Recently I found myself in a familiar battle — the battle of my mind. For me at least, I find I’m deceived and deluded at times, and my mind threatens to leap off great precipices into unknown and perilous abysses. Not always, but often enough. I think it’s pretty normal for many of us.
Anxiety is often a sign that we’re imperilled spiritually, especially when we’re tempted to see others as enemies. A form of cognitive bias imagines others motives as bad and ours as good (technical name: motive attribution asymmetry). We need to overcome this bias by seeing it for what it is and agreeing to change our minds.
Winning the battle of the mind means we acknowledge that spiritually we don’t ‘wage war’ with flesh and blood but with powers in the spiritual realm — powers that battle for control of our minds, wishing to influence our hearts, contorting our feelings.
Winning the battle of the mind starts with an openness of heart. It takes humility to be open to reflect on being wrong. None of us enjoys this. But it is key to relating well with others. It is also key to being at peace with ourselves and God.
If I can genuinely ask the question of myself, “Could I be in error (even in part) here?” I stand at the doorway of my relational freedom with others.
“Where I have offended them, I can work my way back.”
“Where I have created distance by my actions, however well intended I was, I can foster forgiveness through apology.”
The good thing about accepting our responsibility to correct ourselves when we’re wrong is that we have power to influence ourselves. We don’t have that power of influence over others.
The peace of God is ours when we live right with others. When we have won the battle of the mind and we no longer see others as enemies.
What a beautiful world we can enjoy when we’re not demonising people.
Of course, there will always be those who don’t party along such lines. Let them. For us, however, there is life to be had in reconciliation with those who also wish to live this way — happy to be wrong, willing to initiate the reparative work of relating one with another in humility.
