Living in a Photoshop Reality

Hope and I hurrying home. Well, not exactly.

Okay, I have to confess that this was simply one of those times when I saw the picture and then wrote the blog to go with it.  But I just couldn’t pass this one up.  I mean, how many times have you hurried home with Imperial AT-AT’s in pursuit?

The picture is a great example of photo-editing.  One could even say of reality manipulation.  Which, of course, takes place around us every day.  News outlets report stories based on their bias.  People around us relay information stemming from their perspective (at times meaning their best interest). 

And we do it all the time as well – if not externally at least internally.  How I see and hear the actions and the words of others is often a reflection of me at least as much as it them.  It demonstrates the grid, the filter, the lens through which I am processing whatever input I’m receiving.  Now every now and then that grid is dead on right.  But sometimes it’s not.  Which is surely part of what Jesus is speaking of in the Sermon on the Mount. 

“Judge not, that you be not judged.  For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you.  Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?  Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye?  You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you  will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.”  (Matt. 7:1-5)

Oh, that the grid through which I see would be the gospel.  On the one hand, having the realism to know that people are fallen and sinful, motivated by their idols.  But, on the other hand, to remember that I am as well.  And so to be more given to charitable judgments, striving to believe the best about others until the facts prove otherwise.

That is, to not be so prone to reality manipulation.