There's a slick talker roaming within each of our own minds pushing a propaganda of sorts. It's a snow job on how bad others are doing, looking, or being while we rationalize within our biased heads that we are above all of the them and they failings. If they would only... If they could just see themselves... Why, if they were as quick... or as smart...or as... Oh how we do carry on within ourselves about our obvious (but subtle) superiority.
And...because of this selfie-attitude, our communities are in a world of hurt? Why? Because we are a dishonest mess. We profess that our failings are only slight and if they should be desperately visible we admit we have them; but we tend to blame someone else for our lack hoping to get ourselves off of the hook. Really, we are no better than any neighbor. No better.
Society is on the prowl for something; something meaningful, something rich, something far beyond the stagnating routine of normal. Fortunately, many have the drive within to still want to find that treasure; to get there. Be encouraged. There is a grand secret embedded within the rolling hills of life's pursuit. Brennan Manning (I just love this man's heart) mentioned that when G. K. Chesterton's detective priest, Father Brown, is asked how he could be so astute as to get into a criminal's mind, he answers that it came from the discovery that he is a criminal himself.
Before I quote his next paragraph, hear well what is said. To get into a criminal's mind one must discover that he is a criminal himself. At that point, one will know how a criminal thinks. God's genius already knew this. If Father was to get into man's mind, he absolutely would need to become a man himself. And that He did. We know him as Jesus. No Divine one ever understood us better than the one who became as we.
No man's really any good, Chesterton continued, till he knows how bad he is, or might be; till he's realized how much right he has to all this talk of "criminals," as if they were apes in a forest ten thousand miles away; till he's got rid of all the dirty self-deception of talking about low types and deficient skills; till he's squeezed out the last drop of the oil of the Pharisees; till his only hope is somehow or other to have captured one criminal, and kept him safe under his own hat.
Should you be inclined to have a yearning to tell another how low and sinful someone else is, we will all do well to keep it under our own hat. It is at this point in one's life that genuine good begins to come forth. Hurrah for Jesus showing us how. No man is any good until he knows how bad he is. This fact would transform the church into a mighty influence of both substantial relief and authentic hope...and it would let the neighborhood in.
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