The way we talk to ourselves

"Idiot"

"That was stupid"

"You're fat and ugly"

"You are such a failure"

"You're so dumb"

  Imagine if I went around telling people those things. Well, those are things I tell myself on a daily basis. 

 Lately, I have been thinking about this habit of telling myself these very mean things. It cannot be pleasing to God. If He doesn't want us talking to others like that, then I am sure He wouldn't want us talking to ourselves that way.

 It is easy to lose sight of the fact that we are all created by God with different talents and abilities. Just because I can't do something as well as someone else, it does not make me stupid or a failure. As Einstein said, "Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” Besides, if we constantly put ourselves down, we will start to believe what we are saying.

 We spend too much time comparing ourselves to each other. We should be trying to be as much like Jesus as we possibly can. When we compare ourselves to each other, it is too easy to think we are better than we are or worse than we are. 

 Some of us are too hard on the man or woman in the mirror, and then there are those who are too easy on that person. This post is about we who are too hard on ourselves. Maybe part of the problem is we forget which world we are living for. Up in Heaven, it won't matter what kind of car I drove. It won't matter that I was lousy at sports and mechanical work. God doesn't care that I pay Walmart to change my oil. He doesn't care that I think football is boring and stupid, and that I still equate golf with old men in ugly plaid shorts.

 He cares about what we are doing for Him. If I am honest, the times I am being hard on myself involve temporal things. They are times when I am too concerned about my happiness and how I appear to others. Yet He is the only one I should care about pleasing and I should be concerned how I appear to Him, not  the world around me.

 So I shall try to turn over a new leaf and not be so hard on this guy that God loved enough to die for. God doesn't make junk, so it is time I stop treating Mark like he is junk.