Eyesight is a great gift. With the miracle of our eyes, we perceive our real environment. We see landscapes and buildings, recognize colors and shapes. We perceive other people with our eyes; well-dressed, rich, poor, homeless, handsome, ugly, fat, thin. The eyes are naturally judgemental and blinded by external impressions, they see the superficial and naturally classify, judge and filter into categories. The facade – “a result of our actions” many believe – is what grabs our attention most. The eye stereotypes by reducing information.
“You’re a moslem only by your actions, just as you cannot call yourself vegetarian and still eat meat.”
“Judge him by his actions, not by his words.”
“Actions speak louder than words.”
Earthly wisdom differs from Divine Wisdom. The first neglects an essential divine part in humans which is the unseen, the heart. It judges what is visible – looks & actions – and audible – words – and reduces information and simplifies. What cannot be understood is simplified to be understood. It teaches to trust one’s own judgment and does not rest until it gets answers. Only then man can move on.
Godly Wisdom on the other hand teaches to trust only God. To walk humbly with God. Humility removes pride from man’s heart when he thinks he knows everything.
The heart seeks words for what cannot be spoken. Emotions require words in the irony that is poetic expression. Most saints were above all things also poets.
Actions, lack of actions, or words are not the language of the heart. They are interpretations, sometimes honest and other times deceitful.
Sometimes a higher power seems to have a hand in the outcome of our personal actions: fate, luck, blessing… Many beliefs and many words. Some cultures protect it with amulets to ward off the evil eye. Since ancient times there was a recognition of the eye as an evil, judgemental, and sometimes envious power that destroys.
From Salvador Dalí’s “50 Secrets of Magic Craftsmanship”:
“To look is to think […] to ‘look’ is also the highest and the most imperialist hierarchy of the will.”
I have seen people – even some of them are kind to me – cheating, being dishonest just to make their life run smoother and effortless. They see a corrupt system as a ladder instead of a barrier, a corrupt system merely as a topic, as a campaign.
“At a given moment you achieve, without hardly being aware of it, a miraculous masterpiece; at another moment, to all appearances similar, another painting executed with a thousand times more effort and knowledge brings you only greater shame at each fresh sitting and you can barely muster the courage to finish it. Such contradictions give rise to vague words like “inspiration,” or “stroke of luck” or you may be quite ready to believe yourself the victim of an evil eye, as though your worst enemy among the other painters had managed to cast a spell over you. Why did that turn out so well, and today, with the same procedure and with a thousand times more experience, I bungle it?”
Though their action is totally unacceptable, frankly they look more fortunate than anyone who works with integrity and always sets the bar higher. But who knows on something would come in the future? Life is too random, eventually cheaters will show their unworthiness. While our eyes will only have one judgment at a specific moment, God who is timeless and outside of time sees the heart of a man from a different perspective.
Earthly wisdom teaches “follow your heart”, Godly Wisdom on the other hand teaches how to purify the heart from corruption and harmful passions.
Indah Purwanto 
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