One of the main ways we have in the past 400 years to understand the heart and mind of God is reading scripture. Too often we might project our own heart and mind onto His words. In our daily life, when we’re asked to consider how someone else might feel, we project onto them our own feelings. If we see someone speeding, the first speculation as to the reason tells us more about why we would exceed the speed limit than why that other driver is speeding. There can be 18 different reasons why that person is speeding.
And so when we are faced with troublesome passages like the end of Job—“who is this that questions My wisdom...?—or a short passage in which Christ questions His disciples—“do you still not understand?”—several times, we will project how we’d feel in that situation. I’d feel frustrated, impatient, annoyed, flummoxed, befuddled, doubtful in my selection of disciples, etc. Almost all of us would read the passage of Matthew 16.5-12 similar to this, if even more strident in tone:
Yet we are taught that Christ is full of the Holy Spirit, and the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Those character traits will govern our tone of voice differently. Also, we’re taught that God is love, Christ is God and “love is patient and kind...[not] rude...is not irritable, and keeps no record of being wronged...never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful...” So now the challenge is this: knowing Christ’s character, read those words in His voice of patience, kindness, hopefulness...
I’m not a good enough actor to pull it off, and I would seriously have to remove a lot of myself to only let love, patience and hope shine through the questions. But Christ said those words in that way...and that’s how we need to hear them.
If you can recite that passage with Christ’s tone of voice, record a short video and send it to me.
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