Blindness of the Heart.

As you follow the call of Christ, you will be faced with the temptation to fall into pride, and be forced to confront your lack of confidence.

Pride goes before the fall. You can choose to fall in humility, or you can have humiliation thrust upon you; but either way pride eventually will bring a fall. Pride creates a cage of deceit around your ego, constantly protecting itself and shifting your perspective so that you are blind to any reality around you that challenges your own self-importance. If the truth sets you free, pride is a cage of lies that holds you for ransom at the expense of reality and the relationships around you.  

A lack of confidence can be a cage of its own as well. It's a bad set of glasses that blinds you from being everything that you can be. It is a lie that trades dignity for false comfort. You end up living a half-life, never believing in yourself, and resenting others for not believing in yourself either. It's a toxic cycle of wanting to be more, never believing you can become more, all while blaming others for not seeing you as more.  

Two cages, two lies, two ways your heart can become blind. The medicine for one is the poison of the other. Try to humble someone without confidence, chances are they will become less confident. Try to build up the confidence of someone struggling with pride and it will add fuel to the fire. Both will bind you with lies, both will hold you back, and both can be treated with the truth.  

Sometimes it is hard to diagnose between the two. Pride can put on the air of false humility, in order to appease people to preserve the ego. A lack of confidence can overcompensate and awkwardly come off as an awkward arrogance. And many times we are all jumbled up inside and we can have pride in some areas, and a lack of confidence in others.  

Two things have helped me unravel the lies of my own pride and low confidence. Communion with God and deep community with the body of Christ.  

When I spend time with God, He has a way of bringing rightness to what is wrong. As I read scripture and meet privately with Him in prayer, He has a way of convincing me of the pride I begin to walk in and showing me how I can humble myself and lift others up. When I am lacking confidence, He is quick to assure me and love me, reminding me of my place in His family how proud He is of me. However, there are times that we grow callouses around our lies, and we stay blind, ignoring God’s guidance.  

This is where the body of Christ comes in. If you are in deep relationship with the brothers and sisters around you, they tend to have a much better vantage point of your blind spots than you do. If they see you making decisions and behaving in a prideful way, chances are you are blind to it, and they can, gently, in love, call you into humility. If you are holding yourself back, believing all the negative, rejecting all the positive they can see that too, and gently, in love, they can build you up with the truth of who you are In Christ.  

It’s true, loving God and loving others are the two highest laws of Christianity, but they are also the best ways to prevent ourselves and each other from living a life held back by the blindness that can grow in our hearts.

Be Blessed,

Phil Morris