Greatness through the Eyes of God and 1 second of Not-so-great

This Christmas season of 2013, I began reading a book entitled 7 Great Men and the Secret of the Greatness by Eric Metaxas.     I’d only gotten through the first chapter on George Washington and had skipped through to see the other men that were to be mentioned and I knew this was a book that could be life changing.   I ordered 12 more copies of it and gave to all my children and several friends and business associates.
   

Now I’ve gotten down to finishing it and every other chapter is as good as the first.  In fact, now that I’m finished, I’m re-reading some of the men that made the most profound impact on the world like Jackie Robinson and William Wilberforce.    Yesterday while reading about Wilberforce again and his mission to abolish slavery in England at the turn of the 19^th Century, I was very impressed by one simple goal he had and that was to try and see the world and other men through the Eyes of God.   It sounds simple.  But it’s profound to me.
   

I’ve told my children, and others many times, that it was significant to me to realize that every opinion I had, or would form, and every truth that I held as truth . . . were all influenced, formed and determined by my “world view”.   And since discovering that, I’ve come to see that much of what I see as truth, or fact, or right, is not.   It’s just the determination that personally I had made because of the way I have always filtered information based on my world view.     Yesterday, I spent a few hours wondering how my opinions and vision of truth would be influenced, if I tried to examine everything in God’s view?

Then, today I was re-reading Jackie Robinson’s story and about how much abuse and bigotry he heard and experienced as the first Negro baseball player in the Professional Baseball.   His coach who had hired him,  a Christian man, knew it would be a life changing decision for Robinson, the team, the world, and most of all blacks, if Jackie could break through the wall of racism that had kept major league baseball “white only”.   And he insisted that if it were to work that Jackie would have to “turn the other cheek” to all the insults, and slurs and injustices that would be thrown at him.     Jackie Robinson, himself, a fine Christian man, said he was up to the challenge.  And he was.   And, as the book described what he endured over and over and over in the early years of his career, I wept.    And then I wondered?  Could  I could be a man of such courage and character in the face of such adversity?

I remembered back to how things were back when I was a boy in the 50’s and 60’s, and going to the department store with my mom and seeing three bathrooms:  Men . . .Women . .   Colored.   And two sets of water fountains at Woolworths.  White and Colored.   And seeing two soda fountains at Woolworth’s . . . .One upstairs that was nicer for the whites, and the other in the basement for the Colored.  And blacks on the back of the bus and whites in front.    And so on, and so on.    And then it dawned on me that the blacks who were children when I was a child, can still remember that.  But they remember not from seeing it but from experiencing it.   And those blacks are now my age, and about-to-be-retiring-baby-boomers.    What I remember as a historical fact, they remember as an experiential reality.

I wept inside.   And a bit later was mentioning this to a friend (white-like-me-Christian) and telling him that I find it amazing that 60ish blacks today can find any forgiveness at all for the intolerance and racial bigotry that whites (not like me) hurled at them for generations and generations.    I went on to say that the standard line of whites is that the blacks “just need to forget about it and move on”.    But I realize that seeing your mother or father or siblings, or yourself, mistreated and abused is something that does not just go away with a wish.   There would be scars there that were very deep and might never be completely healed.

A few minutes later in the conversation, I asked my friend to get something for me, and he replied with a grin on his face "yes massah".  And chuckled.   And then I chuckled and said "cut it out", and he told me he was just joking.   I knew he was joking.  My friend is a good Christian man who loves and seeks God.    And I am too.    But I chuckled for just a second.     Only for a filthy second though, because just as quickly, a pain came in my heart that said that part of slavery and history is NOT funny Bud.   And for those whose ancesters experienced the "massah's whip" it wouldn't be funny.  It would be piercing and painful.   I repented and I know that my friend did too.

Now, the pondering goes on inside of me.  "How much more filth is there in that heart", I ask myself?  God's view of life is that it darkness to even "wink at sin"?  I guess a second in time is the equivalent to a wink?   But a second or a minute or an hour or a day, it's all the same to God.

I had a portrait taken this week and told the photographer that I wanted a lot of shadowing in the photo between bright and shadow (light and dark).   I wish . .  .desparately . . .that I could see myself in full-brightness and cheeriness.   But I can't.

We all, each have, our own demons that we battle in some way or another inside this earthly body.  In my own selfish mind, it often seems that I have more than my share, or that I can get rid of.  Many of mine are scars that go back 40 years or more. But none of them come from seeing the world through the eyes of God.   So I want a photo of myself to look at that is different from the picture I see in the mirror in the mornings.  I want a reminder to see that there are two forces at work inside of me.  And each of those forces is battling for the control of this earthly body and the influence my life might have, or have not, on this world is in direct relationship to the light or darkness that controls me.   I caved in to the darkness today for a second.   Maybe I won't tomorrow.

I can see that the only way for there to be more light come forth, and less shadow and darkness, . . .  is for me to "see the world and other men (views, comments, people, actions) through the eyes of God.

I have a long way to go.  Maybe I should have told the photographer to make more shadow on my face than I did?    I'm so thankful that someday I'll get to shed this earthly tabernacle and walk into Paradise and the Lord will see me with His full brightness.