Tag Archive | Bible

Christmas, the Beginning of a Bigger Story

© Wendy Clark, December 2022

Christmas is the celebration of the coming of the Christ, the Messiah, the Anointed One. No, “Christ” is not Jesus’ last name. It is who He is–Messiah, the promised Deliverer, and He comes anointed to accomplish a specific assignment.

Think back to Moses and how at his birth there was a fearful king who tried to kill all of the male babies of the Hebrew people. Moses was protected, and Moses would grow to be their deliverer, leading the people out of slavery after 400 years.

Jesus is born after 400 “years of silence.” God hadn’t given the people a new word, recorded and passed down, in all of that time. Don’t be confused and think that means that God withdrew and wasn’t present or paying attention or actively working in the world. Every detail surrounding the birth of Jesus seems to say otherwise and shows that God was waiting until a time that He, Himself had appointed (Mark 1:14-15). At the very least it was 400 years of purposeful silence.

In Jesus’ infancy, there is another evil king who begins killing Jewish baby boys, out of fear that a new king will be born in his own generation. Jesus is protected and grows to be the promised Deliverer, the Messiah, who will “save his people from their sins.”

Just as Pharaoh in Egypt was right to be afraid of the birth of Moses, King Herod was right to be afraid of the birth of Jesus, not because his earthly throne was in immediate jeopardy, but because of the Kingdom of God that Jesus would ultimately usher in: a Kingdom of justice and wisdom and righteousness and holiness. Kings like Herod can never stand boldly in the presence of Holy God. None of us can. We all need Jesus to deliver us–to save us from our sins.

I recently listened to a professed “progressive Christian” pastor preach about how he rejects the teaching of the atoning sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. He sees that teaching as rising out of a violent and punitive culture and in no way related to our lives today. I say with confidence that, no matter what the young pastor claims, he is not a “Christian” at all because Christianity rests on the atoning sacrifice of Jesus. The whole of Scripture, from beginning to end, is wrapped around the atoning sacrifice of Jesus, the teaching that “without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins” (Hebrews 9:22).

Can anyone read the letter to the Hebrews or the letter to Romans and not see that Jesus came to deliver us from our sins? If you aren’t sure of the answer to that question, then I encourage you to start reading both of these letters, in a clear, straightforward way. What is Paul saying? What is the writer of Hebrews saying (whether or not that is Paul)?
The young “progressive Christian” pastor finds the teaching of the blood sacrifice offensive, and he is not alone. The Apostle Paul tells us that many will stumble over the cross and the teaching that Jesus came to die for our sins in our place to be the atoning sacrifice that was required to pay the penalty for sin.

“For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men” (I Corinthians 1: 22-25). We preach Christ crucified.

Read all of 1 Corinthians, and it is clear that one thing that the Apostle Paul wants us to understand is that there are teachers among us that aren’t teaching the truth of the Gospel. Pay attention and be aware.

When talking to people about the Gospel and trying to determine where another person stands, I often ask this question: “Do you know Jesus as your Savior?” If the person says yes, then I ask this: “Can you describe or explain what that means to you?” Whatever the person says next is very helpful in bringing clarity and understanding to the conversation.

One time, a young man responded by saying that Jesus saved him from his depression and his fear and his anxiety and his loneliness . . . and continued with a very long list that was lacking one specific and important word. Those of us sitting across the table from the young man looked at him and waited. One older gentleman prodded, “Brother?”

The young man then began in a kind of frantic way, “But I’m not a sinner. Jesus didn’t save me from sins. I don’t need saving from sins.” Then we knew where we were in the Gospel conversation. No spinning around trying to figure out how we weren’t communicating clearly. He didn’t believe that the Gospel is about salvation from sins, the blood atonement of Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross, which the Bible clearly teaches. And from that point we were able to come to clarity about how we consider the Bible to be an authority over us and our thoughts, feelings, and opinions, but this young man considers the Bible to be one voice among many voices and of less authority than his own thoughts, feelings, and opinions. The “progressive Christian” pastor that I referred to earlier also eventually came around to sharing that same perspective about the Bible.

