? Why is it that we set ourselves up for failure with the unrealistic expectations we have for ourselves?

It seems to me that many of us have bought into the big lie that only big people can do big things. But then when we see ourselves for who we are, we quickly realize that we can only ever be big people in our own minds. From the perspective of having a worldwide impact in global terms, the majority of us will only ever really be little people. That’s the news we don’t like but here’s some good news. As little people, we can only do little things. And when little people do little things great things can happen. Not as a result of little people trying to do impossibly big things; but as result of the combined efforts of lots of little people doing lots of the little things we can do.

What does that have to do with changing our world? Simply, as little people, we all know that there is nothing big we can do to change the whole world. But that doesn’t mean there is nothing we can do. We can be the change we want to see in the world by simply persistently doing ourselves all the little things we wish others would do, but don’t do.

You see for most of us the primary approach has always been to treat others like they treat us. If you are nice to me I’ll be nice to you but if you are nasty to me watch out because the same nasty treatment is coming into your world. The trouble with this an “eye for an eye” policy is that in the end it makes us blind. We are no longer able to see…let alone do…the sort of things that make for peace and love and justice.

The alternate approach is to treat others like we would like to be treated. What would happen if we lived that? What would happen to those small brief daily encounters we have with people? How would it impact our family relationships? Would it change how communities of believers respond to one another?

The challenge that most of us have to deal with is that we treat others the way we expect to be treated rather than treating them the way we want to be treated. However if we are going to be the change we want to see in the world the simple lived out message of the Golden Rule is a great place to start. In other words to truly be a recipient of Father’s grace is to learn what it means to be gracious to one another.