Complaining about politicians has become something of a national pastime.
And who can blame us?
After all, we’re venting, we’re making others aware of whatever it is that’s bothering us and sometimes, it just feels good to gripe.
Unfortunately, complaining will not change a thing as long as we continue to obey politicians.
Disobedience for the sake of disobedience isn’t enough to move the needle in the right direction.
We must combine our disobedience with goodness to affect change.
Paul Rosenberg has pointed out that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave us a good example of how this works.
Whatever flaws Dr. King may have had, and we all have our flaws, he clearly understood how to apply disobedience with goodness as well as courage and self control.
Dr. King taught:
“We will not obey unjust laws or submit to unjust practices. We will do this peacefully, openly, cheerfully because our aim is to persuade. We adopt the means of nonviolence because our end is a community at peace with itself.”
The key to knowing when it’s time to be disobedient is difficult for most people.
That’s because it’s a highly personal decision that we must make for ourselves and that often means that we’ll likely be operating outside the safety of the crowd.
Until we’re willing to choose and then act for ourselves, whatever we’re complaining about will remain.
But once we’ve broken the immobility of compliance, we quickly stop merely being complainers.
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