“Another characteristic of human nature—perhaps the one that makes us most human—is our capacity to do the unnatural, to transcend and hence transform our own nature.”
― M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled
PROVERBS 11-12
16Fools show their annoyance at once,
but the prudent overlook an insult. (12:16)
58Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.
The power of emotions and reactions are very real and difficult to unwind. There are certain ways that I have become programmed to respond. All of them are predicated on how I was raised and those programmed responses were formed in the context of pain, problems, pleasures etc. They are rooted in survival and mostly in emotional survival because physical survival has never been a challenge in my lifetime.JOURNAL
Yet from what I have learned about human behavior. Emotional survival can feel as real and desperate as physical survival...especially to a child. Then as responses become ingrained by repetitive behavior, the responses become somewhat automatic. This is what causes adults to act in childish, incompetent ways. They are automatic responses, learned in childhood that manifest themselves in the lives of those children as adults.
This really is pretty daunting stuff. I can feel and know when I start to retreat into childlike behavior. It often surprises me with it's intensity and power. It is in these moments that I realize how close I really am to levels of evil that I would never think possible. I don't think I am alone in that reality. I think it is why most people never see the horrific possibilities of us humans until they actually happen. This is why we desperately need scripture and relationship with God. It is not so that we can get a bunch of cool stuff and nice vacations, it is so that we don't slip into the worst of our possibilities. It is so that we can actually be transformed into humans that counter the negative and reflect a bit of heaven into the hard realities of this world.
11When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. 12For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
13And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
1 CORINTHIANS 13:11-13
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