To Know And Be Known
I read a quote by Elbert Hubbard.
"Never explain - your friends do not need it and your enemies will not believe you anyway."
It really feels good to be able to trust someone, doesn't it? It feels even better to be trusted. People are trusted for different reasons and at different levels. Sometimes the variation comes with our encounter with the person concern or from our own experiences with others.
At my first reading, this quote made some sense and even sounded nice. But I think it can be a bit overated. The quote seems to imply that not having the need to explain is one of the criteria for friendship. Does that mean that there's no need to explain ourselves and our actions to our friends at all?
I feel that making that effort shows how much someone means to us. After the explanation, how much the person believe in our words, now, that determines the trust level and the depth of the friendship. We can't be very much of a friend ourselves if we can't even be bothered to explain ourselves, can we?
Look at it from another angle, can we trust our friends to make an accurate assessment of us based on what we say?
God loves us, yet He reveals Himself all over the Scriptures. How much more we, in a human to human relationship, need to frequently communicate our intentions to one another to develop the trust?
So, do not be offended if someone ask you to explain yourself. At least the person respect you enough not to presume your position. One who bothers to ask seeks to understand and to know you better. It can be quite frustrating in a relationship to be left to figure things out alone.
Also do not hastily shut off someone who tries to explain. It shows that you matter and this person simply wants to be known by you. God's revelation also shows His desire to be known by us. We show that we love Him when we bother to know more about Him. We show that our friends matter to us when we let them finish explaining, too.
"Never explain - your friends do not need it and your enemies will not believe you anyway."
It really feels good to be able to trust someone, doesn't it? It feels even better to be trusted. People are trusted for different reasons and at different levels. Sometimes the variation comes with our encounter with the person concern or from our own experiences with others.
At my first reading, this quote made some sense and even sounded nice. But I think it can be a bit overated. The quote seems to imply that not having the need to explain is one of the criteria for friendship. Does that mean that there's no need to explain ourselves and our actions to our friends at all?
I feel that making that effort shows how much someone means to us. After the explanation, how much the person believe in our words, now, that determines the trust level and the depth of the friendship. We can't be very much of a friend ourselves if we can't even be bothered to explain ourselves, can we?
Look at it from another angle, can we trust our friends to make an accurate assessment of us based on what we say?
God loves us, yet He reveals Himself all over the Scriptures. How much more we, in a human to human relationship, need to frequently communicate our intentions to one another to develop the trust?
So, do not be offended if someone ask you to explain yourself. At least the person respect you enough not to presume your position. One who bothers to ask seeks to understand and to know you better. It can be quite frustrating in a relationship to be left to figure things out alone.
Also do not hastily shut off someone who tries to explain. It shows that you matter and this person simply wants to be known by you. God's revelation also shows His desire to be known by us. We show that we love Him when we bother to know more about Him. We show that our friends matter to us when we let them finish explaining, too.
