As much as I would like to bemoan the constant assault of negative news on my mental health, there is an evolutionary reason news agencies lead with the story that bleeds. We remember bad news better. We are hard wired to pay attention to disturbing things. Thus you keep watching or reading the news which sells more advertisements and makes them more money. It plays on how we are created. In the grand scheme of evolution, organisms that were aware of and could retain memory of potential threats and dangers outlived the organisms that didn't.

The end result on us as organisms is that even if dozens of positive comments are given to praise you in a single day, it is more likely that you will remember the one criticism more poignantly. It will stick out because negativity will bother you like nothing else.

This inherent imbalance embedded in our cognitive matter effects our relationship with God. Count how many blessings your received today alone. Dozens? Hundreds? Thousands? I bet you the one thing that sticks out is the thing you wanted from God that you didn't get. Right?

What about your perception of God? How many good things did God do for God's people? But what do you remember most when you think of "God?" I'm sad to say, in many people, you remember the angry vengeful God that invokes fear. It's not your fault. It's an evolutionary trait and a trait born by the writers of the Bible as well.

At a closer look however, is the perception accurate? How many times in the Bible does God actually smote people? It's actually rather rare. There is a lot of talking about smiting, but I can only quickly think of two times... Noah and the 40-Day Flood and the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. At that, we hear in today's First Reading that Sodom so foully corrupt that Abraham can't even find 10 good people there. This is important because God promised Abraham that he'd save the whole town if there were at least that many good people there. That's a pretty forgiving God. How many of us would say, "It would be worth saving all of the Nazis if we could find 10 good Nazis?" I wager few of us would concede to that idea.

As a spiritual exercise, I recently read the whole book of the Prophet Hosea. There are 14 chapters and 10 of them are about God threatening to be wrathful, but he never is. Instead he is generous and effusively joyful when reunited with His people. Do we remember that? Of course not. We remember the threats and the fire and brimstone. We're predisposed to such behavior evolutionarily.

Then why didn't the writer inscribe more chapters about God's love? Why not some balance? Maybe 10 chapters of anger and 10 chapters of the good stuff?

Because God's love and kindness is so permanent and so complete that it is the end of the story. There isn't more to say, but there is more to do. It's up to us to meditate, savor, and enjoy the full gift of God's peace that blesses us again and again. God's loving simplicity may not grab our attention like the cascading onslaught of bad news that befalls us on a daily basis, but that says more about us than about God.

Our response must be to not lose our center. Our survival as a species depended on staying aware of threats, but our flourishing depends on us remaining laser-focused on the good and loving God who cares for us with all God's being.

Saint Andrew School is looking for a dynamic Middle School math/science teacher for the 22/23 school year! Contact Principal Sarah Casavechia at sarahcasavechia@gosaintandrew.com if you are interested.

We have limited seats still available for the 2022/23 School Year!

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