Knowing Yourself

In our view of aliments, we tend to be negative as a culture. And rightly so. But at the same time, there are some benefits to having something wrong with you, or at least something that doesn't function the same way as it does for everyone else. For me, I find that abnormalities make me be aware of my body a lot more diligently then most. For example, I know that if I fast for too long and get blood drawn (in a certain quantity) I get ill. Or if I don't sleep or eat for a period of time then I get ill. I even have a good estimate of how much fat and oil my body can handle in one day. Yet, health professionals don't really listen to any of that, because what could I know? They went to school. I've only lived with my body and all of its qwarks for 22 years.

As I thought about how dismissals of my self-knowledge make me feel, I realized that pastors all too often do the same thing, dismissing people for having incorrect readings of scripture, just because they don't match ours, when really God could be saying something meaningful to the person dis-missed through the passage. May this new generation of pastors, help people discover themselves deeper by listening to all of their wealth of self-knowledge. May we not judge. May we guide with grace.