What I don’t like
You ask me what it is about you I do not like. It is not that I do not like you ‘in total.’ I see the good qualities, the good potential in you. I respect that what lies in your heart desires to be sincere. However…
James taught that faith without works is dead. The Lord, when passing by a fig tree that ‘pretended’ to be one with fruit to offer, condemned it for its falsehood – you will know them by their fruits. Though I see in you solid potential, you choose to pretend to have all the answers to life’s challenges yet you produce no fruit from within yourself. Taping inaccurate portrayals of Jesus of Nazareth here and there is no substitute for becoming the hands and feet of the Lord, as St. Francis taught.
Do not divert away my criticism by pointing out my failures to achieve what I profess as the goal of the human being. I know myself perhaps near as well as God knows me. I am the worst of sinners, however I make no excuses for my weakness as a disciple of the Divine. I know full well that I will own my failings and that, by Grace alone, I will – and many times over am – provided with opportunities to squeeze out of my selfish self the selflessness that is our perfect, inner self.
We all want a better world, but the world does not exist for you, nor for me, nor for any individual, nor for any one being or thing in particular. The world exists that all should be one. There is the rub. We possess self-awareness, self consciousness, coupled with the freedom that the Divine plan provides, blesses us with. But we have abused and misused and misunderstood that gift – THIS alone is the reason for the state of the world.
Healing, true healing, begins – can only begin – with each of us facing the ugliness of self and strive ever harder to correct what we know is wrong. Honesty about who and what we really are as individuals will most naturally lead to humility. And it is humility alone that will heal the suffering of not only our time, but also both the past and the future.