Choosing to Not Compare
I have done it more often than I can count. Setting my house, my car, my education, my career, my life next to a neighbor’s, a friend’s or even an enemy’s. I then feel the discomfort when they don’t match. Occasionally I feel better than them. But most often I come out on the losing end. When I don’t have what the next guy possesses, I wonder what’s wrong with me. And it shapes how I see myself. Why have I found that I’m almost always comparing what I have and who I am with those around me?
Sometimes it’s a dark indulgence in envy (read post: Choosing to Resist Envy). I want what someone else has and my attitude sours toward those who have what I don’t. But other times I believe it’s something that runs deeper. I have often studied what others possess to determine the standard by which to judge my own worth. “Who am I and what is my value? Let me decide after watching what everyone else is doing.”
Many of us, I believe, fall into this trap of comparing ourselves with others to determine how we view ourselves. It doesn’t end well.
A Bible Story
Jesus told a parable that illustrates how letting others shape our identities affects our place in the Kingdom of Heaven. In Matthew 25:14-30 we learn of a man, the owner of an estate, who entrusted his money with three servants before going on a long trip. The first servant was given five talents, the second servant two talents and the third one talent. Bible footnotes inform us that a talent in Jesus’ day was worth about 20 years of a day laborer’s wage. Today, if we generalize a “day laborer” as making $15 an hour, 20 years worth would equal around $576,000! The man in this story was entrusting high levels of wealth into these servants’ hands. Why? The best I can tell is that He wanted to learn how reliable each of them were to handle even greater things he desired to give them.
The first thing I note here is that the servants were not equal in their external abilities. They were born with different skills, and the man in charge recognized this. He wasn’t concerned so much with their capacity to produce more wealth for him as much as he wanted to see what they would do with what they were given.
Poor Guy
From the first time I heard this story, I felt sorry for and identified with Servant #3. Yes, $576,000 (one talent) is a lot of money. But his fellow servants were given so much more. On the surface, nothing about this looked nor felt fair. If I were him, I would have immediately questioned everything: the owner’s integrity and trustworthiness, the justice of the system, and my own worth and capabilities.
And it appears that the third servant was thinking just like me. Heavy with what I imagine to be confusion, fear, and shame, he went out and buried the money. Afterall, comparing himself to the other two, he would never be able to make as much as them. So why embarrass himself even more? His personal value had been set according to how he stacked up against the other servants. Obviously, his boss at worst hated him and at best thought very little of him and his humiliation. He was merely a “one-talent” man and would always be less than those around him. He might as well act like it. .
Read MoreChoosing Friendship with God, His Way
I was a child when I remember first hearing the concept of having a “friendship with God.” It provided a welcome relief from the burden of legalism my young perception of religion had pressed on me. But looking back, I now see that this new paradigm also brought a problem. My reference point for “friendship” was rooted in adolescent relationships, which were all focused on what made ME feel good. Thus, while thinking of my connection with God as a friend made Christianity more attractive, it also skewed my image of Him as I viewed our relationship through the fuzzy lens of what’s-in-it-for-me.
Friendships, in my adolescent mind, were supposed to boost MY self-esteem. They were supposed to make ME feel more valuable and less lonely. I was supposed to feel happier, more attractive and always affirmed in MY likes, dislikes and behavior. With the perfect friend at MY side, I imagined MY social awkwardness would disappear; MY shyness around girls would evaporate; I would get more compliments and affirmation. And I would have someone to help ME with MY homework to get straight A’s. The friendship motif was brilliant! Who wouldn’t want one with God?
A Different Kind of Friendship
Initially, I felt hopeful. I had found the secret to the good Christian life: walking through this world with God as my buddy. However, as time went on, I began to experience frustration and disappointment. God didn’t show up as a friend in all the ways I expected. I didn’t always feel happy, and I felt even more socially awkward. Loneliness still haunted me and guilt and shame nipped at my heels. My relationship with God eventually cooled as I began to see Him as not knowing how real friends were supposed to act. He needed to learn a thing or two about how to be there for me when I needed Him.
It was quite a few years later that the truth dawned on me. I had never looked into or thought about God’s understanding of “friendship.” Was it possible that His perspective was different than mine? Was He actually friends with people in the Bible? And if so, were there ground rules? How did they work?
