My mother once had a great love of goldfish, we had a tank that was two metres long. There was an entire ecosystem in there - water snails, water grass, shells, pebbles, numerous goldfish, and even tadpoles and guppies my brother caught in the nearby pond. It was huge, it was teeming with life... but it was a fish bowl all the same.
What is fish bowl mentality?
Fish bowl mentality is when we lose sight of the big picture, and we confine our lives, and our field-of-vision, to the fishbowl. The fishbowl becomes our world... and because it is a small world, we become enormous and important in comparison. We abutt against the same fish everyday, we swim in circles... and we believe that the fate of our world hinges on whether a particular shell is sitting a particular way, or whether a particular fish is swimming clockwise or anticlockwise. We do see the outside world, but only a distorted, blurred view of it... and, in the end, it doesn't matter much to us anyway.
Have we lost sight, or worse, forsaken what God has done for us? Have we forgotten how we were redeemed, how we were picked up out of the mud and the grave, and it took the sacrifice of Heaven's Son for us to be saved? Have we forgotten exactly what we were commissioned to do, have we lost sight of exactly what matters to God? Do we still remember the nature of the battle we are fighting... who we are fighting against, who we are fighting for, and on whose commission and command?
If Jesus were alive today, would he fit into our fishbowl? (Would we allow Him to try?) And if He didn't, would we have crucified Him for it?
The old hymn says: "Turn your eyes upon Jesus". If you find yourself increasingly agitated and frustrated at other people's fishbowl mentality, chances are you are living in the fishbowl yourself, and you also have the fishbowl mentality. To look upon your situation with such intense frustration, to let it rob you of your joy in Christ, means that you already have taken your eyes off Jesus... and fixed it on the fishbowl. (And... are you being judgemental of the very people you are accusing of judgementalism?) Regardless of the mentality of the people around you, yours must be one that is fixed on Him.
Isaiah 50:7 says: "Because the Sovereign LORD helps me, I will not be disgraced. Therefore have I set my face like flint, and I know I will not be put to shame". Luke 9 describes Jesus setting his face like flint towards Jerusalem. Paul talks about being determined to finish his "race". Set your eyes on your Jerusalem, on your Goal, and set your face like flint towards it. Let your resolve not be swayed; let your joy not be robbed. Jesus paid too high a price for you not to fix your eyes and your life on Him entirely.
