Pep Talk

I hate pep talks. Nothing de-motivates me like a motivational speech. I guess the cynic in me must believe that the cheerleaders are the loudest when the football players are playing their worst. So, when my job had a district meeting, I had to roll my eyes when they passed out copies of the short essay Attitude by Charles Swindoll and then had us read it aloud (as if we were in some remedial English course in junior high).

Something really stuck in my craw about the second sentence of the essay: "Attitude, to me, is more important than facts." When I found out that Swindoll was an evangelical preacher, I realized why it bothered me so much.

To some extent, the essay is okay. I suppose if somebody feels inspired by messages like this, then there's no harm in it. But that second sentence stands out to me as a falsehood; frankly, it's borderline psychotic. Facts are unaltered by my attitude. I can think good thoughts all day, but if, say, I owe the IRS money, then good thoughts or bad thoughts, I need to pay up.

Now the point, you might object, is not that your attitude will change facts, but that your attitude will make unpleasant facts more tolerable. But given that Swindoll is an evangelical preacher, something tells me he wasn't simply suggesting that a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down. And I'm pretty sure he wasn't giving advice on salesmanship for my fellow employees either. My hunch is that he was suggesting that all the inconvenient facts about things like the problem of theodicy, evolution, textual and historical criticism of the Bible, the observable ineffectiveness of prayer, and Christianity's mottled track record of moral behavior can all be shrugged off as other people's bad attitude.

So, not only am I not motivated, but I feel like my intelligence has been insulted. Hey, Boss, do you think we can keep Jesus out of our district meetings from here on out? Thanks.

How's that for a bad attitude?