Jesus called the Scribes & Pharisees "blind guides of the blind," and I've covered that subject a-plenty. But what exactly was it that they were blind to? What is it that they couldn't see, that others, more healthy personalities can see? You say, "The truth." Yes, but what particular aspect of it? What exactly was it that made them so mad about Jesus that it made them want to kill Him?
The shocking truth - as far as I'm concerned - has been the latest revelation that set me off on a journey comparable to Amundsen's trip to the pole, although it will not only take us into the distant past, but right to the core of probably the greatest spiritual and social disease of all times, and especially of our times.
What is the one thing nobody wants to see, nobody wants to be confronted with, nobody wants to be made aware of, and yet, if we only would, it would make all the difference in the world? What is it we dread so much that we don't ever talk about, and not even think about because it depresses us more than our favorite football team losing a game?
Our mistakes.
We're scared to death of making them, causing some people to be so spiritually paralized that they practically don't do anything - anything that would ever make a difference or would pose a risk, that is. And if we were bold enough to make them, then we're usually way too scared to talk about them openly, and we even hate to admit them to ourselves and rather flush down the whole issue with a six-pack or distract ourselves in whichever possible way. We do a lot of good works to make up and cover up for them, so that we can pat ourselves on the back again, creating a huge and solid carpet to hide those most hideous and dreadful of all existing things from our sight, and anyone else's.
Of course, the only One we can't hide them from is God, and I suppose that's why they hated Jesus. He just knew all about'em and was looking right through them.
I'm the type of guy who has made more mistakes in his life than there are hairs on the body of a fully grown gorilla, and yet when confronting myself with the question, "Can you name one mistake you ever made?" I had to recruit the help of my journal. I was actually going to ask someone else that question but then realized I'd first have to see how well I'd be able to answer it myself. And it was harder than I thought, even with the amount of mistakes I undoubtedly made, which is probably way above average, but I couldn't pinpoint them all that easily, and not without the help from hundreds of pages of written conversations with my Maker... (And I'm only half-way through with that project, since the word "mistake" seems to be one of the most frequent).
Of course, there are the crass and obvious ones we don't ever forget, like when we overlook a stop light and cause an accident. That sticks. And those are easy to remember. After all, that was an innocent little blunder that can happen to anyone, even though the consequences were tough to deal with. You had to do without your car for a few days while it was in the repair shop, and your insurance rate went up.
But most of our mistakes we make are innumerable small ones that add up and suddenly emerge from the ground under which they were hidden and show their ugly collective face in form of a divorce or some other disaster that happened in our life without our ever being able to explain how they came about.
Somebody once said, "You can never be too bad for Jesus, only too good." How true. Only folks who are aware of the fact that they're making mistakes aplenty need help, let alone a Savior, whereas those who are oblivious to the remote possibility that they might even be capable of any such thing as making a mistake, they're so good, they're better off without One. Because all He'll ever do is remind them of the one fact that they simply refuse to see: that beneath that thin veneer of goodness and self-righteousness lies the same kind of sinful heart that beats in all of our chests. It's just that sin manifests itself differently with each type of personality. And the obvious ones are much easier to deal with and overcome than the well-hidden ones.
So, needless to say, mistakes are a whole new territory to explore in itself. Especially our own mistakes, that is, along with the hidden fears that prevent us from ever admitting to them, being able to see and recognize them, and thus learning from them faster than we could from any other source of information or tutorship.
In fact, that is most likely what this whole life is all about, in fact, all of world history, which - once it will be over with, I'm sure we'll all refer to as The Big Picture, Volume 1. We're being given the golden opportunity to make countless mistakes in this life, the first one being the famous one committed by Adam & Eve. Even in the perfect environment with perfect circumstances, they weren't perfectly happy, or at least not enough to resist one silly temptation.
I daresay that we're probably presented with equally significant temptations on a daily basis, only that we cave in to them so easily that we don't even notice it anymore. Just in case any of us thought they were better than Adam & Eve. We're supposed to have gotten smarter than they were, but did we?
I doubt it. One huge requirement would be learning from our mistakes, the way I'm sure they did. The drastic repercussions made it so obvious they'd blown it. In our world, the changes are happening a little more slowly. What was once still pretty close to paradise is turning into hell so smoothly that we hardly notice it, and by the time Satan will have assumed his throne and rulership over this planet for good, most people will probably have gotten used to it.
We're becoming so used to ignoring mistakes being made and any type of evil, most of us won't even recognize it when the personification of evil (including self-righteousness, I'm sure) himself will stare us in the face from our TV screens.
Well, we'll have a long time to learn from and teach our children about the mistakes we made, after that episode will be over, and we'll see whether anyone will have learned anything out of it sooner or later.
As for me, I'm starting right now, and keeping my eyes open for any precious lessons to be gained out of my nearly-constant blowing it, and I can recommend it as the No.1 therapy for keeping your feet on the ground and learning to deal with life as it really is. It's exciting and not nearly as terrible at all as we always thought it would be. In fact, our mistakes are something we should thank God for. They're probably the main purpose we're here in the first place.
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