I discovered that there were actually only two biblical characters referred to as a God’s friends—Abraham (Isaiah 41:8; James 2:23) and Moses (Exodus 33:11). God did some pretty cool things for them (friends do that). But I also saw that God laid some expectations on them as well (friends do that too). A friendship with God was a two-way street, receiving and giving (while trusting)—something my immature grade-school understanding had failed to comprehend.
Read MoreChoosing to Manage My Hatred
As a child learning Bible stories, I was intrigued by the Old Testament tale of Jonah the prophet. The idea of spending three days in the belly of a live fish never failed to stir my curiosity and horror. How did he eat, breathe or go to the bathroom? However, I didn’t think at all about the question that now provokes my greatest concern with this narrative: why did God put Jonah through such a gruesome ordeal? Couldn’t He have gotten the prophet’s attention with a method a little less abusive (to him and the fish)? The man finally relented and obeyed (though it doesn’t appear his heart ever embraced it). What was Jonah’s issue that bothered God so much?
Some Bad Dudes
The problem centered on a group of people called the Assyrians. Of all the brutal, twisted, fiendish ancient warriors, these citizens of Mesopotamia, with Nineveh as their capital city, were at the top of the conqueror’s food chain. Their armies had completely obliterated nation after nation. Some of their artistic images we have today show soldiers cutting out the tongues of prisoners of war; flaying captives while still alive, then impaling them on sharp poles. Those they didn’t torture and kill were exported as slaves. The news of their atrocities was calculated to strike fear in every people group they were yet planning to invade. To the Assyrians, cruelty was merely a practical component of the business of world domination.
Jonah would have been very aware of all the gruesome stories. He understood these savage subjugators were making their way toward his home in Israel. “Hate” is a mild word for what he felt. However, when he received the call of God to “get up and go to the great city of Nineveh [and] announce [God’s] judgment against it because [God has] seen how wicked its people are (Jonah 1:1), Jonah did not rejoice over the opportunity to preach fire and brimstone to these sadistic murderers. Instead, He knew the gracious character of God well enough to realize there was only one reason the Sovereign Lord would want His judgment announced: God was hoping the Assyrians would hear, repent, and change their ways. The Lord desired to forgive and show them mercy. But this was the last thing Jonah wanted for his people’s enemy. So he took off in the opposite direction.
Yet even after God’s severe intervention with the giant fish, Jonah’s heart didn’t change, though he reluctantly obeyed the second time. In Nineveh he preached God’s judgment against their sin and announced the coming destruction of their city—hoping all along they wouldn’t respond. However, to his utter disappointment, they acknowledged their evil and sincerely repented. And the Almighty Judge spared the city. The story ends with God scolding Jonah for not understanding His merciful heart for ALL people. The prophet’s hatred had blinded him to God’s larger plan.
Complexities of Hating Evil
Hatred is bad—but not always in the Bible. Proverbs 6:16-19 gives us seven things that God hates: “haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that kill the innocent, a heart that plots evil, feet that race to do wrong, a false witness who pours out lies [and] a person who sows discord among brothers and sisters.” It’s right to loathe evil activity and the injustice it brings. God’s hatred of bad behavior, however, amazingly does not interfere with His tenderness and compassion for people. In spite of the sin that He despises in this world, He does not want anyone to perish but everyone to come to repentance (2 Peter 3:9).
Humans, on the other hand, don’t naturally handle hatred that way. Once we lock onto something as bad, hurtful, unjust, disgusting or evil, we tend to reject and hate everything and everyone associated with it. If we’re not careful, mercy evaporates from our hearts. And we drift from God.
There are a lot of unacceptable things in our world to hate right now. Everything from racial inequities, political corruption, and child exploitation to greed, false accusations, and plain old narcissistic behavior in relationships. The more intensely I focus my disgust on one or more of these things, I feel my blood pressure rise. Typically, while in this state of mind, I find no room in my heart for compassion, and I long to see all offending people and groups pay for their transgressions. Mercy? Grace? Ha! They don’t deserve such things.
Read MoreChoosing to Embrace a Triune God
I was attending college in Southern California when I had my first discussion with a Muslim about the nature of God. He was from Iran, highly intelligent and very polite. After listening to my stumbling words trying to explain the Holy Trinity, using my Sunday-school knowledge, he asked a one-word question: “Why?” I had learned the quaint analogy of the Trinity being like the three components of shell, yoke and white making one egg. There was also the one compound of water expressed in its three forms of liquid, steam, and ice. But no one had ever explained to me WHY the Trinity was important for my understanding of God. Was it? Or did it merely operate as a theoretical abstraction that needlessly divided people? I was speechless. My friend smiled but was kind and let the matter drop.