Christmas has significance, but the birth of Jesus is the beginning of something that is completed at the cross and confirmed through the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. We aren’t celebrating the birth of a baby who was born a long time ago and grew to be a good and wise teacher and then died and was buried long ago, his body now decomposed as everyone who died before or since. What is the point of that? There are many people like that throughout history, and we haven’t established in their honor elaborate and extensive celebrations that occur all over the world with decorations and parties and music and gift giving and stories and movies . . .

So if we do nothing else during this Christmas celebrating season, let’s meditate on this from the Apostle Paul’s letter to the church at Philippi:

“Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”(Philippians 2:5-11)

Let Christmas remind us that Jesus is still alive and is coming back, and we will all recognize who He really is. Let’s take seriously the Apostle Paul’s teaching that “today is the day of salvation” (2 Corinthians 6:2) and respond to God’s invitation to draw near to Him through Jesus–and His death for us in our place on the cross. This is the significance of the birth of Christ and the heart of what it means to be a “Christian,” a follower of Christ, the Messiah. All of what it means to be a Christian begins with this understanding.

Son of God and Son of Man

Dec12

© Wendy Clark, December 2021

Son of God

Hannah, my youngest, my late-in-life child, born after I had cancer and chemo, after we stepped out to adopt unsuccessfully twice, after many miscarriages, after I surrendered to God saying, “If I’m not going to have any more children, I’m okay with that, God,” that child–has always been beautiful, loved by pretty much everyone she spends time with, smart, funny, and unusually profound. Even when she was little, sometimes we would be sitting in a room full of adults, and Hannah would say something that would be so interesting, that the room would go silent, and everyone would turn in her direction. Here’s one memory of that, related to Christmas.

Hannah must have been no older than about four, and our homeschool group was making manger scenes. Hannah made three baby Jesus figures for her manger scene. I said, “Hannah, you know there was only one baby Jesus, right?” She said, “Yes, Mom, I know that, but there is God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, three in one, and I didn’t know how else to show that.”

If you’ve missed that somewhere along the way, don’t miss it this Christmas, that Jesus is God made visible to us. “Son of God” doesn’t describe an act of God the Father, birthing or creating Jesus, but the intimate relationship that God the Father shares with Jesus. Look at how the writer of Hebrews explains this:

In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe. The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word” (Hebrews 1:1-3).

Jesus is “the exact representation” of God the Father, the best way for us to see what God is like. God the Father, made the universe through Jesus the Son. Jesus was present at creation and participated in creation. The Apostle John explains this just before he begins to write the account of Jesus’ ministry. It is important to John, who lived and traveled with Jesus, that you understand who Jesus really is.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made” (John 1:1-3, NIV). “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14, NIV).

The “Word” in the Greek means “the expression, the utterance that flowed out of God’s mouth.” Jesus is God and pours out of God. Think about that for a few minutes. When God spoke the universe into existence, Jesus was that expression, the words that flowed out of his mouth. The Holy Spirit is described as the very breath that God breathed, so that when God breathed life into Adam, that life was by the Spirit of God.

God and his Word and his Breath–three in one–perhaps beyond our ability to understand.

Maybe it’s easier for us to comprehend the relationship of father to son and the spirit that moves between them, connecting them and making them one, and yet all three also separate and distinct in their identities and their roles. The Bible makes it clear that there are three separate persons–with a shared will, perspective, and purpose–separate and distinct from each other, and at the same time, completely unified.

Many have tried to explain this. Maybe it’s like an egg that has a shell, a white part, and a yolk and is still all one egg. Maybe it is like water than can be water and steam and ice and still be essentially the same thing. These descriptions fall short of what the Bible teaches about God as three in one.

Jesus doesn’t explain how this works; he simply states that it is. Every time Jesus says “I AM,” He uses the expression that God uses when he speaks to Moses and Moses asks for God’s name.

Moses said to God, ‘Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ Then what shall I tell them?”

God said to Moses, “I AM who I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I AM has sent me to you.’ (Exodus 3:13-14).

What did God just say to Moses? God’s name translates to something like this: I am the one who has always existed and who will always exist. I exist in myself, by myself. There is no other like me.

Jesus uses this same expression of God’s name to describe himself, which is why the Jewish leaders become so enraged against him and also why it is impossible to view Jesus as simply a good man; good men don’t go around claiming to be God.

