Mistaking Your Enemy

“Am I therefore become your enemy, because I tell you the truth?”

It is hard to hear the truth about oneself, but many of us do not realize, it is just as difficult, (in many cases) for those who tell us the truth. As the Second World War medic told his trainees, “If you're not willing to hurt them, you can’t help them.” When those stinging, truthful, words come from the lips of loved ones, friends, and acquaintances, we need to remember the wise man's words: “Faithful are the wounds of a friend.”

We Christians are a strange breed. We love to show our pseudo-spirituality by telling others of our unworthiness, but when someone else says the same thing to us, inwardly, we are enraged at the speaker. The sad truth is, most, if not all of us, do not believe a word we say about our condition. But by presenting this “shew of humility,” we believe people will hold us in a high position with the spiritually elite. It's important for us to be important!

Rather than deny that unwholesome man or woman we’re told we represent, we’d rather live in self-denial of him or her; and in place set up a “straw man.” But such will go up in flames at the Judgement Seat of Christ, leaving us with nothing but ashes to account for our lives lived here on earth. In Shakespeare's Hamlet, there is a well-known line that says, “To thine own self be true.” That is, be yourself; be true to yourself; do not engage in self-deception. Don't put a mask on each morning.

Remember, when someone else deceives me it is without my consent; but when I deceive myself it is with my knowledgeable permission.