Several years later as my relationship with God was deepening, I came back to this topic. Besides Muslims, I had since bumped into Unitarians and Jehovah’s Witnesses who ridiculed the absurdity of worshiping three gods. It was intellectually embarrassing. Was this Christian doctrine necessary for my faith? It certainly wasn’t convenient. I needed to explore it in earnest.
Why Trinity?
The first thing I realized was that the word “Trinity” is not in the Bible. It was coined by early Christians to describe a head-scratching phenomenon that careful study of the biblical documents revealed. Not only were there passages that stated there is only one God (Deuteronomy 4:32, Mark 12:29), there were passages where Heavenly Father was referred to as God (Isaiah 64:8, Galatians 1:1, Ephesians 4:4-6), passages where Jesus was referred to as God (John 10:30, Philippians 2:5-6, Colossians 1:15-17), and passages where the Holy Spirit was referred to as God (Acts 5:3-4, Ephesians 4:30, 2 Corinthians 3:17). How could this be? Some might have thought these were just the result of unreliable manuscripts. But others understood that an important aspect of God’s nature was being disclosed. They took the word for “three” (tri) and the word for “unity” and squeezed them together to form a description that in English is known as Trinity—three united as one.
There were a lot of people that didn’t like this understanding of the divine; it didn’t make sense to them. One guy in particular named Arius (Google him) led an opposition movement. He explained that Jesus was not an eternal being of the same divine substance as God the Father who had no beginning. Instead, Jesus must have been God’s very first creation—a powerful but limited, angelic-like being. This idea was easier on many people’s brains and Arianism gained a large following.
Another guy named Athanasius (Google him too) became the outspoken challenger to the teachings of Arius. Besides pointing out the scriptures that reference Jesus as God, Athanasius was concerned about our whole understanding of salvation. He wondered, if Jesus Himself was not fully God, what good did His death do in saving us from our sin? By stripping Jesus of divinity, Athanasius understood that our redemption would be empty and meaningless because only God Himself is holy enough to atone for all the sin of humankind.
In the end, the relentless determination of Athanasius won out, and the Western, Eastern and Coptic Churches rejected Arianism and embraced a purely Trinitarian understanding of God. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit all have no beginning, no end, and work together so perfectly that they are rightly referred to as One.
But, why else?
This information helped. When someone later asked me if Jesus was praying to Himself while He was on earth, since He was God, I was able to find words to respond. The Father and the Son were individuals yet completely united in purpose as one. Therefore, Jesus was not merely praying to Himself but to His Father of the same divine substance as Himself.
However, I still struggled answering the question, “Why?” Athanasius had said that salvation as presented in the scriptures worked only with a triune God. Did this provide an acceptable reason for embracing the idea of three in one, even though it seemingly defies logic? Yes, I could simply choose to believe it. But I still longed for something more to tighten this Christian doctrine into my mind and heart.
Read MoreChoosing to Remove Barriers Between Me and the Father
“I believe in God, but I don’t feel close to Him,” a young woman told me after a class one day. She went on to say how she wanted a better relationship with God, but thinking of Him as a father meant nothing to her— although she sometimes was angry with Him. She had felt close to God when she was a small child, but she could not imagine Him being there for her now when she really needed Him. Most of her prayers felt as if they hit the ceiling and dropped to the ground unheard. After a bit more conversation, she mentioned that her dad had died of a heart attack when she was eight.
Her dad was gone, and she felt that Heavenly Father had disappeared too. Was there a connection? Does the relationship (or lack of one) with our earthly dads influence how we think of or feel about God?
I think so.
A Unique Relationship
I have learned from experience that this is a touchy subject. Talking about God as Father stirs emotions. People have told me that they suddenly feel angry with me for bringing up the topic. Others sob uncontrollably. Still others go strangely numb, feeling nothing at all. Of all the topics I have taught in discipleship courses, the Fatherheart of God has consistently produced the most varied and strong reactions. The cultural background or ethnicity of the listeners has not seemed to matter. Why is this so?