Here are seven of these statements just from the testimony of the Apostle John. In each of these statements Jesus identifies himself as God, I AM GOD who is . . .

“I AM the bread of life.” (John 6:35, 41, 48, 51)

“I AM the light of the world.” (John 8:12)

“I AM the door of the sheep.” (John 10:7,9)

“I AM the resurrection and the life.” (John 11:25)

“I AM the good shepherd.” (John 10:11, 14)

“I AM the way, the truth, and the life.” (John 14:6)

“I AM the true vine.” (John 15:1, 5)

Jesus also says, “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30), and those who oppose him pick up stones to try to stone him to death and “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9).

If you have never heard that Jesus actually taught that he himself is God and the Son of God, not just a prophet of God or a good man sent by God . . .

If you were taught that Jesus was just a man . . .

If you’ve never really thought about Jesus much at all . . .

Consider this particular conversation that Jesus has with his disciples:

When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say the Son of Man is?”

They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”

“But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?”

Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”

Jesus replied, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven.” (Matthew 16:13-17, NIV)

Jesus refers to himself as the “Son of Man” and then commends Peter for recognizing that he is also the Messiah and the “Son of God.”

If you aren’t sure about all of this or even if you are sure but haven’t given it much thought lately, I encourage you to take some time before Christmas day and read through the Gospel of John, the Apostle John’s account of his encounter with the Son of Man/ Son of God.

As you read, ask and answer these questions: What does Jesus say about himself? What does he do? What does he ask his followers to do? If all of this is true, what implications does it have for my life?

Next time . . . more about the Son of Man.

Being Changed

Jan21

© Wendy Clark, 2021

I’ve been using Bob Goff’s book Live in Grace-Walk in Love:A 365-Day Journey as a supplement to my other Bible studies, Bible reading, and personal reflection. Though Bob Goff’s book follows a schedule of sorts, I don’t read in keeping with it. (I’m somewhere in October’s reading right now.) But as often happens when I read daily readings according to my own schedule, the reading for today relates well to what I have been thinking about.

Here are a few of the things that Bob Goff writes that stand out to me:

“ . . . when I started to think of them [dreaded airport experiences] as opportunities to give away love,my attitude changed.”

“When I think someone ought to be more loving, it’s usually me.”

“The longer I follow Jesus, the more I’m trying to see through the eyes of other people.”

“We come into contact with people every day who need to encounter love.”

“Don’t leave it to someone else to do the loving for you.”

I agree with all of these statements, and I understand them to be true, both in what I know and by what I have experienced. But I would not have been able to agree in the same way many years ago.

In a Bible study discussion the other day one question centered around our awareness of sin, what causes our awareness of sin, and how we respond when we become aware of our own sin.

I thought back to when I was 19 or 20, and in studying the book of I John, I became very convicted by my own lack of love for others, especially difficult people or people who thought very differently from me.

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.
I John 4:7-8, ESV

I had sung this passage many times (maybe you can sing the song and know where the claps belong), but suddenly the words leaped off the page right into my heart, and the entire book of I John took on new significance for me. I felt an acute awareness of my inability to truly love other people, not an emotional, feeling, but the love that Paul describes in I Corinthians 13:

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
I Corinthians 13:4-7, ESV

I mourned over the incredible lack of true love in me, my intense selfishness, my general lack of concern about most other people, and my propensity to justify my own actions while criticizing the actions of others.

I came to the place where I recognized that in and of myself and my own will, I would never really love other people, especially difficult, challenging people. But that’s exactly what Jesus tells us to do.

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?”
Matthew 5:43-47, ESV

I needed a Savior, a Deliverer, a Redeemer, and a Teacher, I needed transformation by a Power other than my own.

And so . . .

I confessed my sin of being selfish and unloving, and I took my sin where it belongs and laid it at the foot of the cross. I surrendered.

I am convinced that if we really want to be changed, the cross is the place where we must start, confessing our sin to God, laying it down, along with all of the plans and schemes and methods that we have tried in our own strength, by our own understanding, and recognizing our total inability to do anything about our sin or our weakness. Then turning in the direction of Jesus, let Him take us to the next place in our journey.

