Loving That Log In One’s Own Eye

DEFEAT by Kahlil Gibran (1883—1931) is an astounding poem.  It propounds a kind of Ecclesiastes-wisdom that defeat is more meaningful than victory—that defeat may truly be a supreme kind of victory.  

Losing an argument, or losing in a conflict, would seem at times humiliating.  These experiences are ubiquitous.  

One of my key interests in mediating conflict is helping others see how they hurt others, seeing their own contribution, because that is not only where reconciliation’s at, it’s also the purest path to one’s own healing.  

Here’s the paradox: camping in our own sense of rightness is a dungeon of our own creation.  But leaving that camp to join with another’s understanding is both a venture in aligning with truth AND it’s a holiday from our insistence that our way is the only way forward.  

Here’s the madness.  Two people insisting upon their own rightness; an insistence that, for each, their way is the only way forward.  It’s a madness, because there’s only truthfully a third way forward.  

Here’s a series of thoughts for the would-be protagonist:  

• For those camped in their rightness, think about what I’ve said above.  Could it be that there’s a spiritual opportunity of leaving your camp to survey theirs—their understanding, their perception, their hurt, their story?  Could there be more to the story?  Even your freedom?  

• Imagine facing God and all of life’s truths one day, all our dark and dirty secrets revealed by a righteous, holy God.  For those who have no faith in God, is it worth the chance not planning for this kind of eventuality?  For those with faith in God, knowing all will be revealed in God’s time, we would be wise to plan for such an inevitability.  

• If we insist upon not seeing truths of life in the here-and-now, are we prepared to face God in the perils of our revealed pride in eternity?  Or reconcile it now?  What risk are we placing against receiving our “well done, good and faithful servant” moment from the Lord when we stay in our rightness?  

• Far worse a reality than a regret in this temporal life is an eternal regret that we cannot change once life’s race is run.  This is what ought to convict us before we stand in the presence of a Holy God.  

• Even if we’re right, aren’t we commanded to love our enemies and forgive as God forgave us?  No amount of our own rightness justifies not loving our enemies and refusing to forgive.  

• If the Bible is important to you—and for many I understand, it isn’t—but if it is, and you wish to follow Jesus’ teaching, then forgiveness and loving our ‘enemies’ is a bone-jarring truth we must wrestle with.  

• Are there others close to you that you care about who are hurt because you refuse to reconcile?  What about people who care about the person on the other side you’re in dispute with, and how they feel?  

• What if there is a life experience we’re all invited to experience but too few of us are willing to go there—to humiliation, to defeat, to a place we can only rise from?  

• “Did you love me enough to love my sheep; did you love me enough to love my lambs?”  Jesus’ words.  

• If only we could hold some space in our hearts for the story of the other that we struggle to understand—to get alongside them as the Holy Spirit does and empathise with WHY they are who they are, and WHY they reason how they do, and from that WHY determine that they see as they do for logical reasons to them.  

If we don’t make any effort to move toward the other person in humility, how can we expect them to move toward us?  

The best test of our Christian faith is how amenable we are to the example and followship of Christ — how well do WE (not the other person we are tempted to point our finger toward) get the log out of our own eye.  

The blessings of God
are quite directly connected
with humility in terms of
our relations with others.  

The seeing of hearts

Wars are not just waged on national and international scales.  They’re waged first and foremost in hearts — yours and mine.  

In a cosmic reversal of fortunes, we only make peace with our own heart when we’ve agreed to be at peace regarding the hearts of others — over whom we have almost no influence, let alone control.  

We only experience peace in a chaotic world
when we understand and accept the chaos.  

The seeing of hearts — others hearts — is a gift not principally to them, but to us, because it relieves us of the caustic load of bias against them who we hardly understand.  

Seeing people right — through eyes of truth — is crucial to discerning and not condemning.  This is about giving others the benefit of the doubt that we would like to receive from them.  

The trickiest thing about hearts is how secretly divisive and biased they are.  About the only time we’re ready to admit this is when we’re caught in a sin — when our heart has been revealed to us at least as ‘a little corrupt’.  

Facing this truth is key to any objective we have on humility.  

The seeing of hearts is empathy of compassion, seeing and accepting the moral limits on others, even as we understand and accept our own moral limits.  

