News too negative? God’s word offers relief
I was reading the article in the farragutpress about 9-year-old Aiden Barger when a quote by his father caught my eye.
He said that “there’s a lot of negativity in the news, so it’s good for him to know there’s still good people doing good things …”
This is so true.
I’m convinced the antidote for the negativity that seems to permeate our society today can, and is, found in the word of God.
The apostle Paul wrote in Ephesians 4:31, “Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice.”
If this is our behavior, it is understandable that what follows is negativity. It’s my judgment that this behavior has become nearly commonplace in our society today.
The antidote to such negativity is to replace that thinking with the positive behavior that Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 13.
The apostle wrote in verse 3 of this chapter: “If I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.”
The word love here is the Greek word “Agape,” which is a deliberate choice we make in accordance with the word of God.
So what is at the heart of Agape behavior?
Paul goes on to describe this love in verses 4-7: “Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth, bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”
Life consists of everyday actions or decisions, and it is these that bring ultimate success or failure.
It is our choice to either allow our behavior to be driven by what we read in Ephesians 4:31 or what we read in 1 Corinthians 13:3-7.
