It is good that there should be creatures such as we are. Unless and until we can say that, we are condemned to an endless attempt to be something else – whether that something else seems to be ‘less’ or ‘more.’” – Gilbert Meileander, Neither Beast Nor God: The Dignity of the Human Person

Recently, in one of the many media that now exist, I received a note informing me that I am jealous. I thought this to be a curious thing for the man to have said, he being a fellow believer and all, as well as being one who doesn’t know me except through what I have written here and elsewhere.

It is a remarkable thing to be human, but perhaps nowhere is it more striking than when it comes to the internal world we construct in order to being able to live in external reality. It is a predilection to which we all fall prey: somehow, through our internal dialogues, we believe we are able to see another, equally unique and complex individual for what they truly are. Those of us who are married are much too familiar with the feeling that, despite living with this other person thirty or forty years, we are caught off guard by something they say or do. When this happens, we are surprised and wonder if we will ever know them for who they are or are becoming at that moment.

To then assume, as we do, that we are able to make declarative remarks about the core qualities or motivations of others who are relative strangers is perhaps human folly at its best – or, more appropriately, its worst. Based solely on what we have read and our own, internal reaction to it, we are now quickly and firmly convinced that we now know a person for who he or she really is.

Psychologists would refer to this as assimilation, i.e., putting people in preexisting categories for the sake of simplifying our existence. In truth, however, each person is deserving of their own category; accommodation is the mental facility of creating new categories for information, events, experiences, and things that do not fit into any of the stereotypical files we already possess. But since we have limited processing capacities, we prefer to carry as few categories as possible in our neurological operating system.

For Christians, it is incredible that we should do this. We believe in a God who is a Master Creator, One who never creates the same tree, mountain, wave, or person twice. Each act of creation is unrepeatable, incapable of happening more than once. There is, has been, and always will be but one of you, and but one of me. That is true for all.

But it is also a bit astounding for Christians to force fit others into convenient molds so that we can escape the delightful but laborious experience of getting to know each person as they are. The more we come to know someone, the more we realize that they require their own category, and not merely a category in which no others fit but also one that is different from our own internal comprehension of the person. To begin to know someone deeply and intimately is a wonderful, rare, loving thing to do, but it also necessitates some mental work that many of us would prefer not to be bothered with..

At the same time, it is a form of passing judgment to make a declaration such as “You are jealous” to another. When we do so, we are criticizing God’s work in the other person and have lost sight of the work needing to be done in our own hearts and minds.

Finally, it is a failure to trust in the purposes, sovereignty, and wisdom of God. While admittedly we all fail to recall this to mind at key times, we do not know how God is working out His plan for each person. It may be that my (or anyone’s) act of “being jealous” is used by Him to do something in our own lives as well as in the life of the person whose life I want to live for myself. No small part of God’s unfathomable genius is revealed in His working out His purposes in billions of people over thousands of years, all of which ultimately are to be drawn together at the Eschaton.

For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known.” – 1 Cor 13.12


2 Cor 1:13