Recently I heard about an interesting observation of a teacher: She likes to pass out slips of paper in each class asking the students to write something positive: on the orange slips, something positive about a friend; on the blue slips, something positive about themselves. Interestingly, almost all of the students write positive character traits about their friends, such as being kind, funny, and helpful; but they only write positive things about their appearance, such as that their nose is okay or that they have nice eyes when writing about themselves. We often seem to unconsciously think that our appearance is important to others or that they notice it more. But it's really about our character. Just as we don't really pay attention to the clothes, hair, or nose of others, our behavior and being are what´s important to others as well. Our laughter, our help, our generosity, our humor, our courage. Why is it so hard for us to see these things in ourselves? Even little children can do this. Is it false modesty that keeps us from recognizing our own strengths? What if we could thank God for these positive qualities that He has allowed to grow in us? Thank you Lord for making me adventurous, brave, and cheerful! Now isn´t that uplifting!
Then I recently read a book that goes in a completely different direction. As a balance, so to speak. "Respectable Sins" by Jerry Bridges, where he confronts us with the sins we tolerate as Christians. It doesn't sound appealing maybe, but it's written well and humbly. It talks about things like pride, selfishness, discontent, impatience and irritability, judgment, envy, ingratitude... which concern all of us more or less. One sentence in particular caught my attention, and I want to work on it: "The actual cause of our impatience lies within our own hearts, in our own attitude of insisting that others around us conform to our expectations." Well, unfortunately, sometimes I have very precise ideas about how things should be, especially in my home… Judging others, which is really taking God's role, is also a well-known trap. We cannot see the plank in our own eyes. Our opinion is not the truth, Jerry reminds us in his book.
Such reading makes us humble. It is impossible to handle all of this!
It's a good thing we have a savior! This is my favorite joker (can I express it like this?): Jesus died for me! It's so liberating. Over and over again. It doesn't wear out, it just gets better and better over the years. And I don't say that lightly, I really experience it that way.
Both are true: We are good. God has allowed so much good to grow in each of us, and we often suffer from false modesty.
And we are bad. We think we're better than we are and we don't realize how wrong we often are.
I want to look at Jesus. Then my view - of others and of myself - gets better and better.
His beauty and his goodness and his grace. His presence. That's all we need.
His love for me is greater than my sins.
Immense in mercy and with an incredible love, God embraced us.
He took our sin-dead lives and made us alive in Christ.
He did all this on his own, with no help from us!
Ephesians 2: 4-5 (MB)