God's Perspective

In his book "Exclusion and Embrace" (Abingdon Press, 1996), Croatian theologian Miroslav Volf comments on how God's truth emerges - "We enlarge our thinking by letting the voices and perspectives of others, espcially those with whom we may be in conflict, resonate within ourselves, by allowing them help us see them, as well as ourselves, from their perspective, and if needed, readjust our perspectives as we take into account their perspective." Though it is obvious, this question of seeing things from others' perspectives is always going to be difficult, not least when we are trying to grasp that God's perspective is likely to be different from ours. For example, we would be likely to think that the church could do with less conflict whilst, in all probability, the church could really do with more conflict. The issue is not conflict of itself, but how we tackle it and whether we allow it to be a growing point. We will never be fully aware of all the aspects of God's bigger picture - but at least we can recognise that it exists!