Self Assessment

My main spiritual gifting is teaching.
Perhaps there are others, but I have not explored them. This is due mostly to the fact the gift of teaching requires some pretty hefty exploration into the character of God, and then some pretty brutal exploration into your own character in order for the gift to be of any use to anyone.

While I will certainly explore reasons why I see the world in certain ways, and how those ways came to be, this post will not be going quite that deep.

In the mean time, it will suffice to say that there is wisdom in exploring the idea that Jesus consistently praised qualities that children possess and even equated those qualities as essential parts of walking with Him.

One of my potential reason is that children are so darn honest. There is no getting around them or getting one by them. They call it like they see it, regardless of any social repercussions that we "mature" adults would be worried about.
"Why does that lady have such a funny looking face?"
"Why is that man so fat?"

Of course most parents would cut this kind of talk off, with a firm explanation about how we are not to behave that way in public. And to be fair, we should absolutely be considerate of the feelings of others. There are ways of approaching something in love.
But there is an underlying honesty that gets stifled along with the bluntness. The parent will probably either refuse to answer the question, or answer with a quick vague answer to the effect of "some people make different choices in life, but we don't talk about things like that."

A child wonders in innocence, "What caused that person to be in the state that they are in?"
It's a question that most people don't want answered about themselves, and don't care when answered about someone else. And then, throw culture on top that says "it's rude to ask those questions" and you have quite the recipe for confusion, insincerity, and unrealistic expectation.

What is interesting to me is how little people are willing to be brutally honest about who they are in the dark. Even those people...and we all know at least one...who claim that they don't "mess around" or "sugar coat" anything, are really just tactless people with an undisciplined and unbalanced view of speaking "truth."
I have yet to see any who, first and foremost, have called their own lives out on the carpet and began the process of healing and overcoming before they would even THINK of calling someone else out.

But even in saying that, I don't want to enable the bondage that is the following: "I can't confront my brother/friend/enemy with the truth if my life isn't together."


So there seems to be a balance that must be struck.

On the one hand, there is the fact that too many people have never taken an accurate inventory of the darkness that resides within them. This is an epidemic, and so I think for the majority of people this would serve as an appropriate place of emphasis.

However, on the other there must be an understanding that we are called to push our brothers and sisters. We are called to love our enemies. We are called pray for those who curse us. And nowhere in that calling is there a caveat that talks about having our act together before we can do those things.

So the conclusion then, is to understand that we are always in need of humility. We need to have a firm grasp on the fact that we are all the murderers, liars, adulterers and thieves...and we are the worst breed of them.
Because if we understand that we are capable of those things, then when we see another who is lying, lusting, killing or stealing, we will approach them with a totally different attitude.

We get angry at people who struggle with things that we are guilty of most. We hate that we are so similar to that person. We hate that we might look just like that guy that gets under your skin so much.
I think that this anger is born out our unwillingness to see who we really are in dark.
The adulterer makes me angry because I don't realize that I hate the adultery that lies within my own heart.
But if I know that I am the adulterer...and that Christ has set me FREE from adultery, then I can love the adulterer, and I can speak truth without hypocritical judgement.

Imagine if the church in America were to take a season to spend time understanding the bondages that it holds onto in order to truly overcome them.

Imagine if *insert your name here* were to do the same thing...