I remember
when my college advisor recommended that I take a “critical thinking”
course. It was pretty boring, and I think I may have
dozed off a time or two, but one thing I took away from that course though, was
the difference between “knowledge” and “understanding”.
Basically, knowledge
is simply an awareness of something. Knowledge
is easy to come by. Understanding is the
ability to use knowledge to pursue an action, using critical thought. Understanding is the tougher of the two to
accomplish.
Last week I
reflected on the Gospel when Jesus asked His disciples “Who
do people say that I am?” and we heard Peter ‘get it right’, confessing that Jesus was “the
Christ, the Son of the living God”, and so he was given the “keys to the
kingdom” (Matthew
16:13-20).
Today I want
to reflect a little bit not on how Peter got it right, but how he got it wrong
(Matthew 16:21-27)! I’m not saying Peter
retracted what he said about Jesus, because that was right. However he was wrong because he didn’t
understand how Jesus would be the Christ.
After Jesus predicted His
Passion, death, and Resurrection Peter wouldn’t hear any talk about suffering
and death: “God forbid, Lord! No such thing shall ever happen to
you.” And Jesus
responded, “Get behind me, Satan! You are an obstacle to me. You
are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.” We can draw a correlation to Jesus’ vehement
response to the time when Jesus was tempted by Satan in the desert (Matthew
4:1-11), when the devil took Jesus up to
a high mountain and told Him He could have all the kingdoms in the world if He
just worshiped him. This was also a
temptation for Jesus to forego the cross and try to force everyone to do right.
And now He heard Peter telling Him the
same thing; to avoid the cross or even any mention of it. It’s as if Jesus was saying, “Peter, this is
tough enough as it is! You sound just
like the devil. I’ve already had to
fight the temptation to abandon the mission I was given. When you speak like that, you’re just getting
in the way.”
If we think
Jesus is being unfair or unkind to Peter, we should remember that His Father
had a similar encounter with Jeremiah.
Jeremiah had been made a reluctant prophet. Jeremiah even claimed that God duped him into
the job. He was so angry and discouraged
at the rough treatment he had to take from his own Jewish people that he
decided to quit (Jeremiah 20:7-9).
But he
couldn’t get rid of the fire in his heart, so he continued to prophesy that
Babylon was chosen as God's instrument for chastising Israel because Israel was
just predictably unfaithful, and they deserved punishment. Not that the truth makes a prophet's job any
easier!
So when
Jesus said, “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny
himself, take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life
will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. What profit
would there be for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life?”, He knew what He was talking about. The devil offered Him the whole world, but if
He fell to that temptation, He would have lost Himself.
Jesus didn’t
run away from the Cross, and He tells us not to run away from it either. This is what Peter still had to understand. And it’s sometimes hard for us to understand
as well. To take up our cross doesn’t mean
we accept injustice or abuse. But it
does mean we accept suffering as part of life, especially as crosses come when
we love beyond ourselves, as it did for Jesus. For instance, I have to take time to adjust
any mask I’m wearing so that I don’t fog up my glasses. It’s a pain. But it’s a small cross to bear if I can
contribute to decrease the spread of the corona virus. This is a small thing compared to health care
workers who are carrying heavy crosses in serving others. So are parents and teachers when it comes to
the opening of schools, no matter where you stand on what did or should happen.
Differences
between us shouldn’t blind us to the humanity of each other. If we can
recognize the crosses that others bear as well as accepting the crosses that
come to us, we can see how connected we are to each other and to Christ. Maybe we need to deny ourselves
self-righteousness and the rush to violence.
St. Paul’s
exhortation in Romans (12:1-2) comes to mind: “Do not conform
yourselves to this age but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you
may discern what is the will of God, what is good and pleasing and perfect.” Taking up our cross keeps us from being
conformed to an age of avoiding suffering and denying the humanity of the
“other.” Taking up our cross can
actually renew our mind by keeping us in contact with the extent of God’s love
in Jesus Christ and helps us discern God’s will in how we are to love others as
He loves us.
May we not
be obstacles to, but instruments of, God’s love.
It’s easy to
be angry with a racist. But when we
truly understand that person — their upbringing, worldview, personality, family
history, where they were raised, the nature of stereotypes, and so many more
factors that pushes a person to think and act that way —we pity or even
sometimes berate them, but ultimately we need to understand so we can accept
who they are. The difficulty is wanting
to understand and accept them, because it’s so much easier to resent them, to
place them in a container that’s labeled “Broken” and move on.
Life will be
way easier by doing the latter, but a life of understanding, regardless of the
stress it produces, is worth living.
Exercising an understanding sharpens and enriches the mind.
If we
understand a person or event, this understanding should inspire us to live more
positively than negatively, maybe push us to contribute in a meaningful
way. The goal is to get out of that
place of frustration, baseless opinions, gossip, and to combine knowledge and
ideas that helps us lead better lives.
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