Don’t turn tone and style into your man made moral code. Some things can’t be done with textbook diplomacy, the only right way to do those things is to do them. There isn’t any way to do those things in a way that will make all of the non-doers happy.
It’s very easy to sit in the bleachers, see the entire field, and try to teach the coach how to teach the players he practices with fifteen hours each week—after watching a game for only thirty minutes. But, those who are actually in the game keep their peace.
Doing something “the right way” requires doing it. The man who thinks someone else does a thing the “wrong way” when hasn’t done the thing at all clearly did a worse job because he didn’t do it all—someone else did it—and therefore he certainly wasn’t able to do it the right way because doing a thing the “right way” begins with actually doing the thing at all.
Salt is supposed to be salty. We need salt, but it’s easy to complain about it. That complaining attitude creeps up inside all of us at one time or another. Police that tendency. It lulls people into comfort, then complacency, then disarray, then hopelessness. Salt haters end up with bland and boring lives; in business, blandness leads to bankruptcy.
Gadflies are a blessing bestowed upon society because they provoke us to action. Gadflies are especially good at rudely buzzing in our ears when we shouldn’t have been sleeping in the first place. And, most wonderfully of all, they bite us when we are so concerned about doing something “the right way” that we just stand there and do nothing at all.
Nature’s gadflies bite the slumbering horse, making it jump into action. They illustrate society’s thought-provokers like John the Baptist, Jesus, and Paul. Prophets of the Old Testament told the provocative truth. God sends gadflies into society and is pleased with them.
Gadflies take many forms, from writers to local prophets today to outspoken voices in media and politics to witty graffiti artists. God created gadflies as a reminder. Never be irritated with reminders merely for existing.