The other day as I drove with my wife and 21 year old daughter, we started discussing gas prices. My daughter said something that made me giggle. She said, "I used to wonder what the big deal was about gas prices. I mean, we have to buy it no matter what. But then I had to start paying for it!" We all had a good laugh because she had been enlightened. I had a similar experience when I first moved out of my parent’s home and recieved my first utility bills. I thought, "What in the world?!? They charge for this stuff?" Up until then my parents had handled all of that. From my point of view, and my daughter’s, to worry about those things was ridiculous. Until the point we were viewing them from changed.
A point of view is the way we see things from where we are. People say, "You can't see the forest for the trees" which is the same thing. Some times life has us at a point where we cannot clearly see and sometimes we have to move to be able to see what matters. Humanity, however, tends to not want to move. Moving means change and change means stepping into the uncertain. We don't like uncertain, we want certainty. Richard Rohr says, "When we give into the fear of uncertainty life becomes a series of insurance policies.” This is truth, when we will not allow ourselves to step boldly into uncertainty we spend most of our time trying to insure no one or no thing will upset our certainty and life becomes defensive. (More on this later)
I went mountain biking with a friend the other day, we were talking about critical thinking and how it has become a lost art. He said the most profound thing, "In order to think critically we have to remove ourselves from ourselves and objectively put ourselves into someone else's position and see from their point of view." We have all heard this, its called, "walk a mile in my shoes" or empathy.
Every point of view is a view from a point. And every point of view has a life of experiences and beliefs behind it. Every person on the earth has a view on things and that view is from a point of experience. But just like my daughter with gas prices, once your beginning point changes, your view changes. Once you have moved from one point to another things become clearer or more obscure. Once my daughter moved from having her gas paid for to having to pay for her gas her view of gas prices changed.
Jesus taught this. In Matthew 7:1-5 he said, "Judge not lest you be judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you. Why do you see the speck that is in your brothers eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when there is a log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the log out of your brother's eye." There is so much in here I can't even begin to write about it in one blog post (maybe there will be more on this) but there is one important point Jesus teaches here- before you can see clearly to help anyone, you have to look at yourself first. The blind cannot lead the blind.
Most of us are much more comfortable telling everyone else what they need to do instead of figuring out what we need to do ourselves. I am the world’s worst about this. I can see other’s faults much clearer than my own. I have to look for mine, search for them and dig them out. It’s a hard job, and it requires changing my point of view. As hard as this is I want to give a pointer on how I have begun this process.
In my years of studying about and thinking about Jesus and his teachings there is one little trick I have learned to be effective in growing, it’s pretty simple but also profound at the same time, as many deep things are. When we see Jesus teach something as emphatic as "The measure by which you judge you will be judged" it tells us something about his teaching. What I like to do it turn that around on itself. So I may say, "The measure by which I am judging everyone else, I need to judge myself with." Here is how that works. Say I am around someone who talks over everyone and it gets on my nerves and I say to myself "what a loud belligerent jerk" I find if I will just ask myself "Do I do that?" I usually see I do! So I realize that my point needs to move so I can clearly see myself! Once I get "me" out of it, then I can effectively help someone else out of the same problem, if they want me to.
This is important as Christians because if we are not careful we tend to be the morality police. We tell everyone else what they need to be and not be doing, but yet cannot control ourselves in the process. So we tell people to not have monogamous same sex marriages, but Christianity's history has been plagued by sexual sin. We tell people to love their enemy, but Christians can be perceived as sign-carrying haters of opposing people groups. Christians must get the plank from our own eye before we attempt to help anyone with a speck or very simply keep our mouths shut.
How do we start? With ourself. If we come to terms with our own brokenness, failures, sin, hate and points of view which are wrong, we can start to move our points. When we realize we do not have the corner on truth, and sometimes someone's life is not as simple as right and wrong, we start to see the person, and not just the action. We start to move our "point". And when we move our "points" our view will become more clear, and gas prices will make more sense.
Truth.
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