a couple of other threads have gotten me thinking about the idea of who/what we are really in love with when we have the feeling that we are "in love" with someone.
a study that i read about some time ago (and i may be wrong on some of the details, but the general idea is here) was one where people were shown pictures of a young girl holding a rock as if to throw it at a dog. in one picture it is a very pretty, neat-as-a-pin girl and in the other picture it is a dirty, unkempt girl in ragged clothing. the participants are shown the pictures separately and asked to give their opinion about why the girl might throw the rock. what mostly was felt by the observers was that the clean, pretty girl was defending herself from the dog and that the dirty, unkempt girl was throwing the rock out of meaness.
perception, with no facts to go on, is what people believed.
take a used car, if the cars appearance is great it is more often assumed that its running gear is in good shape. conversely, a dirty car with a couple of parking lot dings and scrapes just doesn't feel like it will be dependable.
ok, so get to the point, steve.
when we feel something about another person, that feeling is based upon our perception of them. how well do we really know them? in reality our feelings are based upon our assumptions about them, the image of them that exists in our minds.
it is easy, not to mention fun, to impute things that we want to see in another person upon them. when we sometimes find out later that they did not match up to what we thought about them. do we feel decieved, or do we recognize that we wanted them to be someone that they were not?
before this becomes too much of a downer, many testamonies have been given about finding a treasure in a person that someone thought they knew, but in fact did not. in these cases perception hindered what could have been an earlier blessing.
and then there is YHWH's perception. sometimes we give Him little to love about who we are and much to love about who we can be. something that i heard once long ago; "YHWH loves you just the way you are, and too much to leave you that way!"
a study that i read about some time ago (and i may be wrong on some of the details, but the general idea is here) was one where people were shown pictures of a young girl holding a rock as if to throw it at a dog. in one picture it is a very pretty, neat-as-a-pin girl and in the other picture it is a dirty, unkempt girl in ragged clothing. the participants are shown the pictures separately and asked to give their opinion about why the girl might throw the rock. what mostly was felt by the observers was that the clean, pretty girl was defending herself from the dog and that the dirty, unkempt girl was throwing the rock out of meaness.
perception, with no facts to go on, is what people believed.
take a used car, if the cars appearance is great it is more often assumed that its running gear is in good shape. conversely, a dirty car with a couple of parking lot dings and scrapes just doesn't feel like it will be dependable.
ok, so get to the point, steve.
when we feel something about another person, that feeling is based upon our perception of them. how well do we really know them? in reality our feelings are based upon our assumptions about them, the image of them that exists in our minds.
it is easy, not to mention fun,
to impute things that we want to see in another person upon them. when we sometimes find out later that they did not match up to what we thought about them. do we feel decieved, or do we recognize that we wanted them to be someone that they were not?before this becomes too much of a downer, many testamonies have been given about finding a treasure in a person that someone thought they knew, but in fact did not. in these cases perception hindered what could have been an earlier blessing.
and then there is YHWH's perception. sometimes we give Him little to love about who we are and much to love about who we can be. something that i heard once long ago; "YHWH loves you just the way you are, and too much to leave you that way!"
