Mirror Mirror on the Wall Who’s the Best God’s Image of All?
I know we got to hold people accountable for their beliefs and words but the truth is that ‘good people’ too are prone to deception and that’s why they fall ‘victims’ for lack of discernment whose mouth piece they become.
One main reason, I have come to believe, that ‘bad things happen to good people’ is that the mirror of our conscience are the ‘neighbors’ we are supposed to love like ourselves as result it becomes a challenge to obey that commandment.
What triggered all these? One might wonder.
I spent the afternoon of the first day of the 2021 patiently listening to a nice lady in mid seventies.
Since I came out of the closet about ‘reading the Bible’ people either are sarcastic about it or engage in conversations to tell me stories how they found out that God is good. So on January 1st 2021 started “I don’t blame God any longer for taking my daughter at the age of forty four.”
She proceeded to explain why. “I read an article. A mother had been crying for years asking God ““Why did you take my son from me?”” Then one day God replied showing her how her son would have ended up if God did not take him at the time He did. The grieving mother then told God ““Ok, I am sorry for blaming you all these years.””
The lady, I was listening to, concluded “Then I thought ‘who knows how much more abuse Bella would have endured at her husband’s and his family’s hands?” She said that was glad she stumbled upon that post for the ‘comfort had brought but most importantly the clarity and wisdom she had gained’.
I felt responsible to stop the ‘infection’, this deception had spread. Anything that assists us to point the finger at others’ behavior it is infection of the mind. What makes it even more contagious is when we start believing that God ‘reaches’ grieving hearts’ with the intention to remove the blame from Himself giving us options, so to speak, to choose between blaming Him V/S glorfying Him, for the tragedy. It sounds He is saying ‘you really wanted your loved one alive? I actually reduced you future heartache by taking them!’
All we have to do is read the Book of Job from chapter38 to the end, and see what God thinks of our victim states.
I recalled that her daughter spent most of her days off with her mother. If there were no medical appointments and no shopping for her mother then she had both parents over at her house. When we, her daughter’s friends, would comment in admiration ‘It must be rewarding to have such a generous and caring daughter’, we heard “Her husband and his family are milking the cow, why only them?”
The ‘clarity’ she had gained left me speechless and concerned. I was in her house and had just eaten in her dining table with my friends, her grown children. I faced the fact that I had no way of finding out how the grieving mother in the article had treated her son when he was alive. Probably the reader who stood in front of me had felt guilty for what her daughter had been through physically, psychologically, emotionally, as child and as an adult, in her mother’s hands. Recalling how obedient my late friend Bella was never left room for correction of any sort in all stages of her growth, I suspected her mother’s conscience and memory might’ve been busy bringing all that to the surface. Taking responsibility for unnecessarily tormenting an innocent child can drive us to look for dumping some of the conviction and where better than other image bearers.
Although she had taken some solace in ‘agreeing’ with the new found concept ‘God had saved her daughter from days of further abuse’, she still questioned His justice system, “I read biographies of Christian saints and it bothers me to learn they were beheaded; I cannot reconcile with God allowing that.”, shaking her left hand in the air in form of protest.
The more she talked the heavier the weight of powerlessness became over me. I wanted to tell her to read Matthew 14, the story of why and what for John the Baptist was beheaded. A woman’s little ‘I’ got offended by the truth and was waiting for an opportunity to show the truth teller, the price. I dared interrupting the one sided conversation using an earthly analogy that saints fulfill the law of Christ, bailing us from spiritual debt just like we bail someone from earthly jail by paying the required fine. If the sacrifice of Christ hasn’t awakened us maybe the beheading of saints will crack a little window in the hardness of our heart.
Of all I said she must’ve heard only the word ‘jail’. I say this because she jumped to a story when she was in her early twenties she had saved someone from full sentence jail. “I was the only witness that didn’t give in to the threats. As result of me telling the truth he served only three months because the false witnesses had testified at the days I couldn’t make it. I was pregnant at the time and twice on the day I had to swear I was rushed to the hospital with risk of miscarriage. “
She got the 9th commandment down! You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. Can that save us when we violate the 10th?
