Wednesday, February 3, 2021

Mists of Darkness

It is surprising, though it shouldn’t be at how, with all our access to knowledge and information, we live in profound mists of darkness. How can two people or different groups of people see the same information and come to such completely different understanding of what has happened? How can both be right? Yet, there are times when both are right and wrong about the issue... at the same time. How does that happen? Even in our highly connected world, it's easy to live in darkness or ignorance of the truth.

How do we deal with it?

We must first understand what is actually happening: Another way to describe our circumstances is we choose, because of pride and mistaken assumptions, to ignore the voice of the Spirit. We listen only to that which we agree with and look with disdain on information, which true, undermines our closely held beliefs. To wit: we walk in the light of our own understanding. We do so, often glibly unaware that there is far more to every story we read about. Much of that additional context, if we knew it, would profoundly change our understanding and judgement of the story.

Our only real recourse is to rely upon Heavenly Father. But how do we do that? We deal with each situation as it arises by trying to learn both sides of an issue then thinking through and asking for confirming counsel from Heavenly Father. If we get it, we proceed. If we don’t, then we exercise the faith and humility to accept it and change our mind: to acknowledge, we are wrong. Only this way, will we learn to see things as they are.

Additionally, I have learned that while tweets and sound bites say one thing, the nuances of the story tell a profoundly different and more powerful accounting of the event. Sometimes the story, in ignorance, is exaggerated beyond it’s true accounting. Sometimes we think a person's motivation to act is malice even when ineptitude is the better explanation.

Again the only safe way forward is to live the Gospel: to live the principle of revelation. By doing so, when we hear of something, we also hear the whispering of the Spirit to give us the necessary context to accurately know what our role and response should be. Or not receiving that, we exercise patience and withhold judgement and say, to ourselves if need be, “let the Lord judge between me and thee.”

No comments:

Post a Comment