Every human has parents. The power of a mother and father (present or not) in shaping the sense of being and life trajectory of a person is undeniable. While the role of a mother, among many other things, helps determine the foundation of whether someone feels lovable, nurtured and secure, fathers—more than any other role—possess the ability to shape identity and purpose (for good or for ill). Children carry the family name of their dads and longingly look to a father to show them who they really are, their personal value and why they’re in this particular family and even on this earth. To have a dad’s undivided attention, patient input, guidance and adoration is every kid’s dream.
Responding to a Father
Most everyone I talk with is moved by the idea that God has strong feelings of affection for each one of His children (read post: Choosing to Find My Place in the Father’s Heart). But when we get to the part about each of us reciprocating affection back to the Father, things get complex. Many do not know how to respond to a father’s genuine love because they have rarely if ever seen or experienced it. Or it’s been nuanced in such a way that it’s indiscernible. At this impasse, the wide mix of emotions surface, and many choose to not explore what’s going on.
Whether we like it or not, fathers (in our lives or not) have left deep imprints on who we are, our ability to trust, our sense of personal value and where we believe we’re going in life. They have also set a pattern that has determined much of how we respond to the idea of God as Father. I am convinced that if we want to grow in our relationship with God, we must look honestly at the kind of earthly dads we were given. Honestly acknowledging the truth about their human strengths, weaknesses and failures, can put us into a better position to receive the love, affirmation and clarity of identity that our Heavenly Father is longing to give.
Dads Shape our Image of Father
Below are six categories that I believe help identify the type of father-image we grew up with. They are generalizations. Real life is more complex. None of them precisely describe everyone’s experience. But they can provide words for the father image we’ve been carrying. In most cases our dads will be combinations of multiple points.
Read MoreChoosing to Find My Place in the Father’s Heart
I vividly remember the moment I became a dad. My daughter was a tiny thing, just over five pounds. Holding her, I couldn’t comprehend the strange feelings pulsing inside me. As I looked into her little face, I thought, “I don’t even know you, yet I’m sure I would die for you.”
That was my introduction to the emotions of being a father. I was surprised with the overwhelming affection I felt for this naked, helpless, yet demanding creature. It wasn’t long before another thought rocked my reality. If I, an imperfect human and dad, can feel this strongly about my child, then what does my Heavenly Father feel toward me? The thought brought tears. Can I be loved with such strong affection by a holy, all-powerful God? And just as I was getting lost in these reflections, something warm ran down my arm. My precious little girl had peed on me. But did that change how I felt about her? Not in the slightest!
The Unmoved Mover?
I enjoy theology. For me, it’s thinking about God, what He’s like, what His motivations and desires are and how we humans can possibly connect with Him. Unfortunately, some theological thought can lead people away from a relationship with God as they wander down paths that tarnish His character or drill into only one aspect of the infinite spectrum of His qualities. Thinkers of the past, like Thomas Aquinas and Aristotle, have been referenced to make a case for God as a being who does not experience emotion. It’s called the doctrine of Divine Impassibility. The basic (extremely simplified) idea is that God doesn’t change (which I agree with). Emotions are so changeable (which I also agree with). Therefore, God doesn’t experience emotions (not sure I agree with that one).
The logic makes some sense, but there are some additional matters that need to be considered. While human emotions can have us happy one moment and depressed the next as we respond to circumstances or brain chemicals, God is different with everything about Him stable and righteous. Nevertheless, the Bible presents the Almighty at various times as delighted, grieved, joyful, regretful, angry and tender. It’s always in the context, however, of His righteous character interacting with the imperfect, unrighteous ones He loves—never merely out-of-control, knee-jerk impulses. His goodness and holiness are constant throughout the scriptures. We could say that His emotions do not control Him, but at various times they highlight what He values. Overall, it appears to me that God has feelings and that He is rightly moved by them.
A Father’s Heart
The New Testament carries a strong theme of God as our Father. Does that mean He has the feelings of a dad toward His kids? I think so.
Read MoreChoosing to Wait
Recently I assisted my two young granddaughters in making a craft/snack project. With the help of their grandmother, we made little “bird nests” out of peanut butter, chocolate and crunchy chow mein noodles. As a final touch, we placed three colorful jelly beans in each. The girls were delighted, especially when I told them we could eat them later. However, every time a nest was full, and I glanced away for a moment, my gaze returned to find an “egg” or two missing. Delayed gratification is a foreign concept for two and three year olds.
