You know each life from the inside

2Chronicles 6:30 Listen from your home in heaven, forgive and reward us: reward each life and circumstance, for you know each life from the inside, (you’re the only one with such inside knowledge.)

I have always been interested in psychology, whether it shows up in literature, movies or the people I know. I think there is a central conceit, though, to psychology that is pointed out here. I can analyze, explain, use all kinds of psychological theories to describe a person and why they do what they do, and in the end, I don’t really know anything about them. Their interior life is truly a mystery to me, no matter how much I may “understand”. Only God, who has access to our thoughts and feelings from the inside out, truly has access to that inner reality.

In my arrogance, out of such psychological “knowledge”, I can also do all kinds of harm, thinking I know what is best for others, making judgments of them based on their exterior circumstances, or on myself for not matching up to that exterior, what 12-Step calls “judging my insides by other people’s outsides.” I can also get sucked into all kinds of interpersonal traps, seduced by a showy outside when I haven’t fully taken stock of what may be on the inside, or simply caught in a web by my own need or desire to understand that mystery at the heart of another human being, especially someone I love. Recognizing that only God has such access to another can be a guide, or a first step, to recognizing the mystery of the other, holding off on my good-intentioned meddling, or simply standing back and letting go of trying to fathom the unfathomable. Thus, the strings that bind me are set free. There is still connection, after all, but freed from the seductive pull of chasing down some illusory and ultimately uncertain understanding about another, I can be more present with the person as they are, not as I would have them, and that leaves me free to connect in the ways that work for me, and let go of the ways that don’t.

Prayer: Dear God, I thank you for the revelation of this truth about my errors in relationships. . Help me to remember that only You can know truly what is at the heart of another human being. Let me be humble in my aspirations of knowing others, respectful of their understanding of themselves and the world and honoring of their truth as well as my own. Amen.