glory

Looking at the ever changing splendor of the skies, I am struck by the excess of beauty that God has given us to enjoy. Why are the sunsets, sunrises, storms, and everyday skies so beautiful? I am fairly attuned to the glory of a day’s sky. But I miss so much. I am in a building or have my eyes on the road. In a second the picture has changed, and no one looked at it. The excess borders on waste. And this is one planet, one speck in a ridiculously vast physical creation. It’s all too glorious for me to comprehend, and it’s full of praise.

perception

As far as elections, relationships, and self-esteem go, perception can matter more than reality. I do not mean to say that we should live a lie or be disinterested in truth. Far from it! We should cherish truth, seeking it out and sharing it with others. But we need to realize that our often-flawed perceptions have great power over us.

For example, the presidential primaries are fast approaching, and I do not know who I am going to vote for. I will try to decide whom I believe to be competent, trustworthy, and who will provide what the country needs. But my perception may be far from the reality. And even if it is inaccurate, I will vote according to my perception.

Wars have been fought. Families have been ripped apart. Leaders have been deposed and even executed because of perception. With hindsight we may have a better perception on situations. But even with time, the truth may be lost. Was that country really about to attack? Was that spouse really unfaithful? Was that king really responsible for the people's suffering? We may never know for certain. But we do know that perceptions bring about action.

Sometimes the flawed perceptions affecting us aren't even of other people but of ourselves. We've all met someone who thinks he is the most interesting person alive. He doesn't realize the effort people exert trying to avoid him. Likewise we know insecure people who would thrive if they would just realize their potential and step out.

So much uncertainty, subjectivity, and error. Shall we just accept it and live by our errant perceptions. In one sense, it is inescapable. It is who we are and we cannot eliminate our shortsightedness. But, at the same time, we can look to God's word. There is truth there, and it can improve our perception of the world around us. We must admit that our perceptions will influence our understanding of the Bible and that the Bible will not tell us which presidential candidate is telling the truth. But knowing the truth of the Bible can provide the rudder with which to navigate the oceans of perception that we would otherwise float aimlessly upon.

Blind Spots

Blind spots are areas where a person's view is obstructed. I still remember the shock I experienced when my driver's ed instructor directed me to stop and look in all my mirrors. I did so and saw nothing. Then he told me to look over my shoulder. To my shock, I discovered a large, quite visible, station wagon parked very near the car. It was in my blind spot. Though I had carefully looked into the mirrors, I could not see what was so clearly there. My view was obstructed, and if we were both traveling along at sixty miles per hour, my blind spot could have quite easily caused a disaster. I'm sure that quite a few car wrecks have been caused by a person not checking his blind spot. But blind spots are not limited to cars. People have blind spots too.

There may be areas of our lives in which we have major problems, but we cannot see them at all. How is this possible? It may be that we do not see our problem simply because of ignorance. As I did not have the knowledge to look just over my shoulder while driving, we may not think to examine a certain area in our life. But why do we remain ignorant? A person should eventually grow to understand what he is missing. So why doesn't we? How can we persist, never thinking to look over our shoulders.

We do not see our blind spots because we do not want to see them. We want to think of ourselves as good and having it all together. Admitting that we have a week spot crushes our pride. "How could I have come so far and yet have this fatal weakness? Surely, it must not really be a problem." So we reason away our blind spots, securing for them a place of permanence in our lives.

Another reason why we cannot see our blind spots is that we are too distracted by the blind spots of others. We "see the speck that is in [our] brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in [our] own eye" Matthew 7:3. Being distracted by the weakness of others and assuming ourselves to be so much better keeps us from truly dealing with the needs of our heart. So we fail to give attention to those spots that are so easily hidden from us.

I once knew a person who was constantly calling the character of other individuals in his acquaintance into question, making ridiculously overstated accusations about people. But at the same time this person was both socially awkward and in many ways self absorbed. As I wondered how someone could be so blind to his own faults but so quick to focus on other people's ills, I realized that this was exactly what I was doing. By focusing my attention on his problems, I was not giving thought to may own.

