Keeping it In His Perspective

But Peter took him aside and corrected him. "Heaven forbid, Lord," he said. "This will never happen to you". Jesus turned to Peter and said, "Get away from me Satan! You are a dangereous trap to me. You are seeing things merely from a human point of view, and not from God's." Mathew 16:22-23

Whoa! When I read this, it was clear to me that Jesus scolding Peter. And this was a little scary because I could totally relate to what Peter was doing. Jesus had just finished telling them plainly what was going to happen to him. And when Peter heard this, from his own perspective, it did not make sense. He had been hanging around Jesus long enough to see some pretty amazing things. The water to wine miracle must have been quite thrilling. Or the fish dinner for EVERYONE. I imagine, I don't know but I imagine that Peter was confident that Jesus could and would certainly figure a way out of such a brutal death.

But Jesus actually calls Peter Satan at this moment in time. He calls him Satan, according to the text because he was "seeing things merely from a human point of view, and not from God's". I don't know about you, but I had never thought that viewing life from my own human perspective could be dangerous. I have considered it dumb sometimes. Or limited. But dangerous?

And looking back, I can say that many things in my life would have gone much better had I been willing to abandon my own perspective in exchange for God's. I wonder how many "traps" I fell into not necessarily by doing some big sin, but merely because I was committed to my own human perspective. I want you to know, these are real traps! Consider the trap of self pity. Or the trap of pride. I have experienced both and they are directly releated to ME thinking like ME!

I think the Christian population, myself included, spends too much time focusing on the behavior and not enough time focusing on the thought process that produced the behavior in the first place. If we did not have the gift of being able to see things from the Lord's perspective, then I am sure Jesus would not have faulted Peter for not doing it. I wonder if Jesus was frustrated because Peter had been hanging around him for so long that it was fully possible for Peter to begin thinking and seeing things as Jesus did. When you get to know someone, you will have a tendency to know their perspective. And if I make efforts to continue to get to know Christ then having His perspective will not be some elusive concept that I will not be able to grasp. I will be able to stand firm and say Hey I think this but God thinks this so I am now dropping my thoughts and taking His.

I encourage fellow Christians to do the same.