June 29, 2015
Missing the Point
Every once in a while I’ll
find myself in a church setting where someone makes a valuable point and
another person will take the conversation in different direction basically
negating the original thought. Peter did something similar with Jesus when the
Lord was explaining to the disciples his path of suffering, death and
resurrection. “Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. “Never, Lord!” he
said. “This shall never happen to you” (Matt 16:22 NIV)! Jesus stopped Peter in
his tracks by calling him Satan (adversary), a stumbling block, and worldly. Not
only did Peter miss the point of what Jesus was saying, he also missed the point
that he was still the student and not the Teacher.
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1 comment:
Gail;
-----Peter’s response was maybe a little understandable. There was anticipation for the Messiah in the land. They figured He would set up their government and free them from Roman control. To His disciples, Jesus was looking a whole lot like those expectations. He had even recently brought them to understand He was the Messiah. They were talking political arrangements when requesting to sit at His right hand in the kingdom. The emerging picture was looking good. Jesus’ power was great. And they were going to be in His cabinet.
-----But Peter was not excusable. Humility always keeps one eye on the self, filtering out of it whatever misunderstanding is revealed by the unfolding of events or the arrival of new information. Humility is rather a constraint upon conservation of belief, that human principle of interpreting everything by what one has come to believe, anticipating the future to unfold accordingly. If humans were God, conservation of belief would not need constraint. For God’s knowledge is boundless. Nothing escapes His eye or mind. He only believes in what is, because He always knows what is. But human knowledge is finite. Greatly finite. And an individual’s knowledge is immensely finite. It especially does not know the future, or even much about the present, and it knows far less about the past. So the individual is often challenged to lay down errant beliefs as they are contradicted by new ideas.
-----Even more important than just watching the unfolding of the future is the Word of God. Much of what Jesus informed His disciples about His death and resurrection was always right there in the Psalms and other books of the prophets. Granted, prophetic information is much like hints and clues. And, granted, not everyone had a Bible at home. But any mind desiring to know the actual picture painted in prophecy is as capable of finding and assembling the hints and clues into at least a basic understanding as Peter Columbo and Joe Kenda were able to do. Not knowing what you don’t know is as important to seeing a clue as knowing what you do know is to reaching an actual conclusion. Alas, God’s Word always seems to be more well known than reality proves it to be. So its hints and clues tend to go without proper notice. Peter rebuked the Lord for convoluting his own expectations. Jesus rebuked Peter for confronting His plainly spoken words, which includes the Word.
-----Desire is controlling. Not of the way things and ideas unfold, but of whether a person convolutes or edifies what is unfolding. Desiring the truth is much too abstract. It is difficult to emotionally attach to a generality, which much of the truth must be in the mind, since everyone sees dimly. People would far rather see their lifetime of hints and clues conclude in full color, shape, size, and form. They can more easily place themselves in that. But they can‘t just go, “Get thee behind me, Satan!” when somebody else‘s expressed idea challenges the concrete of their personally held belief. Instead, they add a little twist to divert the train of thought onto rails more of their liking. A minority of people do desire truth and are comfortable with its abstract fit. They carry other people’s ideas further into the truth rather than bending them. All the same, they carry those ideas towards their own desire. It’s just that they desire what they know they don’t yet fully know. So they are more willing to explore what another has expressed.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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