It’s not until a child is five or older that she can even begin to comprehend the benefits of restraining those immediate urges. I like to think that I have moved beyond preschoolers in the self-control department. However, when I step on the scale and grimace at the number that appears, why do I not stop my unhealthy late-night snacking? Satisfying my short-term appetites still dominates much of my behavior. Studies have shown that those who learn to defer gratification have greater success in many areas of life—academic and social competence as well as physical and psychological health. Might it also apply to spiritual wholeness and well-being?
What’s so good about waiting?
Of course, one of the Fruits of the Spirit is self control (Galatians 5:22). This tells me that an indicator of the indwelling Spirit of God is my own spirit’s ability to govern itself according to God’s desires and design. A lack of self control implies that there are still resistors within impeding the flow of the Holy Spirit’s presence and will. Fruit, afterall, naturally appears on healthy plants. Thus difficulty in managing my negative impulses, be they angry, controlling, eating, sexual or verbal, indicates God’s Spirit does not yet have full sway in my life.
It’s also a matter of what has my attention in the moment. One of the conditions that hinders the development of deferred gratification is a focus on avoiding discomfort with little-to-no thought for future ramifications. Like most everyone, I want to feel good and satisfied now. I appreciate the immediate benefits the Bible presents to followers of Jesus, like peace, joy and forgiveness as we put our faith in Him. But much of what the scriptures offer are promises for the future.
Hope is the confidence that there is good ahead regardless how life is going at the moment. The way things are today—difficult, negative or evil—is not how they’re going to remain. That’s hope! The problem, however, is that we often place it in things, events, advice or people that are not reliable or at best short-term (read “Choosing to Put My Hope in Something Worthy”). Much of what Jesus told His followers had them looking into the future with growing expectation. In fact, to be a follower of Jesus even today one must let go of demanding that every question, problem, pain, doubt or discomfort be resolved instantly—or even in this lifetime. Resolution is coming, though we don’t see or feel it now. Patience, also called long-suffering, is one of the most difficult yet necessary virtues for us to embrace as long-term Jesus followers.
Read MoreChoosing to Desire Well
I was encouraged as a child to memorize the Ten Commandments. The meaning of the rules seemed clear to me except the last one. “Thou shalt not covet.” Around that same age, I heard the word “covenant” used in a Sunday-morning sermon. Jesus had come to make a new covenant with us. It seemed strange then that God commanded us not to do something that Jesus came to give us. Years later I sorted out the difference. But even today, the meaning of the word “covet” can be fuzzy for me and many Jesus followers. How did it make it into the list of the Big Ten? Why is coveting so bad?
I eventually concluded that coveting is all about desiring things I don’t have. This understanding fed a mindset I had developed growing up that it was best to not want things so I wouldn’t be disappointed. As a result, I taught myself to live with little, letting desires die that felt beyond my reach, labeling many of them as “bad.” The reasoning was usually something like this: if I desire it, it must not be God’s will. This worked fine when I was single but didn’t fly once I got married and started a family. Those dependent on me didn’t have the same tolerance for doing without. And there was also that growing suspicion that many desires weren’t dead, just buried and still trying to come out of the grave—zombie-like. Cravings deep inside were still longing to be satisfied. And I was afraid of the temptations and disappointments I would have to face if they ever made it to the surface.
What’s the Focus of My Desire?
Here’s one English dictionary definition of the word “covet”: “to desire wrongfully, inordinately or without due regard for the rights of others.” This is helpful, but there’s more to it. The original Hebrew word “chamad” translated into English as “covet” simply means “desire.” The same Hebrew word is used in Psalm 19:10 where the writer is reflecting on the goodness of the Lord’s commandments: “More to be desired [chamad] are they than gold, even much fine gold; sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb.” Is the Bible saying there are desires that are good and should be encouraged?
Okay. But what scares me about my desires is that they seem unlimited and can so easily get out of control. In fact, they have gotten out of control in the past, many times. Yet I read scriptures like Psalm 37:4 “Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.” What exactly are those? And if there are desires God wants to fulfill, how do I identify them?
Read MoreChoosing to Choose
Someone once pulled me aside after a class I taught and said something close to the following: “I can’t believe that God is loving. He put people in the Garden along with a tree He told them not to touch, saying it would lead to their death. He set them up to fall. How can He be good?”
I don’t remember my immediate response, but I’ve since pondered that final question quite a bit. Why would God deliberately place a deadly forbidden object within the easy reach of those He claimed to love? No responsible parent today would keep an open box of poison in their home within reach of their small child and simply say, “Don’t touch it, or you will die.” Child Protection Services would have good reason to investigate.
In all my reflections, I have always chosen to start with the premise that God is good. That’s what the Bible states over and over, and it seems fair to study a Bible story within the context of the Bible as a whole. So, I ask myself, how does this tree-leading-to-death scenario in Eden fit into God’s loving character? As Creator, couldn’t He have put such a tree beyond human reach, or better yet not have made it at all? What was His purpose, and how could it possibly be good?
Genesis chapter 2 tells us that the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was accessible yet forbidden. But there was another tree in the Garden with no restrictions on it—The Tree of Life. It seems that God wanted them to eat the fruit of this second tree. It would ensure they always had His divine life within them. Instead in a crazy twist, they chose the forbidden fruit that promised death. Wouldn’t it have been better if God had not given them a choice at all?
What’s the Big Deal About Choices?
“Free-will” is an idea I hear thrown around in philosophical and theological discussions, but what is it, and why is it controversial? According to an online dictionary it is “the power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate; the ability to act at one’s own discretion.” In other words, to possess free will means that I can make choices that are purely my own, that originate within myself. My will is mine. It may be influenced by outside forces, be they the manipulations and demands of other people, my family history, my own bad habits or my inherited DNA. The concept of free-will, however, says I can choose to disregard all influences and do things that go against my biology, my genealogy, my social environment and even my past choices. I can do unexpected, contradictory things simply because, in my own heart, I decide to. At least that’s the theory.
Read MoreChoosing to Not Point My Finger
The note was addressed to the leadership of our ministry, but for some reason it was put in my box to deal with. A few weeks earlier our facility had been used as a wedding venue. Several of our ministry staff volunteered to help with the logistics of the celebration. A couple hundred people had sat through the ceremony and then stood in a reception line before sitting down for a meal. Part of the line went up a short flight of stairs. The note was from someone who attended the wedding and observed an elderly man struggle to get up the five steps. The writer was deeply concerned that no one assisted the man. The punch line of the message was, “How can you call yourselves a Christian mission organization when not one of your staff helped him? I will certainly never support your ministry when you won’t even serve the needy in your own building.”
My first impulse was anger. How can this person blame us for something that dozens of others stood and passively watched? Our staff were in the kitchen helping prepare the meal; they weren’t even there. And where was the note-writer in all this? Why didn’t she provide the needed assistance? But then after a few minutes of stewing, I felt the pang of the allegation. Why didn’t one of us help? How did we not notice this need? Were there others who thought badly about us? How could we show people that we really are good?
What’s under the surface?
Sure, there are situations where charges of wrongdoing are appropriate and need to be made. When we see injustice, almost everyone desires it to be made right. People should be held accountable for hurtful behavior so that changes can be instituted and wrongs corrected. But behind many informal indictments of wrong doing there is more going on. Accusers want to see someone suffer for the hurt that’s been inflicted. The urge for payback is strong when a person has been offended or unjustly treated (read post on Anger). And then there are times when accusers are projecting their own sense of guilt or shame onto another (which is what I believe was happening with the note-writer). Finding someone to blame for the wrong around us or our own failings seems as natural as breathing. However, accusations thrown at others easily morph into full-fledged judgments and plots for vengeance.
But, with what are we aligning ourselves when we become finger pointers?
Jesus said, “Do not judge others, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn others, or it will come back against you. Forgive others, and you will be forgiven” (Luke 6:37 NLT). There is a “boomerang” spirit that is loosed when I begin to damn others for their sins and failings. I can’t escape being negatively affected as much, if not more, than the person I’m condemning. When I zero-in on another person’s fault, bad behavior or transgression, be it legitimate or merely something I’m imagining, I end up rehearsing the offense over and over in my thoughts. It easily plants itself and grows. The Bible calls it a root of bitterness (Hebrews 12:15). The deeper this shoot goes down into my soul the more evil the other person appears and the more righteous my position feels. With the bitterness comes a blindness that distorts the way I see other parts of reality.
Read More
Choose This Day 