Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Stop regarding man

I think this has appeared before on this site, but it's worth revisiting.

The idea has to do with Romans 12 where Paul states that we shouldn't think too highly of ourselves. I like the way G.K. Chesterton states it :

" Are there no other stories in the world except yours; and are all men busy with your business ? How much happier you would be if you only knew that these people cared nothing about you ! How much larger your life would be if your self could become smaller in it; if you could really look at other men with common curiousity and pleasure; if you could see them walking as they are in their sunny selfishness and virile indifference ! You would begin to be interested in them, because they were not interested in you. You would break out of this tiny and tawdry theater in which your own little plot is always being played, and you would find yourself under a freer sky, in a street fully of splendid strangers."

( page 15 Orthodoxy)

I think these ideas give us a perspective and echo what the Bible says in Isaiah 2:22: "Stop regarding man, whose life is in his nose. Why should he be esteemed ? "