Seeing hearts means we aren’t shocked when others aren’t “for” us, as we admit the light-speed at which we’re prone to turn “against” others.  

Love can be highly conditional
unless it’s a deliberate choice
to see others as God sees them.  

Seeing hearts is about comprehending we’re not a lot different from one another as human beings — we have our perceptions and we respond accordingly.  

Seeing hearts correctly is not hard when we’re open to the truth in our own heart.  

We want our plans to succeed, we want life predictable and easy, we don’t appreciate surprises and we hate loss, and we want what we think we deserve.  

Unfortunately, life’s not like that.  Not for any of us.  Though there are times when it’s especially rough for us.  Perhaps this coincides with times that seem favourable to another person we’d compare with.  Life feels particularly unfair.  We don’t reckon with the ‘swings and roundabouts’ of life.  We want the disparity rectified immediately.  

The seeing of hearts helps at these times, for we empathise with ourselves and are prone more to patience amid the apparent misfortune.  

When life is good for us but there’s another person suffering, seeing their heart helps us stay in the “mourn with those who mourn” state.  This helps them via our compassion — as we ‘suffer with’ them — and it helps our own heart as we’re blessed in being a blessing.  

In another cosmic reversal, as we see others’ hearts, empathising with them, we do so out of the seeing of our own heart.  

Recognising the vagaries and partialities of our own hearts helps us understand and accept the vagaries and partialities of others — these are human constants that are easy to see if only we will take the time.  

Seeing hearts is the way to peace
in a life that cannot be separated from others.  

In life, inner peace is linked to peace with others.  

As life is relational, so is peace.  

Peace with self is contingent on peace with others.   

Toward a reasonable theology for the trauma sufferer

It seems strange for me to have only come across the term “trauma theology” in the past few days through a counsellor friend.  

But given my personal and professional experience has lent me to the field, I feel led to explore the ideas that have been piqued.  

The following is deliberately incomplete . . .

What we’ve all struggled with in terms of the concept of Theodicy (one definition: “the defense of God’s goodness and divine providence in life in view of the existence of evil and outcomes of suffering”) is it endeavours to find explanation about things that cannot be explained.  

Why does God allow suffering?  How on earth could any human being, pastor or minister or counsellor, have any idea on how to answer that question?  It is so very variegated.  It is so very nuanced.  And endeavouring to answer that question only relegates any logical or valid real reason to nonsense.  

Seeking an answer misses the point, a ploy of the enemy.  More is the point of finding God within the suffering — this is still a tricky phenomenon for those who have suffered trauma.  

How can the Bible help?  Incredibly, Paul captured the essence of the attempt to explain the inexplicable in 1 Corinthians chapters 1 and 2.  Paul explains that God shames the strong and the wise, and instead blesses the weak and the weary — (there is a key here to be explored later).  God reveals human wisdom as folly in the realm of suffering and trauma.  Then we go back inside the Old Testament and find ourselves utterly at home in the inexplicable via Ecclesiastes, Job, the lament psalms, Jeremiah, Lamentations, and so many of the other prophets.  Even the books of history are full of stories of injustice and suffering, with no pat answers.  

Then in the New Testament again we find solace in the Passion narratives of Jesus suffering on the cross, and we can also land in 2 Corinthians — yes, the whole ‘tearful’ letter — and verses like James 1:2 leave us wondering!  “Consider it pure joy my brothers and sisters when you face trials of many kinds.”  What that says is there must be a way to healing, but the biblical vista is one of hope grounded in a future perspective of maturity and completeness — much of which is cast forth in the hope in eternity.  Christians are called to endure.  There is suffering here in this life that we can only endure with the help of fellow sojourners.  Trauma predisposes us to crave the love of someone, and ideally a community, who will walk alongside us.  

The human brain is responsible for absorbing stimuli that are anything from the mundane to the potentially traumatic.  The trouble with the brain is when it senses danger, it cannot think logically and can only experience the event — think trauma — for what it is.  The feeling part of the brain is all we have to cope with stimuli that is too quick for the thinking part of our brain to process.  Then when the thinking part of the brain does come on line, it must deal with one hell of a mess.  

