“I realize God has treated me with undeserved grace, and so I tell each of you not to think you are better than you really are. Use good sense and measure yourself by the amount of faith that God has given you.”(Romans 12:3)
Relationships are hard. The things that often attract us to each other become points of contention. They become the things that rub us the wrong way. How can we ever stop fighting about the same things? Why do certain things from our spouse, our parent, our child, our friend, make us impatient? Today’s reading gives me a good idea of where the problem might lie.
To realize that we only know certain things because God has given us understanding, makes it easier to not judge others who think differently or who don’t know what we know. What a humbling experience to realize that everything I know, every word I say, every idea I get, every belief I have, every argument I give, is an awareness given to me by God. Not that I couldn’t be wrong, I could misinterpret, not have all the facts, not understand completely. But those things that I consider “smart” about myself. Those things…are a gift. THAT realization, can make a world of difference in the way I see myself and others.
Now I think most of you reading this would agree 100%. I do too, obviously. But what happens when we are confronted with someone who thinks differently? Someone who challenges us? Someone who argues with us? Do we remember? Do we remember that they are entitled to their opinion? That they also know things we don’t know? Are we able to respect their opinion without thinking less of them?
Now here is where it gets really tricky. When it comes to faith, we often think that our doctrine is the correct one. Of course we think that! We would change our minds if we thought otherwise! But would you agree that if God’s ways are higher than our ways, that if He is indeed God, then there’s no possible way that we can be 100% correct in our interpretation of who He is? And that just because we have been taught something all our lives or that we have interpreted the Bible a certain way, that doesn’t guarantee that we are correct?
Faith is a tricky one to be humble about. Most of us have very strong opinions about what is right and wrong, and we all reference the same book to prove it. I’ve seen this for a very long time. Even in the face of things I believe are very wrong, I have seen Christians get down right mean in their effort to prove their point. May I offer another way?
When it comes to relationships, what if it doesn’t matter what you believe as much as how you live? What if kindness, not judgment, is what shows the fruit of the Spirit? What if it is our behavior and our words that show if we really get it? Perhaps we are supposed to measure ourselves to how far we’ve come, not to others. Perhaps we can listen to others’ points of view because we love and respect them, not because we necessarily agree with them. And because we trust a God who has given us understanding on some things when we didn’t deserve that gift, we can trust that we don’t have to control things and certainly not control others. We can share what we believe, but I think it’s in the way we share it and in the way we live, that we can have the greatest influence and impact in this world. So yes, we can and should say what we believe, but not thinking more highly of ourselves than we should, remembering that whatever good comes from us is a gift.