Will we build a loving world or will we focus on hate and hell?

This world is a fallen cesspool of hate and misery and sin. There is no hope here.

This world is also beautiful and loving and perfect. It’s a divine miracle.

How can both of these be true?

When I entered this chapel to pray late Tuesday afternoon, my frustrated and chaotic mind was firmly fixed on seeing the world at its worst. I saw an image of a world where the people are bumper to bumper on a highway to a hell of their own making.

In the silence and solitude of the next 90 minutes, my mind was filled with the beauty and the wonder and the love of a miraculous realm. It wasn’t just a fantasy, though. I saw bits and pieces of that loving world in people I knew.

As I prayed and meditated over these thoughts, I saw the worst of the world very clearly, but I also saw the best of the world. I struggled to see which one was the truth.

Then I suddenly realized that the window on the front wall of the chapel was like a metaphor. We can choose to focus on the world “out there” — the cesspool we see on the news and all over social media — or we can focus on the loving truth “in here.”

They’re both real. Both worlds are the truth.

But it’s our choice which one to focus on. It’s our choice which one to experience. And it’s our choice which one we choose for our own lives.

When I get angry about the terrible things going on in the world — the ones that bring me down and make me see the world at its worst — it feels like righteous anger.

There really are terrible things and terrible people in this world. We don’t have to look hard to find them. News media sell the worst, simply because bad things attract the most eyeballs. Social media pushes the most outrageous interpretations of the world possible, because the people making this propaganda are trying to manipulate our minds.

And this brainwashing is working.

More and more people are angry and hurt much of the time. They feel as though they’re doing the right thing to “stay informed” and be “socially conscious.” This is what they’ve been taught.

But all it’s doing is hurting them and making them hate the people they’re being programmed to hate. And this process doesn’t help a soul. Even if people end up feeling righteous anger about things that are truly terrible, all it does is make them bitter and resentful.

It changes nothing about whatever is going on.

But because the culture has trained us to live like this, very few people will listen if you explain what’s being done to them. Living this way has become so normal that they don’t know any other way to live.

The truth is that we can choose to consciously shut off those angry and bitter voices. We can stop looking at the things that make us hurt and angry. We can focus on the things we can control.

We can choose to live our lives in a search for love and meaning. We can choose people for our lives who bring love and healing. We can build one another up — instead of tearing other people down.

The worst of the world around me is going to exist whether I live in that cesspool or not.

The best of the world is going to be there for the small minority who choose to be part of it.

Hold both of those pictures in front of your mind. Realize that you can live in one of them or the other. Not both. And then ask yourself which one you want to choose.

I’ve tried the choice of focusing on the worst of everything. I found it to be miserable. I found that it made me a worse person — and it didn’t help anyone.

I’m a better person and I’m a better influence on the people I love when I ignore the worst and focus on the best. My future looks better when I ask myself how I can love people in better and more honest ways.

And love is the core of what makes this life worth living.