Finding Direction: The Wind Vane Chronicles

Okay - the word is gullible. Although, I much prefer trusting.

But, I’ve been called on it, now, some three times in the past three or four days since the Captain Gulf post, so I guess I need to consider the possibility, at least, that that’s what I am - gullible. One long time friend told me, you know, I hadn’t heard that story from Tom, but when I read it I thought that sounds just like Dee Ann. And, he should know. He’s known me since I was 10 years old and we rode the school bus together a couple of hours every day growing up on our farms near our small West Texas town.

But, as they say a lot these days (at least Dr. Phil does) - I’m not going to "own" that one. I’m not sure what that means. I presume it’s similar to what we would call "owning up" to something. But, I reject that possibility about myself for the "preferred" word, trusting. Here’s why.

First, while I hate proclamations that start out, "When I was a kid . . . ", I’ve got to say that I grew up in a time and age where no one I knew smoked or drank and I never heard four letter words or bad language from anyone in the entire town! Those were the days, in a lot of ways. I’m sure some of those things went on, but not in my family at all and not among anyone I grew up with, their parents. friends or anyone else. At least, not around us. Ever.

It really was a time of innocence. It was also a time of strong Christian values on the part of the vast majority of the community.

My kids grew up in more recent times in a small Mississippi town and while things had changed a lot, it was mostly a "growing up innocent" kind of childhood for them, too. I’m glad. Life would be a lot better if that was the way it is everywhere today.

But, you know. life is that way in many places in the world among many people and families because they are Christians. I believe this. I’ve experienced it myself, I know it and I see it in many people around me among neighbors and friends and people I meet along the way. And, it’s a life changing, life altering way of life. Call me "gullible," if you will, but I truly believe that I can trust in this as an important fact of life.

And, no place is that fact brought home to me more than in observing and listening to friends who don’t claim to be Christians and whose "friends" and family aren’t Christian in their outlooks or actions. I have one long time friend who I see about once every six weeks or two months who I’ve known for about 30 years, I guess, and when we get together and I ask her how things are going and what’s going on with her and her husband, she is always relating stories to me that I find absolutely appalling. Her older husband’s kids and grandkids only keep in touch with them long distance when they want something - money - and no other time.

And their "friends!?!" These people are well known and well respected among their peers, I would say (although probably not the ones who know them very well), but their behavior and actions are awful, to be blunt. They may be acquaintances and casual passers by, but they aren’t who I would consider to be friends in any way. They are money hungry and power grabbing and self centered and all in ways that are obnoxious.

My friend is the one I would call gullible. I’ve as much as have said that to her as she’s asked me how I think she should deal with her "friends." I’ve told her that I think she’s crazy to hang around them and to take the abuse. She is. She’s not influencing them in any positive way, either, but is stooping down to their level in a lot of ways.

I’m sorry. That’s not the way God intends or wants our lives to be. I heard Garrison Keillor the other night on "Prairie Home Companion" on Public Radio talking about the 100th anniversary of a women’s Christian university and it’s positive influences in these women’s world and he was saying that "religious" things and ways should be something that comes as natural with us as moving our hands or legs or breathing. I think there’s something to that. It works. It makes a difference in our lives for the better.

We can trust people who live that way. Not because they are perfect or don’t make mistakes, but because their quality of life is better. I’ll choose that over gullible any day of the week.

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