Twice It Was Just Dislike

Ignacio can name both of them and he has stopped trusting himself about any of it.

The first was a man about nine years ago. Ignacio had a settled, immovable sense that something was wrong, and he handled it well, and he said nothing to anybody, and he watched for about two years.

Nothing was wrong. That man is still there, still exactly as he was, and about four years ago Ignacio was in a position to see quite a lot of that man's life at close range and there was nothing in it. He was simply a man Ignacio did not warm to.

The second was a woman, more recently, and it took him less time to work out and was more embarrassing because he had been quicker to be sure.

Two for two.

And what has happened since is not that he doubts the gift in general. He can point at other times, further back, when something arrived and it was real and it mattered. He is not a cynic about it.

What has happened is more specific and more disabling. He can no longer tell, in the moment, which kind he is having. The real ones and the two wrong ones felt exactly the same from inside. Identical. Same settledness, same certainty, same absence of any evidence he could point at.

So now, when something rises in him, the first thing that arrives with it is the memory of two men he was wrong about, and the second thing is a question he cannot answer, and by the time he has finished not answering it the moment has gone.

He is fifty-one.

You may know that arithmetic.

Maybe you have been wrong too. Maybe more than twice. And maybe you have found that being wrong did not teach you how to tell the difference, because there was no difference to feel.

The order of operations

There is a passage everybody knows and almost nobody reads to the end, and the end is the part that helps you.

And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?Matthew 7:3

Read on two verses and something appears that people skip.

First cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.

Then shalt thou see clearly.

Jesus does not abolish the second half. He does not say there is no mote and He does not say leave it alone forever. He gives an order of operations: your own eye first, and then clear sight afterwards.

Which is more hopeful than the way the passage is usually deployed, and it is exactly your situation. You have just spent nine years finding two beams. That is the first half of the instruction, done properly and at some cost, and almost nobody does it.

The passage says what comes after that, and it is not permanent disqualification.

And you have been doing the first half of the instruction and there is a second half. The written word puts the beam first and then promises clear seeing, and it is the Holy Spirit and not my paragraph who makes that reach a man who has been treating two errors as a verdict.

And you are not disqualified by having found something in your own eye. The word treats that discovery as the prerequisite rather than the end, and the Spirit bears witness with your spirit rather than closing the account.

The two of them had something in common

Now, a practical thing, and it is the most useful sentence in this article.

You said the real ones and the wrong ones felt identical from inside. I believe you, and that is the standard experience, and it is why introspection fails here.

But they were not identical from outside, and you have the data.

Both of the wrong ones were about people you did not warm to. You said so yourself about the first, and the second was quicker precisely because there was already a temperature there.

That is not an inner signal. It is an outer fact, available before the event, and it is checkable in about four seconds by a man who is willing to ask himself one blunt question.

Do I like this person?

If the answer is no, that does not mean the perception is wrong. It means it cannot be trusted alone, and it must not be acted on, and it goes in the drawer for a year.

If the answer is yes, or neutral, the same caution applies but the drawer can be shorter.

That is not introspection. It is a rule about circumstances, and rules about circumstances work when rules about feelings do not.

And you are able to test this from outside rather than from within. The word says by their fruits ye shall know them, which puts the test in observable things rather than in the quality of a conviction, and the Spirit is the one who makes an outward rule kinder and more reliable than an inward search.

And nothing about you is under review for two mistakes nobody ever heard about. The word says there is now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, and the Spirit supplies that to a man who told nobody about either of them.

What being wrong cost, and what it did not

One more, because I do not want you to lose the size of this.

Both times you were wrong, and both times you said nothing. That is the entire reason this article is about a man's confidence rather than about two people's reputations.

If you had spoken either time, that man would have carried something for nine years, and that woman would be carrying something now, and both of them would have been carrying it for nothing.

The discipline you already have is the thing that turned two errors into a private matter. That is not a small achievement. Most people learn this lesson by having damaged somebody, and you have learned it without a casualty.

And what you already do with it is the whole protection. The word says a wise man keepeth it in till afterwards, and the Spirit is the one who has made that a habit in a man who is currently only counting his failures.