The Child Over The Fence

It is not even a person you dislike.

That is what makes it awkward. They are perfectly nice. They wave. Somebody took a parcel in for you once.

And their child plays an instrument, or reads, or gets mentioned at the school gate, and something in you does a thing every single time it happens, and you would not be able to describe the thing to anybody without sounding petty.

So it stays private and it keeps running. Every school gate. Every time their car comes back from something on a Saturday morning.

And what nobody points out is that you are comparing two completely different kinds of object, and you have never once checked what you are actually working from.

And it has no event attached to it either. Nothing was ever said. There was no moment where somebody made a remark and it lodged. It assembled itself slowly out of four seconds a morning, and four seconds a morning for two years is a considerable amount of time to have spent on something you have never once said out loud.

Measuring themselves by themselves

There is a line in Corinthians about comparison that is unusually blunt about the result.

For we dare not make ourselves of the number, or compare ourselves with some that commend themselves: but they measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves among themselves, are not wise. (2 Corinthians 10:12, King James Version)

Are not wise. That is the conclusion, and it is not moral language. It is a judgment about method.

Measuring themselves by themselves. The instrument and the thing being measured come from the same place, which means the result cannot tell you anything you did not already put in.

You have been handed a verdict on a method rather than on a heart, and no measurement has ever once been able to be more reliable than the instrument taken to it. 2 Corinthians 10:12 calls the comparison unwise rather than sinful, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that a relief instead of one more accusation.

And notice what the passage does not do. It does not say the other people are worse, and it does not say they are better. It refuses to enter the contest at all.

You were never being asked to win it, and no verse anywhere has ever once required a person to come out ahead of a neighbor. The written word declines the whole exercise as unwise, and the Spirit of God is the one who gets somebody out of a competition nobody else knows is running.

Audit what you actually have

Now let us look at the evidence, because this is where the whole thing collapses if you let it.

What do you actually know about that household.

You know what is visible from a street. You know what gets said at a gate, which is the most heavily edited speech in the entire week. You know what appears on a screen, if that applies, which is worse.

And you are comparing that to the inside of your own house, where you know everything. Every bad evening. Every thing you said and regretted. Every worry you have never mentioned.

You have been comparing an interior to an exterior, and no two things have ever once been less alike than those. 2 Corinthians 10:12 names an instrument problem, and the Holy Spirit is the one who shows a person exactly what they have been holding in each hand.

And here is a thing worth knowing, which is not a platitude.

The household over that fence has a version of this article about somebody. Everybody does. There is no house on that road where an adult is not measuring the interior of their own family against the outside of somebody else's.

That is not comfort exactly. It is information about how common the instrument error is.

You are looking at a mistake that almost every house on that street is making tonight, and a universal error has never once been a personal failing. The written word calls the practice unwise rather than rare, and the Spirit of God is the one who takes the isolation out of an ordinary thing.

You were never the only one doing it, and nobody has ever once been able to see into a house from a sidewalk. 2 Corinthians 10:12 refuses the contest as a category, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes refusing it possible at a school gate.

Write what you know, and then how you know it

So here is the assignment, and it is two columns and it takes three minutes.

Tonight, write down one thing you know about that other household. Something specific that you believe to be true about them.

Then, beside it, write down how you know it.

And be strict about the second column. Not: it is obvious. Not: everybody knows. How, specifically, did that piece of information reach you.

You have the right to ask your own beliefs where they came from, and a belief that cannot answer that has never once been evidence about anybody. 2 Corinthians 10:12 puts the fault in the measuring rather than in the people, and the Spirit of God is the one who is present while a second column gets filled in honestly.

Most people find that the honest answer is one of four things. Somebody said it at a gate. It was visible from outside. It was inferred from one visible thing. Or it came from the child, secondhand, through your own child, which is the least reliable route in the world.

And then look at the second column for a moment.

That is the whole exercise. You are not proving anything about them. You are finding out the quality of the evidence you have been running a comparison on for two years.

2 Corinthians 10:12 calls a comparison built from its own materials unwise, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is at a table with somebody writing down how they know a thing.

You are permitted to check your own sources, and an audit has never once been the same thing as thinking badly of anybody. The written word names the method rather than the people, and the Spirit of God is the one who is present while the second column gets written.

You have three minutes tonight that can end a two year comparison, and it has never once required the other family to change anything. 2 Corinthians 10:12 declines the contest outright, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes a school gate survivable on Monday.