Today when I read Bob Goff’s words about love, I agreed with them, knowing them to be true, both intellectually by the Word of God, and also by my personal experience, having lived them. I am a much more loving person today than I was nearly 40 years ago when I felt hopeless in my ability to ever truly love. I see the world completely differently than I did back then. I see you differently.

How did I move from a place where loving people was never much on my radar to a place where loving people is front and center and where I actually look for opportunities to love other people?

I encountered the Word of God.
I believed it.
I submitted to it by putting it into practice.
I repeated these steps over and over and over again.

If you are struggling with sin, something in you that you know is counter to God’s Word, that you know needs to change, there is a simple practice that will take you to the next step: Encounter the Word of God. Believe it. Surrender to it.

Easy? Often it is not. It tends to take a lot of practice.

Simple? Yes, very simple. Even a young child can learn this practice, step by step, and it’s something that we should teach our children, even as we model it for them.

So then, do I now love perfectly? No. I am still being transformed. I am not who I once was, but I am not yet who I will be.

To me, that is very good news because in this last strange and challenging year, I have both made some new mistakes, and I’ve also repeated some very old ones. I have sometimes fallen into trying to persuade people who perhaps needed more to experience unconditional love. I have sometimes trod with heavy feet where I ought to have stopped lightly.

I am aware of these sinful missteps because I have daily encountered the Word of God. I believe that what God says is true and non-negotiable. I confess my sin daily (and trust me, I have daily sin to confess), and I seek to align myself with what God says is true and right and good. I surrender.

Every day that I practice, practice, practice following Jesus, I am transformed by the Power of the Holy Spirit, little by little.

If we will seek to be transformed, minute by minute, day by day, over a lifetime, we will, in time, be greatly changed. Instead, often we look for huge change in a short amount of time and with little perseverance, and so find ourselves to be ever the same.

Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.
2 Corinthians 3:17-18, ESV

I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.
Romans 12:1-2, ESV

To Tell the Truth

Aug8

A few days ago I stepped on my bathroom scale, and it betrayed me. The number I saw was inexplicably low. I stepped off and then stepped on again. It showed me an even lower number. I repeated the process, over and over again, and each time it showed me a lower number than before. I thought to myself, “Oh, no, even my scale is lying to me!”

Lately it seems that lying has become very common, and people will lie about the most unimportant things. Has this always been, or are people more willing to lie now than they once were?

Years ago my dad had a 16 mm reel of Candid Camera episodes, and in one of the episodes was the Candid Camera team pretending to film a detergent commercial. The detergent was called “Wham” or “Zam” or something like that. They set-up a table with two sets of “white” towels. Both piles looked less than impressive. Then they stopped people on the street and told them they were filming a commercial and asked if they would pick out the brightest, cleanest looking towels.

A person would choose a pile, and the host would say something like, “I’m so sorry, but those are not the towels cleaned by our detergent. Would you like to try again?” Many people said, “Yes,” and then the crew filmed them selecting the “right” pile of towels.

One woman stood out as honest. She took a look at both sets of towels and said, “None of these towels is clean. They all look terrible!” When the host said, “but this pile over here was cleaned by Wham” (or whatever name they used for the detergent), “If you want to, we can start over and try again.” The woman said, “I don’t care if it was Wham or Zam or whatever, they’re all filthy!”

It was funny to watch, but is it funny that people are willing to lie so that they can be seen in a commercial on TV? This was filmed back in the 60s. I don’t think much has changed unless maybe lying has become more common.

Current late-night TV show hosts enjoy going out on the street and questioning people about events that have never occurred. Many people will talk with great confidence and in great detail about something when they are clearly lying. On Social media sites people will post pictures that they have clearly manipulated and lie about how “genuine” they are.

Realizing that people will lie when it doesn’t even matter has made me doubly skeptical about how people might lie when they are desperate or frightened or feel out of control. That’s why I am unlikely to be moved when someone posts the sworn testimony of a person I do not know who has this friend who had such and such happen to them. It is not good evidence that you have a friend whose dad is an expert in his field who said whatever he said . . . I have no way to determine the honesty of your friend or of your friend’s dad. It’s all “hearsay,” to use a legal term, even when it’s in a typed post. Often it is simply Internet gossip that is passed around and around and around.

