If someone were to ask us, what are the most annoying words? I am sure there would be many different answers. Understandably, each person naturally has their own opinion. If you were to ask me and I had to answer as honestly as possible, then forgive my flesh if I say that the most annoying words are true words. And it turns out that my answer is also recorded in the Bible. To support my statement, let's peek into a moment in Jesus' life.
“But now you are trying to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. Abraham did not do such things,” Jesus said, as recorded in John 8:40. The truth spoken by Jesus, it seems, was so annoying to the Jews of that time (and even now) that they tried to kill Him!
Today, of course, we want to accept Jesus' words for two reasons. The first is because we believe that He is our Lord and God. Whereas in the eyes of the Jews at that time, Jesus was an ordinary man. In Surabaya slang, Jesus was just a kid from Nazareth. Many even saw Jesus as a poor carpenter, uneducated in religion, and tending to be a know-it-all. The difficult part was that when Jesus spoke the truth, the truth about their real innermost hearts, about their hypocrisy, about their greed, and the like, they couldn't deny it. Their hearts acknowledged that He was right, but their flesh felt like it was being skewered. Sorry, I mean pricked by thorns. Well, this is what happens when I write while hungry... And the second reason, which might be the main cause, is because we think Lord Jesus isn't talking to and/or about us.
But what if what Jesus said then also often happens to us? Am I the only one, or are many of us annoyed when someone tells the truth about our real innermost hearts? We might still read the Bible when His Word speaks the truth about us. Because we read the Bible alone and in a closed room. We might still go to church when Pastor Han Han’s sermon scolds us. Because only our own hearts know, and the sermon is heard by the entire congregation who aren't asleep. But do we still respect an ordinary person, like a carpenter, if their words contain truth that hurts our feelings? What if someone in a lower position protests against us and they are right? What if someone says something that precisely hits the corruption of our hearts? Will the correction lead us to realize and repent, or will it make us annoyed with that person? We might not kill them, but we might hit the unfriend button or save their phone number as