UNINTENDED GOOD
Please God let the horrible conditions at Fulton County Jail in Georgia (and bad jails everywhere) improve as a result of press coverage of Donald Trump and his allies' arrests there this week. When I was in prison you "visited" me. (Matthew 25:35-36).
I suspect there are a lot of Adult Children of Alcoholics and Dysfunctional Families (ACA's) in politics, in prison, and everywhere there are hurting people.
Having said that, I was inspired to edit the 12-Steps of ACA and apply them to politics below.
Here are those edited steps:
1. We admitted we were powerless against the effects of political dysfunction, that it had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves (or our political party) could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of our good God, as we understand our good God (in all our political affairs).
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves (before the oppositions).
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our (own) wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all our defects of character (judgmentalism, dishonesty, envy, self-centeredness, mistrust, etc).
7. Humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings (to help us integrate, not burden ourselves, our families, and workplaces with them).
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all. (imagine the atmospheric change in politics and prisons)
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and, when we were wrong, promptly admitted it. (I was wrong, "Breaking News!")
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understand God (not praying to win elections, but only for the knowledge of God's will for us and the power to carry that out for the common good).
12. Having had a spiritual (political) awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to others still suffering.
God. Multiply the unintended good in politics and prisons just like You did with the loaves and fishes. Matthew 14:13
Amen