One thing I have noticed in these kinds of references to “experts” is that often the “experts” are using the exact same turn of phrase, the soundbites that are used in the news. This raises a red flag for me. At the very least, the language they use often reveals a possible political bias that may be influencing the way they present the “facts,” but some people seem completely unaware of these soundbites, even as they use them themselves and reveal where they have been picking up their “news.”

When my bathroom scale started lying to me, I knew it right away because there are other clear pieces of evidence to consider, like how I look in the mirror, how I feel, and how my clothes fit. I picked up my scale and turned it over and dusted off the censors on the bottom. I put it back on the floor and tried again. This time it gave me a more reasonable number. It went back to being honest.

But how do we reset a culture populated with people who lie so easily and with such confidence and very little noticeable remorse? If only “liar, liar, pants on fire” was really a thing, but then perhaps we would have all been badly burned by now.

One of the Scriptures that has most influenced me to reject lying and tell the truth is when Jesus says this, “You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.” (John 8:44). The enemy of my soul is the father of lies? I don’t want to give him any foothold in my life!

A few years ago I spent a whole year studying honesty and what it means to be truly honest according to Scripture. God is completely honest. There is “no shadow of turning” in Him, not even a shade of manipulating or enhancing or downplaying or withholding or many other things that people are apt to do when they aren’t being completely honest. To be truly honest requires that we submit to the refining fire of the Holy Spirit, every minute of every day. I am convinced that we can continue to grow in our understanding of honesty and our ability to be honest for as long as we live. In this life there will be no end to pulling at the threads of what we may not yet see as lying–to ourselves, to others, to God. It is a continuous, ever- deepening process if we are willing to submit to it.

Here are some of the other things that the Bible teaches about lying and honesty.

Proverbs 11:3
“The integrity of the upright guides them, but the unfaithful are destroyed by their duplicity.”

Proverbs 12:22
“The LORD detests lying lips, but He delights in people who are trustworthy.”

Proverbs 13:5
“The righteous hate what is false, but the wicked make themselves a stench and bring shame on themselves.”

Proverbs 19:1
“Better is a poor person who walks in his integrity than one who is crooked in speech and is a fool.”

Colossians 3:9 (the Apostle Paul to Believers)
“Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices.”

Philippians 4:8-9 (the Apostle Paul to Believers)
“Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.”

Clashing Worldviews

Jun9

Sometimes, maybe a lot of the time, we make the mistake of thinking that everyone else sees the world the same way we do or that if we could just talk persuasively enough, others would shift directions and see the world the way that we see it. The “right” way.

We’ve all seen the written shouting matches going back and forth on social media. Most of us have been caught off guard when we have posted something heartfelt and were met with hostility from people we think of as “friends.” We may have responded with a harsh answer back, or with silence, or with more explanation, or by deleting the entire conversation, or even by blocking the other person from ever engaging with us again.

In 2020, it has become clearer than it has been in a long time, that we are living in an age of clashing worldviews. No matter who you are and how you see the world, you can be pretty sure that you see the world differently than many of those around you: co-workers, neighbors, friends, even people in your own family.

We all see the world from a perspective that has been shaped by our experiences and how we have interpreted and responded to those experiences. Our interpretation of events is an interweaving of what we see, hear, feel, and believe.

When something happens to us in life, especially something uncomfortable, painful, or traumatic, we try to make meaning out of the experience, to find a place to categorize the what happened to us.

We tend to play what happened over and over in our minds, the order of all of the little pieces, all of the details, but we don’t just sort through the facts; we have feelings attached to what happened, whether we recognize and acknowledge those feelings or not, and what we feel shapes our understanding of what we experienced, sometimes correctly, and sometimes incorrectly.

I think back to a very turbulent time in my life, back when I was in the 6th grade. Someone who did business with my dad–a man who was a missionary–cheated my dad out of a lot of money. This threw our family into an economic crisis.

I was attending a small Christian school at the time and had been there since kindergarten. I was with the same kids every year and had known most of them from the beginning. My parents had sacrificed to pay for us to attend there, and we had received scholarships and other financial help as well. But now we could no longer afford to stay, so suddenly in 6th grade, I was entering a K-6 public school, knowing only a few of the kids that lived on my block.

What a relief that this turned out to be a great school and a great situation for me! I loved my sweet teacher. I was put in a challenging, interesting, and fun class. I was making friends. But then . . .