For the sufferer (or would-be-sufferer, in the case of those who are about to be impacted by trauma), there is such a temptation — or need — to find an explanation for their suffering.  “There must be some reason for what happened or why it happened or what I’m to do about it, including how I’m to recover, that makes sense,” but there are no neat answers, and we know that the common experience of those who have been traumatised is that it literally sticks inside our bodies, becoming of a sense autonomic, with horrendous, ongoing after effects.  

For the counsellor or would-be-counsellor, as well there is such a temptation to actually bring from oneself a legitimate way of helping, otherwise we would feel we were ripping the client off.  “Surely I must be able to ‘do’ something!”  “Surely I’m to be helpful as a ‘highly trained specialist’ in my ‘field of expertise’.”  

When we bring nothing but our love
into the field of trauma-work,
and we are otherwise an empty vessel
to be filled with another’s pain,
then we are equipped.  

Trauma theology says that all the person needs in their trauma is a faithful witness to that trauma, someone with the discipline to show up and shut up, with the discernment and wisdom to know they are out of their league, but also with the willingness to speak caring truths in defense of the one they walk alongside.  

Central to Christian theology is the suffering servant, Jesus.  If anyone can identify with our trauma, Jesus can.  As can Job.  As can David chased by Saul.  As can many other biblical figures.  

In the Holy Spirit, we have One that “walks alongside” and it is this ministry of Presence that a fellow sojourner has the privilege of undertaking.  It is a slow and enduring work, one done without thought of destination, but fully encapsulated in the word, “journey.”

IMAGE: taken today (10 March 2026) at Piney Lakes, Perth, Western Australia.

Blessed are the Absorbents (a.k.a. Peacemakers)

Life, the wise life I mean, is upside down.  

The true spiritual life is the wise life, and it’s a life that defies the world’s values for a supreme and eternal value set woven into the living, breathing, space-time phenomenon we exist within.  

The world will have us believe that pushing our way around, asserting our authority, taking control of what we can, etc, is the right and best way to live.  

But the precise opposite is true — never do we, however, receive feedback from this world that that is the case.  We can only trust this to be the truth by faith, to absorb other peoples’ pressure, stress, and aggression is the only way to peace and eventual victory.

The more we absorb, the better it is for us.  

The more others spew their garbage toward us and we don’t react, the more their putrid behaviour stands as its own testimony.  

Far better is it in the true spiritual life to be the abused than be the abuser — notwithstanding the judgement facing us in the next life is the judgement that prowls in this life threatening the person who thinks they’ve gotten away with it.  

When a person impugns me, the more I need to gird the temptation to react.  

I need to absorb the threat and respond with kindness, as it’s a reflection of my heart on test.  If I cannot absorb the indignity thrust my way, I’m no better than the aggressor.  If I meet aggression with aggression, I prove my carnality and distance from the Benevolent One.  At which time, I can repent.  

If we believe in the gospel message, we can possibly live the gospel message.  Believing is living, because if we don’t live the way we believe we enter unbelief.  

It makes no sense in the moment to absorb the aggressor’s attack, but as we absorb the attack by choice, we are not observed as a weakling, but as someone strange — “did you see that, how that person did not react?”  This is the witness of Christ in a person’s life, and it is what the world celebrates — once it sees the outcome of the behaviour.  

The only way to beat aggression is to transcend it.  

Life Comes After (Spiritual) Death

Spiritually, life comes after death; a spiritual truth that must be practiced to be realised; a universal truth that works when we work it — plied by faith.  

Life after death — death to selfishness, death of dreams, death of our pride, all kinds of spiritual death — when we allow these ‘deaths’, life beckons; that’s what we Christians practice.  

It’s what makes the maxim “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” real through the cross (death) and resurrection (life) of Jesus.  

This is what it is: the resurrection gives us both life eternal and life temporal.  

Here is how it works in this life:  

Many times in this life we struggle and stumble.  We don’t always get it right and many times we become bewildered by where life takes us.  Some days we just want to give up!  And some days we do!  

All this is normal in any life,
no matter how “good” we’ve got it.  

Life comes into us after we experience spiritual death —
when we come to the end of ourselves.  

When we agree, once again — and it is a repetitive process — that our personal strength can take us only so far — and we need God’s strength — right there, we feel the infilling of God’s Spirit that makes us stronger for the present moment, giving us hope for the tasks ahead.  Life comes after death.  