After the brief story of courage, despite the threats she had adhered to the truth with steadfastness saving her colleague who had been falsely accused, a dead neighbor surfaced in her memory. Though I too was raised in the same neighborhood, as observant as I am, I had missed things while people were alive. I learned from the nice lady that first day of the New Year about the neighbor who had died five or more years ago “She was a controlling mother. She also assumed that anyone her sons hang out with had intentions to take advantage of them, even the mothers of her grandchildren. She wasn’t shy to tell her daughters in-law to go to work and not take advantage of her sons. If relatives on her side visited she commanded her sons to stop being hospitable.”
Since we “were” in the neighborhood she informed me about another neighbor’s stinginess. This one is still alive but his wife had died. “He accused his daughter that she purposely picked the most expensive flowers for her mother’s funeral just so to spend his money. And soon after that they became estranged.”
Prior to sitting around the table, I overheard her complaining to her youngest daughter about her son not making any attempt to find a job but he is charging his parents rent.
It is true that since March her son hasn’t been able to work because of COVID-19 lock downs and his position doesn’t offer the opportunity to work from home. However knowing how patient he has been with them and at their beck and call for fifteen years, it shocked me that none of it counts because he’s been asking back a fraction for ten months.
Though I felt honored she trusted me enough to talk about dead and alive it became food for thought. Does she feel the same way her late neighbor felt about the people that surrounded her sons? Is there any chance my friends’ mother has been commiserating silently with the other neighbor who got bitter about the price of the first and last flowers he ‘brought’ to his late wife? I couldn’t ignore the pattern. Then just to confirm my speculations she proceeded to tell me “North American taxes system is built to take advantage of working people.” This last one gave me an window of opportunity to explain why ‘I guess, that’s how the governments can cover the expenses of the surgical procedures you and your husband have had even though you haven’t worked a day in this country.’
She got up from her seat, went to the kitchen and returned handing me a plastic bag and told me “These are for you. But wait, my son will drive you.”
For a week I indulged in delicious homemade vegetable pies and at the same time truly concerned what do I do with the gift of discernment. Is her eternity my responsibility? Am I a watchman failing to alert this lady of the danger of deception? How can I introduce the finished work of Jesus to a Christian by culture? Can I tell people who decide to vent when they have few hours with me ‘You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you’ll see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.” Matthew 7:5
I am not Christ Jesus though; I need Him myself.
I admitted that it is a rare thing that she has the courage to stand for the truth even in midst of threats, just like saints for whose end of mortal life she felt hurt about.
I realize from observations, any form of self analyzing and reflecting brings some sort of suffering. Every aspect of self exposing hurts pride or ‘dignity’ brings torment, emotionally and psychologically. Processing the truth that we are as bad as the next person we judge suggests need for change and reorganizing the life we have identified with. It is a task that might bring benefits in the long run but not money or peace in the present. Anything that shakes our earthly ‘citizenship’ we avoid grieving what we have to lose.
Ideals require obedience and for most of us focused in the here and now, the ideals and obedience sound madness, nonsense but at the same time rejecting the sacrifice of the One Who stood obedient to the end leaves us open to become a mouthpiece for deception. It is true we’ll look like losers, people mock us if we dare and attempt to courageously withstand the fear and pressure of ridicule but we’ll be set free to never wonder in victim state or vacillating between pride and shame.
When the ideals offend us then we easily become prone to craftiness and deception. Mind games of deception makes us focus on the ‘I’, its goal though is to sabotage God’s order for the big picture and what better way to achieve that goal of sabotage than directing us to focus on preserving the ‘Me, myself and I’. Unless things grow there’s no order in the big picture which we, our children and loved ones live. Therefore it makes perfect sense why Bible stresses obedience.
“For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.” Ephesians 6:12
We were successful at coming up with all sizes of mirrors to see our face and physical body because we cannot otherwise know what we look like. However, we point the finger at the mirrors that God made in His own image. As long as we do that ‘the bad things will happen to good people’ who easily notice and therefore judge on others the expressions of disobedience most of the time shamefully hidden in our own sub conscience.
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