To deal with our financial situation, we had to sell our house and rent a house in another neighborhood. I didn’t really understand how public schools worked and that this would mean I would need to change schools again. One day during school, the principal called me into her office to tell me that I would have to leave the school and go to a different school, closer to where we had moved.

I remember that I was completely shocked and devastated as this woman, who looked so cold and uncaring delivered the news, watched me break down into sobbing, and never said one kind or compassionate word.

I asked her why I couldn’t just stay and finish out the year. I had already switched schools once, and we would all be changing again the next year for junior high. She responded to me in a tone that I remember being harsh and unkind:

“I can’t even get my own daughter into this school. Why should you get to go to school here?”

She sent me back to class a complete wreck. My kind teacher felt very bad and said she would do what she could to help me stay, but I had to leave anyway. She did have the class write to me a few times, which was very kind.

I am stunned by the fact that I started crying as I was writing this, some 45 years later.

The new school experience was terrible for me. The class of the motivated and engaged students was full, and I was put in a class with the lower academic students. I was pulled out of the class for an advanced reading group and a few other things during the week, but it was clear what kind of class this was, and all of us in that class (and all the kids in the other class) knew it was the class for ‘the dumb kids.”

For a long time I didn’t have any friends in my class, and one girl at the school kept trying to bully me. I use the word “tried” because I stood up to her, but it was a difficult and troubling time for me.

A few weeks after I had moved to the new school, my family and I were eating in a restaurant when the principal for the other school walked in. I felt sick to my stomach. Then I was filled with rage so powerful that I didn’t know what to do. I remember silently praying over and over, “Jesus, help me! Jesus, help me!”

Why was that woman so unkind to a young girl who was clearly devastated? I have often wondered about her, and I have had to forgive her over and over again. Even now, I find myself having to forgive her as I write this and to choose to think merciful thoughts about her. I doubt she ever had any idea of what effect her words, actions, and attitudes had on me, and how even the memory of them still has the power to affect me.

And recent events have brought this childhood experience to mind yet again because I started wondering how I might have interpreted this event if I had been a black little girl, facing that unloving white woman across the desk in her office. Would I have been sure of her motives, sure of her heart? Would I have “known” that her attitude toward me was because of my skin color?

I was white, and she was white, so of course it never occurred to me that her harshness was due to racism because it was not. I don’t know why she behaved the way she did. I think it had something to do with her wanting her daughter to go to the school where she was a principal, but I had nothing to do with whatever was going on there. She didn’t speak to me with kindness or compassion. She didn’t try to help me. Why not? I don’t know, and I can’t imagine that I ever will.

As I think back on that experience, I’m struck by how what we believe about God plays a part in how we interpret events, both how we relate to Him, and how we understand Him to relate to us.

When I was filled with a sickening rage against this woman for how she had treated me, I started praying because I understood, even then, that the source of my strength and help was and is the LORD. I also understood that holding onto those feelings was not good for me, and that I needed a way to release them, to release her, and to move forward in my life.

What we believe about other people, how we see them, and how we believe they see us, also plays a part in how we shape our experiences, and because that is true, I recognize that my memory of those events may not be completely accurate. I remember that principal as being cold and uncaring and for certain she said nothing kind to me, and she didn’t help me in any way. I still wonder why she called me into her office during the school day to give me that news. Why didn’t she call my parents? Why wasn’t my mom there with me? What did the principal think was going to happen?

But maybe she was moved by my distress, and I didn’t perceive it. Maybe she was caught by surprise by my reaction. My memory of her as being hard and uncaring is part of how I interpreted what I saw and heard and felt that day. The evidence seems to support that interpretation, but it can’t reveal what the woman was thinking or feeling on that day or why she behaved the way she did.

Fast forward many years to an encounter with another woman who appeared to be cold and unfeeling.

I was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma when I was 32 and had two daughters, ages 2 and 4 months old. It was a shocking and devastating time for my whole family. Again I found myself sitting in an office across from a woman who seemed unmoved as she laid out to my husband and me treatment plans and what we could expect. Although we had an appointment early that day, we had waited for several hours before getting in to see this doctor. We were on edge, and she was expressionless. I went out of that room feeling like the doctor was a competent but hard woman.

