Sunday, January 20, 2008

The More I Know You, The More I . . . Hate You?

Idioms -- you gotta love them.

Take "Familiarity breeds contempt".

What is basically being said here is "The more I get to know you, the more I find to dislike about you." Or to go by the handy little explanation I found via Google:

This means that the more you know something or someone, the more you start to find faults and dislike things about it or them.


It's sort of sad when you think about it . . . especially when you think about how often *you* find more faults with people the longer you know them.

Though it is easy, isn't it, to find faults in or with others?

"I would enjoy the song service at church so much more if Person X didn't sing so loudly or off-key . . ."

"I would have an easier time of things if my spouse were more helpful . . ."

"Well, if Person B wasn't such a meanie-head, bitter and negative to boot, then I would still . . ."

Yes, we're a sorry bunch, aren't we? Which is why Jesus admonished us to take the logs out of our own eyes before dealing with the specks (talk about discrepancies, eh?) in another's eye (Matthew 7:1-5).

I've heard it said many times the things which bug us the most in other people are the very things we do ourselves, which has led to a bit of an epiphany for me, I think. Lets look at the things that bug us about other people and rather than judge or write off or try to 'fix' the fault, use that person as a mirror of sorts to look at yourself -- to see the log blocking your own vision. But don't stop there (because sometimes we do, telling ourselves and others "That's just the way I am!")! Tell God you have this nasty huge log in your eye. You know it's wrong, He knows it's wrong, and no one is fooling anybody. Then give it to Him. Allow Him to get it out (He has very steady hands!) and then be prepared to see like you've never seen before.

Maybe then the person with the speck will allow you to help them get rid of it -- they'll trust you to seeing as how you're not about to whack them in the head with a log.

Something to think about, eh?

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