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zamdad -> RE: Why is HARD for Chrisitans to say...I am Sorry? (8/9/2008 11:02:20 PM)
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ORIGINAL: Liveloved
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Too often were so busy, lost in our own reality
But this is what selfishness is---and that pretty much defines pride, thinking more of yourself than you ought to think.
Yes and no. In a sense, I suppose, it is a form of pride. But, look at our culture today. Everyone wants to be heard, no one wants to listen. I'm in my 40's, my generation was known as the "me generation." We were taught that we deserved a beak today, that we could have it our way. Everything became about ME, my happiness, my reality.
I've come to the conslusions I have after years of working in a business designed to change people: corrections. Have you ever noticed that when you are trying to communicate your feelings to someone and you can see them formulating a response before you are finished? It seems that both collectively and individually we have lost the ability to really listen to others. To be able to put all our own "stuff" aside and truly begin to understand what another person is communicating.
Example: for five years of my career as a PO, I supervised a sex offender caseload. When I talk to people about this work, all tto often I can see the walls go up to block any effective communication. All the prejiduces come to the surface and questions ultimately come up asking me how I could have ever worked with that population. Truth of the matter is, I loved that aspect of my job. I got to know the men and women I worked with deeply. I got to see them begin the process of change, what we in the church call "repentance." I began to understand where these people were at mentally, emotionally and spiritually. Buit the majority of people in the community here the term sex offender and they have no desire to understand anything further. They have been conditioned to think that we have to keep them isolated from the rst of the community and to protect our kids. While this education/conditioning is not a bad thing, it all too often becomes an easy excuse for people to not have to look further and understand the bigger picture; to see things from God's perspective let alone outside their own perspective.
What does this have to do with the ability to say sorry? We have been conditioned by our culture to look out for number one. We consume more mass media (TV, radio, print, internet, etc.) than we do of God's Word. Therefore, our thinking is shaped by the information we receive. When the messages we are getting is that we are the center of our own universe, it's difficult to epathize, to understand where another person is at mentally, emotionally, spiritually. We're always looking for an angle where we are going to benefit when we have to try to understand things from outside our own perspective.
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