You Know What You Know

The other day my mom-in-law said that she wished that some folks could see through the eyes of others, walk in their shoes a bit, before making judgements. Today, I listened to the audio testimony of an old (well…he is getting up there, but maybe I shouldn’t refer to him as old) long-time friend. As I listened I got a little chill. Though I had heard quite a bit of his story before, he explained some of his thoughts and subsequent actions during the time that he and I mostly hung out and I began to see some things from that time in a whole new light.

In truth some things are right and some are wrong. We have every right to (as Christ did while clearing the temple) take strong action when we see a wrong being done. And every right to judge it as wrong. What we are not allowed to judge is someone’s heart. And that is one part of what was revealed to me today. As Proverbs 20:5 points out, “The purposes of a man’s heart are deep waters…” A saying I have recently come across time and time again is that “perception is reality.” Which I take to mean that we all come to the things around us with a unique perspective based upon our own experiences – a collection of experiences which absolutely no one else on this earth has had. So, there will never be any two people that will ever completely 100% agree on how the world works. We all see the world through our own uniquely colored glasses and there is no other way for us to see. We may sometimes (as I did today) have a bit of another person’s color revealed to us and through that gain a bit of understanding, but when it comes right down to it, as another friend used to say all the time “you know what you know.” And whatever you know informs your view of the world time after time.

Another place to which my thoughts traveled today had to do with why our family chooses to ‘do church’ in the way that we do. I use the term ‘do church’ loosely. In much the same way that our family uses the phrase ‘do school,’ We don’t really ‘do’ either.