The key to arriving at the juncture of death (coming to the end of ourselves) is to literally give up.  Acknowledging that our way’s not working is the key point in time when hope rises.  

We may not feel hopeful,
but our prospects are stoked with hope.  

The first step of AA’s Twelve Steps is to admit life is unmanageable without the help of God.  When drunks arrive at Step 1 they’re at their rock bottom, it’s so obvious life is hopeless without help; indeed, they cannot do it without the help of a ‘higher power’.  

Until we’ve been there, low enough to give up trying to do things in our own strength, we don’t truly realise how foundational a spiritual step like this is.  

When you’re at ground zero — bewildered by the depth of the disastrous pit of where our choices have taken us — there is a twofold experience: spiritual death paradoxically amid the spiritual life that beckons if only we steadily trust God each moment.  With each moment out of that kind of hell, the light gets brighter on the horizon.  

The only way is up from a rock bottom.  

I imagine David feeling closest to God when at his rock bottom, when he fell to his knees in utter desolation praying he would not lose God’s Holy Spirit.  It was IN this place that David experienced an absurd, ever replicable reality — God cannot despise a broken and contrite spirit.  God comes close to us when we’re down and out!  

There, in essence, is the key to the moment’s perfection of humility — as we face the truth of the plight we’re in.  This is why life beckons even as we step out of the jaws of spiritual death — out of a reality where the life we’ve led has died.  

There’s no better hope in reality than experiencing life rising out of ashes.  

The more we practice this life, the more life we practice.  

How on Earth Do I Suffer Injustice Joyfully?

One of the Bible verses that has entranced me for over twenty years now is this from James 1:2 —

“Consider it pure joy, my fellow believers, whenever you face trials of many kinds…”

Of course, this is followed up with key verses, arguably the rest of the letter, that unpack this seemingly absurd utterance.  That’s the wisdom of James.  I think that the context of the whole document is James 1:2 — for trials are common to the human experience, and it’s only godly wisdom that gets us through — indeed, it’s the way to get through.  

Faced with trials we could do worse
than read James from first to last,
then think and pray, reflect and lament,
allowing God’s Spirit to do His work
in and through us.  

But most of us aren’t that disciplined to trust God at His Word.  We generally prefer what seems to be our default way — either suffer every bit of the pain with complaint (which is not altogether bad) OR we deny the pain and completely bypass its purpose.  

Pain has a purpose.  C.S. Lewis said this:

“Pain insists on being attended to.  God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts on our pains.  It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”  

When pain enters our life it’s as if the quietest sound is deafening.  And grief keeps us in this state for months if not years.  It changes us, transforming our sensibilities, making us in part more prone to pain and in part more empathetic.  

Once pain has gripped us and has held on, once we’ve been contained by pain for any length of time, once we’ve been forced to be conformed to it, it breaks us or it breaks us open — the latter is part of the biblical process that James speaks of: it humbles us and makes us greater.  

Being broken open with faith in God is a form of the ‘deeper magic’, as C.S. Lewis would put it, that brings the power of the gospel to life IN our life.  This is the life that Casting Crowns refer to in their song, Praise You In The Storm.  

Against human expectations in suffering, expecting God would pluck us out of our peril, realising that’s not how life or God works, we stand on the precipice of a choice — to praise Him anyway.  

In praising through tears of brokenness,
we are broken open, and in that very moment,
His grace works in and through us!  

It’s here we recognise that suffering
takes us to a place of learning
what we could not learn otherwise.

What I describe above is one expression of the extension of James 1:2 through the remainder of the chapter and perhaps the whole book of five chapters.  

God’s wisdom is applied in faith —
i.e., it is something we must DO —
that operates absolutely opposite
to the world’s wisdom that
makes ‘common sense’ but doesn’t help.  

Rare is it that any of us would take God at His Word and set our faces like flint at the task of enduring — not so much without complaint, but with repetitive composure that continually turns back, gritting one’s teeth in audacious hope underpinned by a joy borrowed from better times.  

A joy borrowed from a future hope having transcended our suffering is a faith that must be APPLIED for that hope to be realised.  

Injustice cannot be righted by simply railing against it, which is our human default response.  Paradoxically, suffering joyfully is the best hope of righting injustice.