This is from the chapter entitled "Disruptive Honesty"...enjoy!
"Most people go through their entire lives without anyone, ever, speaking honest, loving, direct words to the most damaging issues in their lives. Pause for a moment, and count the times this has been done for you. Better, pause and count the times you have offered this to someone you love. We chitchat. We spend our days at a level of conversation as substantive as smoke. We dance around one another like birds in a mating ritual, bobbing, ducking, puffing out our chests, flapping our wings, circling one another, now advancing, now retreating. If we filmed a week of it in time-lapse photography, it would make the Discovery channel. Let's be honest - why aren't we more honest with each other? Because it will cost us...We're cowards, that's why." Beautiful Outlaw, by John Eldredge
This got me thinking...if it is hard to be honest with someone you know and care about, then it is probably even harder to be on the receiving end of that honesty. I mean, no one really likes to be told they are doing something wrong; we know this and so we don't usually say anything...it's one of those vicious cycles. The author is basically saying, if Jesus is our example, then we should do what he did...this is what he did. How hard is it for us to be REALLY engaged in the lives of others? How much do we really care? That's something that we need to remember...Jesus said the things he said and did the things he did because he CARED...for all of us.
We love it when we read passages about Jesus "sticking it to the man" and telling the Pharisee's how they don't have it right. We cheer, we clap and we pump our fists for Jesus and "boo" the evil, the hypocrisy of those who don't "get it", we "boo" the phony, religious types. But what about...............us? How would we feel if we were the Pharisee Jesus was talking to?
AHHHHHH! Crazy right? We would be irate, defensive, dodging, accusatory back at Jesus, you name it...wouldn't we? Because that's how we are normally, to everyone else when they say something that rubs us the wrong way; that's usually because in some ways it is true. We always look on the outside of other people and ourselves, instead of inward. Deep inside ourselves, and deep inside of others...
The fact of the matter is that we hate it when people are honest with us, we hate the real us. Not that deep within us we know what's going on, because we do, but we hate it about ourselves...it's not so much that the words themselves, "it is something in us that is offended"
It's honestly why Reality Shows are so popular these days. There affect on us is very similar to that of Daytime Soaps, in that we can watch these rich, beautiful people, with all of their issues and be able to say "wow, my life isn't so bad after all. If THEY are having these problems, then..." Reality Shows give us the ability to see how much better we think we are than other people, because their faults are out there for the world to see. In the mean time, we get to sit back, watch and say "Oh my gosh, like, she is so awful...I would, like, totally never do that!" (if you were able to do the valley girl voice in your head while reading that just now...kudos from me). But as easy as it is to see how something is wrong when Mandy Moore throws the Bible at her friend and says, "I'm full of Christ's Love!" we are usually ignoring what is actually going on within ourselves.
"Honesty is the best policy" I guess, unless it becomes difficult.
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