Months later, after I had finished my treatment, was cancer free, and was coming back for a follow-up appointment, one of the nurses talked of what she remembered that first day. She said that she knew from the beginning that I was going to be okay because I had a positive attitude and I was looking to the future. Then she said something that surprised me.

She said that after our meeting, the doctor sat in her office for a while and cried. She talked to the nurse about her great grief at the young women with cancer that she was treating. (Another of her patients also had a baby and was being treated for cancer.) The doctor herself was pregnant. She was overwhelmed by imagining what it might be like to have a new baby and be diagnosed with cancer. She was struggling to “keep it together.”

When we have a bad experience that is connected to someone else, we want to know why people do the things they do. We often make up our minds about why they do those things, and our worldview plays a big part in what we decide is true about other peoples’ hearts and motives.

But we have no way of knowing what is inside the heart of someone else. Sometimes we are not even able to see our own hearts clearly. The Bible talks about this problem:

“Every way of a person is right in his own eyes, but the Lord weighs the heart” (Proverbs 21:2).

When Samuel was sent by God to anoint the person who would be the next king of Israel, he was distracted by what he could see and what he thought about who should be king. God corrected Samuel when he incorrectly picked out the person he thought should be king:

“Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart” (I Samuel 16:7).

We can’t see inside to the heart. We can see lots of clues, and we are told to look for those clues, the things people say, the things people do (what the Bible calls “fruit”) in order to have some understanding about who is trustworthy and truthful, but in the end, we can’t really know why people do what they do.

“Therefore do not pronounce judgment before the time, before the Lord comes, who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart . . .” (I Corinthians 4:5).

Motives and intentions are something that we can’t really know and we have to leave to a future time when God will reveal those deeper things that for now remain hidden.

Because we are such complex people, with so many things that shape how we see the world, God tells us not to use the world around us as the guide for interpreting events. Instead, we are to replace whatever worldview we have come to have with a Biblical worldview. We are to line up our thinking with God’s thinking.

The Apostle Paul writes, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Romans 12:2).

We must actively resist thinking like the world thinks by renewing our minds and being transformed. How do we do that? We surrender our thoughts, to God’s thoughts. We let the Word of God shape us.

Jesus prayed for those who would follow Him, that the Father would sanctify us (transform, purify, refine) in the truth, and then He said this, “Your Word is truth” (John 17:17).

So if I can’t know why people do the things they do, then what am I supposed to do with all the bad things that others have done to hurt me?

The Apostle Paul writes, “Since God chose you to be the holy people He loves, you must clothe yourselves with tenderhearted mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. Make allowance for each other’s faults, and forgive anyone who offends you. Remember, the Lord forgave you, so you must forgive others” (Colossians 3:12-13).

I can choose how I will think of other people. I can choose to think of the principal with mercy and to forgive her even though I do not understand why she did what she did. I can choose to remember that doctor as a person, as a woman struggling with her own hopes, dreams, and fears.

The Apostle Paul also writes, “The purpose of my instruction is that all believers would be filled with love that comes from a pure heart, a clear conscience, and genuine faith” (I Timothy 1;5).

And to the believers at Philippi, he writes, “Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves” (Philippians 2:3).

I can examine myself, comparing myself against the Word of God, I can agree with what God says is true and reject what I think or feel when it is contrary to God’s word. I can surrender and submit my thoughts, ideas, attitudes, and feelings, even my memories to make them obedient to God’s Word.

No, I don’t know the motives behind the things that you say and do. I don’t know your heart and all the places where it has been hurt and broken.

Here’s what I do know about you: You were made in the image of God (Genesis 1:27). God knew you before you were even born (Psalm 139:13-15). God knows everything about you (Psalm 139:1-6). God loves you (John 3:16). God’s desire is that you would know Him (2 Peter 3:9). God wants me to love you even if you are not kind and loving toward me (Matthew 5:44). God’s goal is for you and I to live in peace and unity, and that we would love each other (Psalm 133;1-3).

None of these truths hinge on your experiences or my experiences. They are true whether you or I believe them or not. And as I was taught long ago, the only two things from this world that will last forever are people, and the Word of God.

So we ought to give great care to both.