We can see other people's blind spots because we are willing to accept that they are sinners and that God is still working on them. We would reduce our own blind spots if we were willing to judge ourselves not only with the same scrutiny that we judge others but with a greater scrutiny. God is not hiding our blind spots from us. We are simply not willing to look at them. And this refusal could quite easily lead to a disaster far worse than any ever experienced on an expressway.

Borgian Philosophy

If you have ever watched much Star Trek, then you are probably somewhat acquainted with the Borg (a collection of zombie-like cyborgs who share one mind and are bent on the assimilation of those who would add to their perfection). The Borg are not very chatty. The individuals almost never say anything, and the collective generally repeats the same catch phrases over and over: "We are the Borg; you will be assimilated; resistance is futile; we will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own;" "comply;" "irrelevant;" and other cordial conversation starters.

The main point of most of there conversation is we are going to defeat you and make you all mindless zombie-robots (or "drones," in Star Trek lingo), so just give up now, and we will all be much happier about ourselves. But the prospect of becoming a zombie robot generally is not very appealing to people, so they resist. Many are assimilated, but is resistance really futile? My answer to that question is that sometimes resistance is futile, but even when resistance seems futile, it may be the right thing to do. To understand when to resist and when to give in, we need to recognize that even when something is inevitable, resisting it may still have value.

Resisting can be advantageous. Take the use of my air conditioner for example. Summers in Korea are unbearably hot and humid. And the summer offers almost no cool days to break up the climatic misery. It is a sad reality that the only defense against Korean summers is to go inside and turn the air conditioner on. But that can get expensive. It is so expensive that I wait as long as I can before turning on the air conditioner in the apartment. I know the time will come when the air conditioner will be turned on, the volts will be consumed, and the bills will be high. But I want to resist the inevitable for as longs as possible, and that resistance saves me money.

Sometimes resisting the inevitable reveals that it was not quite as inevitable as you thought. Resisting sin would fit into this category. We are all sinners and we are not going to be able to stop sinning in this life. But you should not give in to sin. You will not be able to stop sinning altogether, but if you resist, you will sin less. And in resisting, you may discover that one particular sin that you thought to be in inevitability was really avoidable. I remember being told by an adult as a child that when I grew up I would not be able to resist the urge to engage in premarital sex. This was just wrong. The person who told me this false statement had accepted it as an undeniable axiom. To him it was just an inevitability. But resisting revealed that what he had assumed to be inevitable was really avoidable.

For other things, however, there may come a time when you should stop resisting even if it was once beneficial to resist. Death, for example, should be resisted for as long as possible. But there will come a time when you have to stop resisting. I remember the several weeks before my grandma died. She was living with the help of a machine, and there was some talk of taking her off. But my grandpa objected, and I was glad. But then, one-by-one, my grandma's organs started to fail. When my grandpa saw that death was unavoidably near and that my grandma was suffering, the choice was made to turn off the machines. My grandma died shortly thereafter. I loved my grandma very much, and I wish that she was still around to bring joy into the lives of all her many children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. But to have held on to her when her body was giving out would have been selfish of us. So while resistance had served her well before that point, it was time to give in.

There is a resistance, however, that is never valuable, and should always be avoided from the start. We should never resist doing the right thing. Those who resist doing right often resist because of ignorance or hardheartedness. This type ofresistance is indeed futile.

In the final episode of Star Trek Voyager, humanity triumphed over the supposedly irresistible force of the Borg, obliterating them once and for all (well as once and for all as anything ever is in sci-fi). Humanity proved that the Borg were wrong. Resistance had value. And it may have value for you too.

sharing sorrow

While it may be true that misery loves company, I’ve recently been brought to understand a better truth: there is comfort from sharing sadness. The old adage that misery loves company is, in my opinion, sick and twisted. A person that would take delight or be placated by knowing that other people are miserable is not showing love. We should never wish misery upon another and certainly not for the sake of making ourselves feel better.

However, we can find comfort from sharing in other people’s sadness. When someone is hurting, others come alongside of them and try to encourage them. When my wife and I recently shared what we were going through with the loss of our unborn baby, we received many statements of encouragement and assurances of prayer. Some of the most comforting and encouraging notes were from people who had also gone through such a loss or something similar. They shared how they had felt and how the Lord brought them through it.

