Preconceptions: The World Upside-Down

God has a funny way of telling me I'm wrong: He turns my world upside-down.

This past week I went camping with some friends in Montana. I had to ask off of work in order to go and was excited for the camping but not exactly excited about who would be joining me. I had talked very briefly with an individual who was going on the trip but I had not gotten to know this person well enough to see any common ground we could possibly share. To be blunt, I did not think I would enjoy this person's company. There was a slight fear that this person may detract from my enjoyment of the trip. As a result, I was hesitant about the trip, but the idea is comical to me now, as if my enjoyment was something I inherently deserved.

Within the first night of the trip, my preconceptions had already been broken down.

As we sat around the campfire, we talked of education and theoretical things and inevitably wound up on religion. Hours passed as we shared our definitions of faith in comparison to reason and science. The more I listened and the more I spoke, the more I saw common ground. In our differences we had similarities, and in our similarities we had differences.

The following day I was talking one-on-one with this person about preconceptions. She began to tell me about her very own preconceptions of another person and the effort it takes to get past an initial understanding of someone. Internally, I began to ask myself: why is it that our natural tendency is to judge and assume things about others? Just hours before I had assumed this person was self-centered and all surface and therefore, I was incapable of imagining her any other way. Yet, God turned my world upside down so I could see things how they really are. Like the human eye, the things we see are upside-down and need to be flipped right-side up in order to be interpreted.

As my eyes turned what they saw upside-down, I learned that the problem was with me and not the other person. I was viewing everything upside-down. My preconceptions were hindering my own view of reality by turning them upside-down. I was using a method of looking at things that assumed the upside-down way I saw life was really the right-side up. Just as I am so often wrong, God gently revealed to me that my perception of things is skewed and that I need help to see things right. I need lenses that refract light to flip things around. I need lenses only God can give me. Hopefully I can have the humility to pray for a new understanding and receive glasses that see the world right-side up.