Why we all need to go “back to school” this year

Our society is descending into chaos. The mass shootings last week in Texas and Ohio showed us the level of wickedness that exists in the human heart. Sex trafficking is on the rise, businesses are cheating customers, and the level of hate between neighbors is seen in every community in America! Every aspect of our society says something needs to change!

When we became adults, we became less civilized than when we were children. Grow ups forgot some of the basic principles that we learned back in elementary school. We need to be reminded of a few things that our first-grade teachers taught us.

Think back to your first day of elementary school. Maybe it was kindergarten or first grade. Your teacher told you a few rules that everyone in school is supposed to abide by. I think it’s time for us to relearn some of those “elementary” rules about how humans are supposed to relate to one another! I think it’s time to revisit some of those simple childhood rules.  The hate and violence in our communities demonstrate why we all need to go back to school this year.

Here’s a few lessons your first-grade teacher probably taught you:

Maybe this is one of the most important we can be reminded of. It’s time for adults to start to play nice with each other like children play with each other on the playground. It’s time for people to stop cutting their competitor’s throat or stabbing their partner in the back so that they can get ahead in life.

Playing nice with each other doesn’t mean that we have to fall over and be taken advantage of. Rather playing nice with each other just simply recognizes the dignity and humanity of others around you.  You can still compete fiercely in business or politics but be dignified in the way that you conduct yourself. This is what it means to play nice with others. I think it’s time for all of us to start playing nice with each other once again.

Clean up your own mess… Don’t expect someone else to clean it up for you! This is a great lesson of which we need to be reminded!  It is not the federal government’s job to bail you out when you make a mistake in business. It’s not your neighbor’s job to pay the taxes that you were unable to pay because of your financial mistakes. Your mess is your problem – my mess is my problem. It’s time for us to stop expecting somebody else to clean up our own mistakes.

Perhaps if we return to the lesson of cleaning up our own mess, we would be less likely to take foolish risks in the future. Maybe we would think twice before buying that house that we know we can’t afford- only to end up in foreclosure a year or two later. There would be a lot less people addicted to prescription painkillers if we stopped suing doctors and drug manufacturers and started taking responsibility for abusing the pills in the first place. This is what it looks like to clean up your own mess.

We all need to be reminded of this simple principle. Because all of us are fallible human beings we will make mistakes. Those mistakes often hurt people around you. Sometimes, we hurt deepest the people that we love most. This means that we all need to say, “I’m sorry” often.

Sometimes the hurt can be a little bit more bearable when the person that did you wrong gives you an honest apology. We all need to remember this elementary principal… When you hurt somebody be quick to apologize.

There are many more elementary principles that I could cover in this blog. However, I’d like to stress just one more thing today… stick together and hold hands. I’m talking to families with this last one.

It’s good for us to be reminded that it is a scary world out there. Some people will hurt you if they get the chance. One of the things that makes the world a little bit less scary and makes us feel a little bit safer is sticking together when things get tough. Troubles seem smaller and problems seem less scary when somebody is at your side. When families hold hands and stick together, life is a lot less scary.