Sunday, August 20, 2017

lying to ourselves


Our old pal with the unfortunate name, Commodianus, is back today with another bit of wisdom in A Year with the Church Fathers.  He tells us that we shouldn't try to get rid of our guilt from making money dishonestly by giving it to charity. God isn't interested in ill gotten gains.

But his last sentence is what rang out in my mind. "you are fooling yourself, but no one else." The emperor's new clothes and Michael Jackson come to mind. Both of them were so powerful that no one would tell them what was true. They lived in imaginary dreamlands of their own creation, not in reality.

The scary thing is that we all live in our own artificial realities to some extent. Some of us more than others. Some of us have people in our lives who give us that much needed reality check from time to time. But there's another way we can get and stay grounded in reality.

We can spend time with God. If we seek His face, and ask Him to teach us what's true, He will give us true humility. And as we know from the saints, humility is reality. It is neither thinking more nor less of ourselves than what we truly are.

Maybe a good prayer for us today is to ask God to show us in what ways we're deceiving ourselves. And to help us see the truth. He's good at doing that very gently and lovingly.

God, please help us be humble.

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