For God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-discipline. 2 Timothy 1:7 (NLT)
See Yourself in the Other – The Thinking Slow Series – Part 2
In yesterday’s post, I led with my belief that we are designed to think slow.
I showed how our brain’s bias is by default set to defensive mode and how fear is a powerful protection mechanism that, back in primitive times (and still today) saved us almost daily.
Most of what our brain’s rapid fear response was designed to protect us from is no longer a threat. Things like animal attacks, weather, and sudden imminent danger. So where does all this fear get directed now?
People (or “the other”) – including people groups – often become the new targets and triggers for the over-sensitive and under-used cerebral security guard in a modern world devoid of all natural major and lethal threats.
But those “others” – crazy mash-ups of Divinity and dust; that random yet organized community of cells and atoms, blood and breath and bone, fears and experiences and hurts and pains, joys and memories; those living connectors to another kin; a brother, a sister, an uncle and a mother…
They are just like you.
Floating on a blue ball of dust, in an infinitely large universe; created and sustained with the most minuscule of human interference on a cosmic scale, suspended and held by a Divine grace beyond our knowledge or comprehension.
You and I, we did nothing within our power to be born. And we can do nothing to sustain the delicate balance that holds us and protects us against the harsh, cold and destructive nature of the infinite dark just beyond our atmosphere.
That, my friends, is a divine miracle.
When we are driven by our fear, especially the primal fear that resorts to quick thinking and judgments, we divide and separate. We generalise and ostracise. We cast aside and minimise the infiniteness of the miracle that is another human life.
But when we slow down and let our more modern, up-to-date brains help us, we can see the other. The divinity and the imperfections. The beauty and the blemishes. The divine and the dust.
We can see our own selves.
The call is to live from a place of love, not fear. To override that defensive sense, and instead, lay our weapons of words and hands and tools down and invite people to our tables so we can see them. And once we see them and hear them and know them, we won't be scared of them.
As Brené Brown says, “People are hard to hate close up.”
In fact if you sit with someone long enough, and listen to them, and look them in the face, you'll begin to see yourself in them.
It takes slowing down your most primal reactions and responses – your pre-disposition to fear and retaliate and defend – to empathize and care. To truly love.
When you see yourself in the other, it takes down the dividing wall between you.
In fact, Brian Zahnd says it perfectly, you'll see that…
“There is no them;
There is only us.“
Written by Jesse Milani
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