Good structure doesn't always make good humans

​So, most of my life I've been a bit of a weather nerd. When this nerdiness overcame me as a kid, there wasn't much public science to follow to support my passion. All you had really was a local weatherperson who you just knew wasn't doing much more than sticking her or his head out the window and looking due west minutes before coming on the evening news and offering a 'forecast.'

But today - today we have weather models. And lots of them. It's awesome. These scientific models instantaneously read all elements of the atmosphere to tell us precisely what is going to happen in the weather.

Or not....

I went to bed last night reading some updates from a few 'experts' who translate these models for us. And last night, these models were saying no snow in our area this weekend. Reading some of the comments on these translations, you'd have thought someone was delivering news far more tragic than 'no snow.' Folks were personally attacking the tanslator for the output of a computer. 🤷‍♂️

Then this morning, same models - same 'experts' - the output is different. Those same models now say yes to snow. And in the comments, the translator is being hailed as a hero.

I'm reminded how much we long to have scripts in our lives. How we long to follow them as we search for the safety of certainty. Even though, over and over, we have all been personally reminded one way or another in our lives - there is NO certainty. Especially in the weather!! 🤷‍♂️

The most dangerous application of this longing - this desire to have life scripted as much as possible - is when we get to believing there is only one script - and everyone should be following it.

I think we have institutions - formal and informal - that recruit us with the simple selling point that there IS a script. There's a structure we get to follow. There is certainty.

I think there are relationships we enter into because there is a bit of a commonly accepted structure and definition to them.

I think there are jobs we take because of their structure and defintion.

I think our public education system is built largely on structure and defintion.

I think our churches are all about structure and definition.

I don't think structure and definition are inherently harmful. It can actually be good. The harm comes when we start clinging to the structure at all costs without ever questioning the merits of the structure. Structure can make robots out of our brains, while rendering our minds and our hearts and our souls obsolete.

Seth Godin says, "The thing that gets us stuck isn't us. It's the script we've decided is our only option."

Because if you spend too much time clinging to a structure, you CAN come to believe that your structure is the ONLY structure.

You can come to believe people who aren't following YOUR structure are bad people, at the expense of considering maybe you have a shaky structure. Or at least, you fail to consider it's not the only structure.

Sometimes the things we cling too tightest in the name of certainty and safety, are the things that make others feel as uncertain and unsafe as they've ever felt.

That's not always with evil intent. In fact, it's often because we're clinging to structures when maybe we should be clinging to one another.

Structures can sometimes be good guidance, they don't always make good humans.