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Christian Network

"We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are."

-Anais Nin

The only human being who was ever capable of insight unsullied by the fallen subjectivism of our race is Jesus Christ. For the rest of us reality is filtered through our personal experiences and then warped by the self-centeredness we have been afflicted with since the Garden. The result is a world perceived in terms of "personal truth" vs. absolute truth.

Who among us cannot remember a time when we were sure the worst-case scenario was about to descend upon our heads only to find out that "this too, shall pass."? What so often happens is that we perceive God as ready to act on us the way we would act on a person we have been wronged by. But God rare does so. Why? It is because in His omniscience He clearly sees every angle of the circumstance in ways we cannot. Objective reality belongs to Him. In fact He is objective reality. Only God completely knows what is really going on in any situation we might find ourselves in.

This is why it is so vital for believers to pray for the insight that only comes through the power of the Holy Spirit. Our Counselor can open our eyes to understand what we never would understand had we depended solely on our own foggy vision and false wisdom. This is the only way we can stop seeing through the "dark glass" of our own prejudices and leave our subjective unreality behind us.

Today the Christian Church is rent with divisions and prejudices. Part of the reason for this sad state of affairs is the tendency even believers have to see things according to their own passions while claiming that it is God who is showing them some truth. We have far too much confidence in the idea that we are accurate arbiters of reality in the power of our flesh. The fact is we are always off the mark when we let our own filters trump revelation as the place from which we can attain to ultimate knowledge. How many teachers and preachers are selling as truth the twisted logic that came from their own inner conflicts? The answer is too many, and the result is the splintered church of our time.

It is very dangerous to assume that we can always accurately discern what is really going on. That this is something that even has to be reinforced today in Christians belies the depth to which we have come to trust the accuracy of our own perceptions. We should know from the Scripture that the "human heart is desperately wicked" and, further "Who can know it."?

It is God’s desire that His children come to know the truth and be set free by it. One of the ways this comes about is when we surrender our own "truth" and ask for His to supplant it. If our sincere goal is to become more Christlike it behooves us to stop manufacturing our own reality and align our ideas about the "way things are" with His. Only in this way can we live consistently in the truth and, by extension, in our God.