Understanding part 1
This goes right along with what I've been preaching lately. Which is why I'm Ranting it too. Guys, I don't preach and write because I have it all figured out. I preach and write IN ORDER to figure it all out. (Which is not to say that I'll ever figure it ALL out. But it's a quest for truth. A journey into the heart of the matter, which is the heart.) So. Here's where my heart is right now. It's all about love right? The New Commandment is to love one another as Jesus loves us. To receive and release His love. But that begs the question, "How does He loves us?" And the answer is, "He loves us so much that He was willing to lay His life down for us." Which means we ought to lay our lives down for each other. Love as we are loved, right? But look at Romans 5:7 (NLT), "Now, most people would not be willing to die for an upright person, though someone might perhaps be willing to die for a person who is especially good." It's hard to love with that kind of love. You can't love someone you don't accept. And you can't accept someone you don't understand. That's why understanding is so important. So we can stop seeing each other as "an upright person," or "a good person," or "a bad person." The key is understanding that we're all just... people. The book of Proverbs puts a premium on wisdom and understanding. Proverbs 2:2 says, "So that thou incline thine ear unto wisdom, and apply thine heart to understanding." Wisdom comes from what you hear--the Word of God (which is Jesus, which is love). And understanding comes from the heart. The Jesus in you connecting to the Jesus in me. That's how we understand each other. We let love connect us. We don't judge by appearance--people do a lot of things that don't make sense--but we judge righteous judgment. We look past external actions and look inside. Past the surface stuff and into the deep stuff. Deep calls out to deep. Actions don't always tell the story. Daniel Tiger says, "It's YOU I like, not the things you do." And if you can understand WHY someone is doing something, then even if they mess up, it's easy to "love them anyway." If you can see past the action and see the person then you can LOVE the person. If you can understand them, you can accept them. And I'm going to really get into acceptance later on--maybe in the next Rant series--but for now I want to say true acceptance is not tolerating someone. It's embracing them and celebrating them. Not, "I don't like you, but I guess I love you since I'm supposed to love everybody, but keep your distance because I really don't like you." Love is affection. Love is unconditional. Remember that the greatest expression of love is laying your life down for your friends. And whether or not someone is a "good person" has nothing to do with whether or not they are your friend. I think it was Abraham Lincoln who said, "I destroy my enemies by making them my friends." Kill them with kindness, by laying your life down for them. Let me end today's Rant with Proverbs 4:7, "Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding."