DAY 208 Jeremiah 50:1–52:34

My people have been lost sheep; their shepherds have led them astray, turning them away on the mountains; from mountain to hill they have gone, they have forgotten their fold. (Jeremiah

Now, after days of reading about the decimation of lots of communities by the Babylonians and Chaldeans, and God’s request that the people do as their captor Babylonians request, now we read about the decimation of the Babylonians. I can’t follow who’s the good guy or the bad guy. I’m sure there’s a great narrative about all of the smashing God does, but that’s not what interests me today. Partly because I don’t understand it. I’ll leave that for the scholars.

This morning, I’m thinking about being led astray, and forgetting my fold. The reflective question for this section asks when I’ve been led astray, and what factors caused my straying. My biggest temptations tend to be the shadow sides of my greatest strengths, and I suspect this is true for many of us.

Using any of those personality or typing assessments, I am decisive and just. I strive to right the wrongs in the world, and am very self-giving. These sound like positive traits, but they all have a shadow side that, when unchecked, definitely lead me astray. The most insidious aspect of this is that because these start out as positive traits, I think I’m doing the right thing, up until I find myself in a strange field, no where near the rest of my flock.

Decisiveness can easily become judgmental. I see something, I decide a course of action, and I take it. Sometimes that’s in consultation with others around me, and frequently it is not. And sometimes this is a good thing, when indecision rules and yet people know something must be done. This trait also means I can appear dictatorial, and forget about consensus.

Being just is a good thing, except when it comes at the expense of mercy. In my home world, I’m much more likely to fall on the side of making just parenting decisions, while my beloved husband is always better at the merciful decisions. If I’m not careful, I find myself leaving no room for mercy. Thank God for the strengths of my husband, to help me recognize the shadow side of justice. Honestly, we definitely parent better together, because of each of our strengths and shadows.

I want to fix the wrongs of the world. That’s a good thing, until it means I’m correcting how people do things that honestly don’t matter. An absurd but illustrative example is which way the toilet paper roll should be. Clearly, there’s a right way, and my desire to correct the world’s wrongs means that I will correct other people’s ways, even with toilet paper. I haven’t done that one in a while, luckily. But I do find it difficult to tell the difference between the world’s wrongs, and simple preferences. It’s not just that I have an opinion about a way to do things, it’s that I genuinely feel I’m correcting a bigger wrong in the world. I could recite the way things should be for so long, and so obliviously that I find that the flock has moved on, and I’m by myself, talking about what’s right. Thankfully, I have family and friends who are willing to come find me back into the fold.

Finally, I want to help people, but that sometimes comes at the cost of being enabling, or overly self-giving.

For me, I’m not likely to be led astray by anyone else. I can do that all by myself. All of my strengths are precisely the things that can lead me astray. That’s good news, because with a little bit of self-reflection I can name some of my strengths. If I think hard enough about those strengths, I can spot the shadows. Those are the things that lead me astray. Again, I would suspect that this is the case for most of us. So what is it for you?