A popular saying goes “One person’s garbage is another’s treasure” and it applies to things we love to hate and and things we hate to love. The last time I jumped in front of a speeding train to save someone the observers thought I was joking. Getting into someone’s shoes may help us understand their experiences but we never see their thoughts and our understanding will rarely be the same.

We dare not call someone’s possession garbage, nor do we muster up the courage to say we see diamonds whenever a humble chunk of carbon presented to us. It is so tempting to jump into the Biblical narratives on the side we perceive as the good guys, the winners, and the heads, as if God has programmed everyone to be loving, conquerors, heads, and faithful witnesses. We end up wearing glasses that lie to us, and that distorts the realities that we need for personal growth.

Acts 19:13-16

Then some of the itinerant Jewish exorcists undertook to invoke the name of the Lord Jesus over those who had evil spirits, saying, I adjure you by the Jesus whom Paul proclaims. Seven sons of a Jewish high priest named Sceva were doing this.

But the evil spirit answered them, Jesus I know, and Paul I recognize, but who are you? And the man in whom was the evil spirit leaped on them, mastered all of them and overpowered them, so that they fled out of that house naked and wounded.