Hallelujah.

There are people that I meet sometimes that I just plain dislike before I get to know them. I try very hard to push that prejudice out of my mind, and to open up my heart to them and usually, I find that they are actually pretty nice people. But that does not change the fact that there are just some people at whom I instinctively heap judgment and scorn in my heart. Today, I realized a big part of why I do this, and the type of people to whom I do it.

I'd met this person about a while back. It didn't take long for that feeling to set in, for some unexplained burning against that person to take hold of me every time I looked at him (I'll refer to the person as male, just for the sake of avoiding saying "him/her"). Everything about him, from his hair, to the way he talked, to his hobbies, even his existence began to gnaw away at my sense of peace. It was frustrating enough to have someone I disliked so intensely in such close proximity to me. It was even more maddening to be at the complete mercy of a judgmental burning that I could not explain. The day ended, and even though I was pretty sure I wasn't going to ever see him again, still I felt some profound type of scorn. And for a long time, every time I even thought of the person, I felt a deeply-rooted hatred that I wasn't even fully aware of at the time. Now, even as I write this I'm beginning to realize why I felt I hated him so much, and how the person at whom that hate was directed wasn't actually...him.

Freudian psychologists discuss the use of defense mechanisms as a way to avoid inner anxiety in a person. One of these mechanisms is the phenomenon of projection, where the defender takes the feelings he has about himself and, well, projects them onto someone else. And looking back at it now, it's starting to make more and more sense why this person (unknowingly, I think) suffered in my heart under the fire of all of this hatred. I'm realizing how much of myself I see in him. In the things he does, the way that he speaks, the things he says when he speaks, the attitude he had towards life, I saw myself. And I could not stand it. Time after time I heaped burning coals upon his head, committing heart-borne murder upon...myself. The only reason I hated this person so much was because he resembled who I used to be before that point, who I was at that point, and, in a way, the person that God wanted me to leave behind in myself.

It's interesting, how effectively I can unknowingly hide myself from my own judgments. Pride, lust, worldliness, all of these things are things I know I must cast out, but at the same time, still have in myself. As a result, I condemn others with the hatred that I should harbor for the sinful nature within me.

JDSN taught once that we must understand the love that God has for us in order for us to even begin to love others in the way we are called to. I'm realizing now just how much this is necessary. I must see the fullness in God's knowledge of my heart in order to know how much it means for Him to forgive me. I must know the egregiously detestable nature that God chooses to overlook in order to give it up to him to change. I must count the cost of what I am laying down to truly look forward to only that which God has promised to give in return. And in the end, the only hope I have to love others as God loves me is to know first how He really does love me; faithfully, unconditionally, sacrificially and patiently.

It's so difficult for me to even realize how deeply the Holy Spirit really has to dig into me to start to bring forth all of this sin in me. There's some odd sense of dichotomy in both the slight frustration that I feel in seeing all of these ugly truths surface as well as the awestruck gratitude that I have in seeing this salvation really come forth (if even in some ways that I don't always like to think about). But if anything, it really is teaching me just how true it is that I am not responsible for practically any part of my salvation. In seeing how wicked I am, not only in my reflection in that person but also my subconscious instinct to hide and avoid such a revelation, it becomes more and more of a reality that it is only by God's hand, by God's calling, and ultimately God's will that I have come to this place in my life. As much as I might accredit to myself even my response to God's call, even the desire to seek comes from Him, and is in His own way the invitation back home. His call might come in some unexpected form, during some unexpected times, in the midst of the most unexpected circumstances. But I pray that I and people everywhere, whether we are saved or not, will listen for and respond to God's still small voice, that we won't be distracted by expectations of God's voice or call in one form, while we are in one state, but open our hearts to the truth that He is always calling for us to come back into the arms of the Creator, the Father, the Savior.

As I continue on this walk, I can't even give an estimate of how much more wickedness and sin will turn up my life. But I can only pray that I will always look to Him who gives me strength, through whom I can do anything, by whose grace and love I was led out of Egypt so that He might dwell in me, and be the Lord my God.