We may congratulate ourselves for sailing through a disturbing experience without “shooting our mouth off” but overlook the fact that we were primed to do so because of our underlying condition of contempt for certain people or certain situations. In our mind, we concluded that this person didn’t really know what he was talking about—compared to us!
We may have kept our arrogance and know-it-all attitude quiet, but anything could have happened. (And our attitude may have “leaked out” anyway in our body language.) These settled conditions that underlie our feelings don’t seem wrong because we’ve developed culturally acceptable, euphemistic ways to disguise them: I’m not exacting, just careful!
Because having a settled attitude (underlying condition) of contempt is common today, it’s important to listen carefully to our thought patterns regarding certain people and observe how we speak to and about them. We need to pay special attention not only to the background noise in our head but also to our tone of voice (so revealing), to the hunch of our shoulders, and to the set of our lips. These can be telling symptoms of our underlying attitudes.
TODAY’S EXPERIMENT - Reflect on what might be a common underlying condition for you, such as hurry or discouragement or contempt. Try to put some distance between yourself and the condition in order to examine it. When did it start? Why are you now convinced you must hurry (or live in discouragement or look down on others)? What underlying condition is God inviting you to adopt instead? Consider how it would make your life lighter and easier (see Matthew 11:30).
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