God Sees Everything

We are living in a world that's more polarized than maybe ever. It's certainly more polarized than it was when I was growing up. Nearly everyone we see on social media posting about this or that thing that's the thing to be engaged in right now sounds more like a talking head than an actual person - they are simply repeating whatever their commentator of choice has had to say about something. 

No longer are we trained to consider multiple angles, to think about various factors that might be at play, to truly look for truth that might exist beyond what we tend to look at (even while we confess that a lot of what we're looking at may, in fact, be completely false and computer-generated). 

In our current world, everything is black and white. The number of friends I have seen on Facebook recently who have said, "If you don't agree this is clearly ______, then unfriend me now." The problem, of course, is that nothing is ever as clear as it seems when you're only looking from one angle. There's always more to a story than what you see in the headlines or the talking heads or the political persuasions. 

There's always something grey. 

One prominent story lately involved a shooting caught on camera. (Actually, sadly, many prominent stories lately have had this theme.) I said something about withholding judgment until there was more context, and a friend said, "How can you need more context? The shooting is caught on camera. They did pull a gun and they did shoot that person and that person is dead. How is that not murder?" 

In reply, I suggested another situation. Suppose that an abused woman has cameras in her home. She's finally had enough and decides that today is the day, so she grabs a gun and stands in the garage waiting on her abusive husband to get home. When he pulls into the garage and gets out of the car, she shoots him. The camera footage of that shooting shows a woman waiting with a gun and shooting a man in apparent cold blood. 

Are you ready to say that was "obviously" a murder? Of course not. If the evidence comes out that she was an abused woman, which is not caught on the 15 seconds of camera footage they are showing on the news, then you're willing to withhold judgment. Context changes everything. 

There's always more happening than what is caught on camera. There's always something that made that camera start rolling in the first place. What happened before whatever happened on tape is often extremely important and introduces the shades of grey into what we want to be so quick to say is black and white. 

This is one of the things I love about having an omnipotent God, a God who can see everything beyond my little, limited perspective of it. A God who has enough context to not see the world in black and white, but in full, living color, and to act accordingly. (And thankfully, in choosing love.) 

When Jesus entered the Temple, we are most prone to remember that He turned over the tables in righteous anger. But before He did that, Mark tells us He "looked at everything" (11:11). He didn't just storm in and explode and start making a scene. 

He walked into the Temple and looked at everything, took it all in. It was a place He was familiar with, but He didn't assume He just knew what was going on there. He immersed Himself in the fullness of the experience. 

He does the same with your life and with mine. He walks in, looks at everything, sees the context, and takes it all in. He immerses Himself in our complicated lives, which often have far more context to them than our little, limited perspectives can understand. God sees everything. 

That's why we can trust His judgment, His wisdom, and His grace. Because He truly sees it all. 

And not just the headlines that we're trying to show Him.