SEEING OTHERS AS WE SHOULD
A man dressed as Napoleon went to see a psychiatrist at the urging of his wife. “What’s your problem?” the doctor asked.
“I have no problem,” the man replied. “I’m one of the most famous people in the world. I have a great army behind me. I have all the money I’ll ever need, and I live in great luxury.”
“Then why are you here?”
“It’s because of my wife,” the man said. “She thinks she’s Mrs. Smith.”
Pride tends to do two things with us. It causes us to see ourselves as more important than what we really are. That’s why Paul wrote, “…Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought…” (Rom. 12:3).
But pride and envy also cause us to see other people as less important than what they truly are. Envy doesn’t like to see others achieve recognition or prominence, and it will do whatever it can to bring the other person down. Someone has said that an envious person is a lot like a crab. If crabs are caught by a fisherman in his basket and one starts to climb out, the other crabs will reach up and pull it back down.
As humans, we often act the same way. If we can’t be somebody great, we can at least pull down others around us so that we look better by comparison! Frederick Buechner has described envy by saying its desire is for “everyone else to be as unsuccessful as you are.”
In the Corinthian church, there was a lot of competition involving spiritual gifts. Those who had the more prominent or public gifts, such as the ability to preach or the ability to speak in different languages, regarded themselves as superior to those who held what they viewed as “less significant” gifts. Paul says, though:
“On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor….But God has combined the members of the body and has given greater honor to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other.” (I Cor. 12:22-25).
May God help us not only to ourselves as He sees us, but to see others around us as He sees them as well.
Have a great day!
Alan Smith