On the surface, these two things seem to be the same. But the difference is that the first desires to see other people hurting while the second rejoices to see that God has been faithful to other people even though they hurt like you do.

human brutality

Syler, the monstrous villain of NBC’s sci-fi action-drama, Heroes, is a violent, loveless, power-hungry psycho. Throughout the season, he has been portrayed as pure evil--a man without any redeeming qualities. His character is so ruthlessly wicked, that it is easy to think of him as being sub-human somehow and devoid of any natural emotions. But episode 21, “The Hard Part,” reveals some things that shake this classification.

In the episode, Syler begins to feel remorse, not for the horrible things that he has done but for what he believes that he will do. In an attempt to avoid his future actions, he seeks help. He goes to his mother’s house and tries to put his driving ambitions aside. At his mother’s house, Syler seems to be a completely different person. He shows kindness, affection, frustration, a desire for parental approval, and perhaps even love, and you begin to feel sorry for him. I found this greatly disturbing and almost wished that I did not know these things about the character. It was easier to think of him as a monster and not a person. He certainly behaves like a monster through most of the shows, so how could he be a person? And why was this possibility so disturbing?

After I listened to Yinong Young-XuIt’s “This I Believe” NPR essay, “A Potential for Brutality,” I realized that Syler’s humanity was disturbing because it revealed our own potential of violence. Humans all over the world have been and continue to be brutal. People enjoy and celebrate violence and brutality in movies and, in some cases, even in real life. Violence and fear rule the lives of many people, perhaps even the majority of people in the world. When we watch the news, we can see that this is true.

But we comfortably distance ourselves from the violent by labeling them as fanatics (which they are) and by considering them to be devoid of natural affection (which some may have made themselves). Yet these people have mothers, fathers, sisters, and brothers. And as to our fallen humanity, we are essentially the same. Our society simply puts more restraints on violence than does their society.

We then are capable of the same brutality. We have the same potential for evil in us that communists in China displayed during the cultural revolution, that gang members and other criminals show in American cities, and that terrorists display throughout the world. Our thoughts can be perverted, and our consciences can be seared. Thankfully, western governments put restraints on people to keep most of us from realizing our violent potential. This keeps brutality in check, but it does not rid you of it. It can not get rid of it.

Violence exists because people are sinful. Christian influence has limited violence in society, but only the gospel can rid a person of violence (and that progressively), because only the gospel can free a person from sin. So when faced with the reality of violent people, we need to recognize our own potential and look to Christ who alone can save us from our own sinful inclination for violence.

navigating life

Watching kindergarten students is quite amusing. When my classroom was arranged differently, there were fewer ways to make it from one point to another. When I would call upon a student to come to the front of the room, he would often choose the most challenging route available to him and then push his way through until he reached his destination. The students chose the hard way because they did not realize that a better way existed. Their ignorance was either due to the inferior perspective that comes with being five and short or they simply chose the first route that came to mind without giving any thought to the efficiency of their steps.

We make poor choices for the same reasons. Sometimes our limitations impede our understanding. This is unavoidable. While God is infinite, we are not. Maturity will improve our situation, but even when fully grown we have limitations and will tend to make poor choices because of our limitations. Thankfully, God reveals His perspective to us, directing us through His word. Unfortunately, we tend to trust our own limited perspective and fail to trust Him. Spiritual growth will help us trust God's revealed perspective. We must work to trust Him more and more, but we will still falter.

If, on the other hand, we choose poorly in life simply because we have not thought things through, we are doomed to continue unabated until we wear ourselves out and give up or until we realize that we have been choosing poorly all along and need to make a change. This type of bad choices is far less excusable. We have the capacity to make a good choice; we simply fail to try. Either way we are left fighting to do what would have been so much easier if we had taken a different route. When kindergartens do it, teachers laugh and tell each other about it. But when adults do it, they hurt people, are unhappy, and resign themselves to doing as little as possible because life is too hard.