There is real vulnerability in understanding someone else’s point of view.
Vulnerable because there’s an element of leaving what is comfortable to you, to enter into something that is far more comfortable for someone else. That probably explains why in some conversations it’s easier to ‘connect’ with what someone is saying by talking about what’s familiar to you. By the end of some conversations you’re really just hearing yourself, rather than getting an insight into the other person.
Over time, however, we are reminded that our neatly packaged understanding of the other, does not reflect the true understanding of the other. We are reminded that the other is a strange place and we are the strangers there. So we rely on the other – the person best equipped to help us in the strange to be our guide and navigator to truly get our bearings on what this strange place is.
So we open ourselves up to be vulnerable in understanding.
This was brought home to me in an evocative way when I sat through a creative performance by a group of men in Stoke-on-Trent. The performance included perspectives on aspects of masculinity that were not meant to be comfortable. They were there to challenge the viewer to consider if they really understood what it was to be a man.
From different viewpoints and experiences, there was just a taste of the complexities that face men today. It wasn’t a celebration of manhood or a battering of it, it was a remarkable expression of it. Remarkable because so much can be taken for granted and hidden and assumed and absorbed and neglected and ignored and misunderstood.
I watch something like this and am all the more amazed that Jesus should choose to walk among us. That He should immerse himself in the human experience and see people struggling with the burdens of existing. That He should suffer and understand and in obedience take all of those burdens to the cross. So when He says He understands, He really does. He became vulnerable and was able to connect what was considered to be real with the promise of the Kingdom reality to inform what it really means to live.
So it’s no surprise that all those who follow Him are not called to stay away from the world. It’s no surprise that He just looks to protect those that follow as they likewise share their understanding with others.
God forgive us for choosing to live in ignorance. God help us to engage and at least truly seek to understand.
(Photo by Jean Carcallas on Unsplash)
For His Name’s Sake
Shalom
C. L. J. Dryden
Life With CD 