Cynical Love - The Battlefield of the Mind - Day 13

Have you paid attention to the ever-expanding rhetoric in our culture these days that drips of cynicism and sarcasm?  (Turn on a cable news channel or watch a sit-com, if you doubt it.)  How everyone is suspect of having their own agenda or revealing only half-truths?  That everything is a scam or pyramid scandal or ponzi scheme?  Someone wants to get the upper hand in their position, their popularity, their standing at your expense?

And while I do not believe God wants us to be naive...actually He wants us to be wise as serpents (Matthew 10:16)...to be aware, with eyes wide-open, to be discerning...but in that same verse Jesus talks about also being harmless as doves.  In other words, don't handle the insight you have been given carelessly and thereby hurting others.

In the battlefield of our mind...the enemy can twist our thoughts about others in a way that matches our culture...being suspicious, cynical, sarcastic...even paranoid.  Ever walk into a room that gets quiet and you are sure they were talking about you?  Well, do you know that they were?  Or innocent, inadvertent oversights by others...your mind creates scenarios that something innocent was part of a deliberate slight or slam against you...and without empirical evidence, the mind creates an offense against the innocent, and a root of bitterness evolves, and the next thing you know you are harboring unjustified grievances against this person.

Jesus says, "Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples." John 13:35.

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast;

it is not arrogant or rude.  It does not insist on its

own way; it is not irritable or resentful;

it does not rejoice at wrongdoing,

but rejoices with the truth.

Love bears all things, believes all things,

hope all things, endures all things.

I Corinthians 13:4-7 (ESV)

If love is to be our trademark, we must guard against the culture that wars against this battlefield of our minds before our love for God and each other is no longer recognizable.