Take a Good Look

Mark Dunagan
03/04/12 - Sunday Morning

Take a Good Look

There are a number of passages in the Bible that encourage an honest self examination of ourselves:

• “Test yourselves to see if you are in the faith; examine yourselves!” (2 Corinthians 13:5).
• “Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me and know my anxious thoughts; and see if there be any hurtful way in me” (Psalm 139:23).

As with anything the Bible endorses or advocates, there is always an abundance of good reasons for why such is being encouraged.  Self-deception or being deceived by others is a problem far too common:

• “Beware, lest your hearts be deceived and you turn away and serve other gods” (Deuteronomy 11:16).
• “Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing” (Matthew 7:15).
• “Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall” (1 Corinthians 10:12).
• “The god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving” (2 Corinthians 4:4).
• “Let no one deceive you” (Ephesians 5:6).
• “Do not be deceived” (James 1:16).

Practical Help:  Humility

“The arrogance of your heart has deceived you” (Jeremiah 49:16).  Over-confidence and pride can easily create a situation in which we can be easily misled.  What does not help is that presently in our culture there is a definite tendency for self-inflation.  When high school students are asked if they are in the top half of their class for leadership ability, 80 percent will say yes.  70 percent will say that they are in the top half for good looks.  Yet this is not only true of many modern teens.  If you ask professors whether they are in the top half of their profession, 94 percent say they are.  Newscientist.com/Evolutionary guru:  Don’t believe everything you think, October 12, 2011, Graham Lawton.  This should not surprise us, for Jesus noted that the religious leaders of His time were often blind guides (Matthew 15:14), and were far different morally that they perceived themselves (Matthew 23:25).   Thus, humility would include such realizations that:

• “I can be deceived—so I will stay close to God”.
• “I can be tempted, so I will flee from sin”.
• “I was in sin once—so I know what I am capable of doing when I become selfish”
• “I need God’s wisdom”.
• “Being intelligent isn’t enough—for I see many intelligent people who are deceived”.
• “God’s law applies to me too—I am not the exception to the rule”.
• “Apart from God I am just as blind as anyone else”.
• “Sin will rule me, as it does others, if I dabble in it”.

Practical Help:  Love For God and Others

“The one who says he is in the light and yet hates his brother is in the darkness until now…but the one who hates his brother is in the darkness, and walks in the darkness, and does not know where he is going” (1 John 2:9-11). 

Here is excellent motivation to get rid of the anger in our lives, and instead to see how blessed we are.  It is a great incentive to view people as having great worth, instead of nuisances or "pains in the neck". 

Practical Help:  The Word of God

In the above article, the writer interviewed an evolutionary biologist on the topic of self-deception, and the man said, “I end the book with a chapter on fighting our own self-deception.  I’ve been remarkably unsuccessful in my own case.  I just repeat the same kinds of mistakes over and over”.  The good news is that this does not have to be our story.  Without God, self-deception will continue, but with God and His word we can break out of this trap:

• “But prove yourselves doers of the word, and not merely hearers who delude themselves” (James 1:22).
• “For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit…and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Hebrews 4:12).

In Psalm 19 David asked a question that more people need to ponder, “Who can discern his errors?” (19:12).  That is, who can really see himself as he really is?  The previous verses answered this question, “Moreover, by them (the commands of God, 19:7), Thy servant is warned” (19:11).   By seriously listening to the word of God and by allowing it to scrutinize our lives we can see our errors and we can avoid the presumptuous sins mentioned in the next verse (19:13).  We can even avoid the situation in which sin is ruling over us.

Humility and the word of God needed to be continuously combined in our lives, for even Christians can end up deceived—and not just a little, but thoroughly fooled.  Case in point: the Christians in Laodicea viewed themselves as “rich and in need of nothing” when the reality was they were “wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked” (Revelation 3:17).

Continually Look at Jesus

In Second Corinthians chapter 4 Paul noted that Satan has blinded the minds of the unbelieving (4:4).  Yet he notes that when a person turns to Christ this blindness disappears (3:16).  Praise our Lord that no one must stay in a blinded condition.  Then Paul says, “But we all, with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory” (3:18).  Allow me to make a couple of observations:

• We live in a culture where the concept of there being an absolute truth has been disregarded.  We find many people proclaiming that each man only has to accept "his own reality".  What more excellent recipe for ending up with a generation of deceived people, for the only reality that truly exists is not mine or your subjective one, but God’s objective reality. I must come to terms with the truth that God’s standard or reality will be the only reality in the end (John 12:48).
• I cannot accept my excuses or the excuses offered by other people when it comes to failure to mature and grow.  I must never accept excuses, rather, I need to submit to Divine solutions.  I need to follow the wonderful, live-giving, life-improving instructions given in God's word (James 1:22).
• Messing around with the little things on the periphery of my life isn’t very useful if on the inside I have big problems (Matthew 23:25).

The best insurance for not being deceived is focusing on the Lord.  There is no room for self-pity or sinful anger.  There is no arrogance or presumption when you are looking right at Him.  There is no ingratitude or impatience when we realize how spiritually indebted we were before Jesus redeemed us.  And there certainly exists no ideas that somehow I can make it to heaven without obeying Him or going through Him and Him alone.  I have found that in order to believe error, you just have to consciously determine to forget about what Jesus Himself has said.

Change/Big Change is Possible!

Jesus said that the Pharisees were filled all uncleanness (Matthew 23:27).  Yet at the same time He admonished them to clean up their lives (23:26).  Jesus also talked about someone with a log in his or her eye, yet clearly taught that the log could be removed (Matthew 7:1-4; Luke 6:42).  What a refreshing message compared to what many are often told in the world—that big personal problems can never be solved, that the true root of the problem can never be discovered, and that we are destined to keep on making the same mistakes day after day. The truth? Big change is truly possible.

Mark Dunagan | mdunagan@frontier.com
Beaverton Church of Christ | 503-644-9017
www.beavertonchurchofchrist.net