Seeing Others As We Should

A man dressed as Napoleon went to see a psychiatrist at the urging of his wife. "What’s your problem?" the doctor asked.

"I have no problem," the man replied. "I’m one of the most famous people in the world. I have a great army behind me. I have all the money I’ll ever need, and I live in great luxury."

"Then why are you here?"

"It’s because of my wife," the man said. "She thinks she’s Mrs. Smith."

Pride tends to do two things with us. It causes us to see ourselves as more important than what we really are. That's why Paul wrote, ...Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought... (Rom. 12:3, NIV).

But pride also causes us to see other people as less important than what they are. Someone has described us as having a "crab mentality." The term refers to a pot of crabs in which one tries to escape over the side, but is relentlessly pulled down by the others in the pot. As humans, we often act the same way. If we can't be somebody great, we can at least pull down others around us so that we look better by comparison!

In the Corinthian church, there was a lot of competition involving spiritual gifts. Those who had the more prominent or public gifts, such as the ability to preach or the ability to speak in different languages, regarded themselves as superior to those who held what they viewed as less significant gifts. Paul says, though:

On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor....But God has combined the members of the body and has given greater honor to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. (I Cor. 12:22-25, NIV).

May God help us not only to see ourselves as He sees us, but to see others around us as He sees them as well.

Source: Allan Smith, Thought for the Day.