My son and I were mowing the backyard and there was big stick in the path of the mower.
I picked up the stick, and when I thought my son wasn’t looking, I tossed it over the backyard fence into the grassy area. Why? … I don’t know…

Two weeks later, we were mowing again and saw another branch on the ground. This time I told my son to pick it up and put it to the cemented area of the backyard so that it doesn’t get in our way.
To my horror, he picked up the stick and threw it over the backyard fence.
He did see me do it that last time.

It just takes one person to normalize a behavior no matter how heinous it may be.
Think of all the stupid trends that are actually harmful to human beings yet it still became trends.
Why? Because we saw someone else do it and therefore 1) it can be done and 2) it must be somewhat okay (like ingesting tide pods…)

Will Smith once said, “Racism is not getting worse, it’s getting filmed.”
Absolutely true.
But also, in the past 4 years, we’ve seen people more comfortable of being outwardly racist. There have been more white supremacists and Nazis who’ve felt empowered to come out of hiding and bask in the vitamin D that their pale skins have been missing out on.

And if that one person happens to be a person of authority… well…

People watch us.
People pay attention to what we do… more often than what we say.
If you have kids or work with kids — they’re learning from you.
We have more power and influence than we might want to take credit for.

And as Uncle Ben said (from Spider-Man, not the nasty rice): with great power comes great responsibility.

Be responsible.
As Christians, we are responsible for one another.
Normalize kind and loving and good acts towards humanity and the earth.

And live your life in such a way that your pastor doesn’t have to lie about you at your funeral.

This is part of the “WRITE ON” series that I’ve been doing. Most of these “WRITE ON” posts won’t have any depth– it’s just writing for the sake of writing, so I don’t forget how to write. I tell you this mainly because I’m more focused on writing rather than editing so you’ll errors find more grammatical than normal. As always, thank you so much for taking the time to read this!