Lesson of the Goldfish
Story★★★★Richard L. Dunagin of Denton, Texas, writing in Leadership Journal, said that his children won four free goldfish at the school carnival, necessitating a Saturday morning family outing to find an aquarium. The first several they found were too expensive, but then he spotted a used one right in the middle of the aisle: A discarded ten-gallon tank complete with gravel and filter. It was five dollars.
“Of course, it was nasty dirty, but the savings made the two hours of cleanup
a breeze. Those four new fish looked great in their new home, at least for the first
day. But by Sunday one had died. Too bad, but three remained. Monday mormng
revealed a second casualty, and by Monday night a third goldfish had gone belly up.
“We called in an expert, a member of our church who had a 30-gallon tank. It didn’t take him long to discover the problem: I had washed the tank with soap, an
absolute no-no. My uninformed efforts had destroyed the very lives I was trying to protect.
‘Zig Ziglar, Top Performance 2Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Spurgeori’s Sermons, vol. 1 (Grand Rapids: MI: Baker Book House, 1983), 258.
“Sometimes in our zeal to clean up our own lives or the lives of others, we
unfortunately use “killer soaps’*»—condemnaton, criticism, nagging, fits of temper.
We think we’re doing right, but our harsh, self-righteous treatment is more than
they can bear.”
The point
Just as soap residue unknowingly killed goldfish meant to be helped, harsh 'killer soaps' like condemnation and nagging can destroy the very people we're trying to help.