April 09, 2012
Mocking
Recently one of my colleagues was publically scorned and she made the observation
that believers don’t often take a stand on issues because they are afraid of
being mocked. “If you can't withstand a little mockery during these days,
how will you stand strong later?” She makes a great point. Jesus, in predicting his own death
told his disciples, “He will be handed over to the Gentiles. They
will mock him, insult him, spit on him, flog him and kill him.” (Luke 18:32 NIV)
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Gail;
-----An observation of human nature grew out of the eighteenth century to form one of the most widely held theories of social psychology. Symbolic interaction, as the theory is called, recognizes the simple facts that all persons share a nature unique from the animals, a nature which generally attempts proper behavior through self-regulation. This self-regulation is a process rising from the social nature of each person having an individual mental-life engaging the mental lives of everyone within his social group through communication. That all being the potatoes of the theory, the meat is that, for the person and the society, the “looking-glass self” is key.
-----The looking-glass self is all the impressions a person perceives of everyone else’s reactions to the things he does. Allowing “do” to broadly mean whatever has a recognizable effect upon someone or some thing, we are continually being flooded with feedback regarding what we say, or write, or wear, or how we move or even posture ourselves or our simple expressions of smiles, frowns, and eyelid twitches. I think everyone at least suspects this process is operating continuaqlly in our heads or hearts, because it really is part of how human nature works.
-----But as human nature has been twisted and bent away from what God made it to be in Adam and Eve, we would err to merely take a bow before the looking-glass and say of the self, “Thus be me.” The looking-glass is greatly important. It is all the others around you who each individually meant enough for the God of everything to become man and suffer a grueling death to buy. But the looking-glass is twisted and bent because it too is human.
-----Of course social nuances of our behavior need trimmed by folks reactions to what we do. If I come running through the living room, and everyone draws their feet back, then I will be a stubborn ox if I do not slow down and mentally attend my path for others’ toes. We must adjust what needs to be adjusted for getting along and fitting in. But if that were all there is to it, then we are more lost than we thought. We and the looking-glass we form for each other will just continue to shrivel and twist and bend more and more and more as misbehavior and misgivings feed back into the process creating infinite layers of imperceptible distortions. Thank God for His having something better to give us in addition.
-----Available within everyone is the peep-hole. Through it can be seen what simple fundamental truths and axioms of love might be operable in any given situation regardless of society or the looking-glass. Many attend this peep hole, and some more than others. Some things seen through it over the centuries were magnificent and huge. They got written. In fact, the hearts of the minds who saw these things were so overwhelmed by the meanings and implications that their thoughts and expressions became highly impacted by the Holy Spirit. So we now have the Holy Word, which itself is a peep hole among all man‘s literature and ideas. Oh! It is important to pay mind to the looking-glass! But the mind paid to the looking-glass must be shaped by the soul paid to the peep hole.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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