Don: When cleansing the temple of moneylenders and the like, Jesus said that a house of prayer should be for everyone. This idea has not hitherto been associated with the idea that God does not want everyone to see Him in a uniform way. If He had, the argument goes, He would surely have shown us—people everywhere and throughout history—a uniform view of Himself. The fact that He has not, and that there are thousands of variations in human views of God, suggest that the omission was deliberate—it is God’s plan. It follows then that since understanding more about God is impossible and cannot be the way back to God and to the oneness with Him that was lost at the Fall, the only alternative is to understand more about ourselves and worry less about understanding God.
How is it possible to have a mature and righteous (in the sense of valid and reliable) view of oneself? Given our sinful state, how does one even begin to make the assessment? Many Bible stories illustrate the difficulty. One is the story of the publican (tax collector) and the Pharisee:
And He also told this parable to some people who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and viewed others with contempt: “Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood and was praying this to himself: ‘God, I thank You that I am not like other people: swindlers, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I pay tithes of all that I get.’ But the tax collector, standing some distance away, was even unwilling to lift up his eyes to heaven, but was beating his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, the sinner!’ I tell you, this man went to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.” (Luke 18:9-14)
What are the factors that demand from us, and help us achieve, an accurate self-assessment? We’ve noted that crisis (natural, such as a tornado; or man-made) can be a factor, but is it an essential factor? Are we only honest with ourselves when the losing chips are down? The tax collector in the parable is clearly in some form of crisis, while the Pharisee is clearly far from it. The Woman at the Well was in crisis through her loose living. The woman with the menstrual problem was in crisis because it would not be cured. Zaccheus (another tax collector) suffered a crisis of conscience for taking people’s money. The Prodigal Son suffered physical degradation and deprivation. Nicodemus suffered a crisis of faith in his Pharisaical beliefs. The thief on the cross next to Jesus was at the point of death. In his own self-assessment, the Rich Young Ruler had done all that was needed to inherit eternal life, but Jesus destroyed his certainty. Jesus also led Simon the Pharisee to a correct assessment of himself in the moment when he almost begrudgingly recognized which of two debtors was worthy of forgiveness:
Now one of the Pharisees was requesting Him to dine with him, and He entered the Pharisee’s house and reclined at the table. And there was a woman in the city who was a sinner; and when she learned that He was reclining at the table in the Pharisee’s house, she brought an alabaster vial of perfume, and standing behind Him at His feet, weeping, she began to wet His feet with her tears, and kept wiping them with the hair of her head, and kissing His feet and anointing them with the perfume. Now when the Pharisee who had invited Him saw this, he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet He would know who and what sort of person this woman is who is touching Him, that she is a sinner.”
And Jesus answered him, “Simon, I have something to say to you.” And he replied, “Say it, Teacher.” “A moneylender had two debtors: one owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. When they were unable to repay, he graciously forgave them both. So which of them will love him more?” Simon answered and said, “I suppose the one whom he forgave more.” And He said to him, “You have judged correctly.” Turning toward the woman, He said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I entered your house; you gave Me no water for My feet, but she has wet My feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You gave Me no kiss; but she, since the time I came in, has not ceased to kiss My feet. You did not anoint My head with oil, but she anointed My feet with perfume. For this reason I say to you, her sins, which are many, have been forgiven, for she loved much; but he who is forgiven little, loves little.” Then He said to her, “Your sins have been forgiven.” Those who were reclining at the table with Him began to say to themselves, “Who is this man who even forgives sins?” And He said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.” (Luke 7:36-50)
Jacob, a rogue who had who had deceived his father and stole his elder brother Esau’s birthright, went into crisis following a final despicable act in which he used his own family as human shields to protect him, and was led by God to a true self-assessment—but it was a struggle:
Then Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. When he saw that he had not prevailed against him, he touched the socket of his thigh; so the socket of Jacob’s thigh was dislocated while he wrestled with him. Then he said, “Let me go, for the dawn is breaking.” But he said, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.” So he said to him, “What is your name?” And he said, “Jacob.” He said, “Your name shall no longer be Jacob, but Israel; for you have striven with God and with men and have prevailed.” Then Jacob asked him and said, “Please tell me your name.” But he said, “Why is it that you ask my name?” And he blessed him there. (Genesis 32:24-29)
Wrestling is as intimate as an activity can be except for the sex act itself. God seeks to wrestle with us in the most intimate way in the depths and darkness of our despair. But God does not seek to win: He simply wants us to reach the point of exhaustion at which we become truly self-aware. In asking Jacob: “What is your name?” He is asking: “Who are you, really?” Jacob’s ailing father Isaac once asked him his name also, when Jacob was in the process of deceiving Isaac by pretending to be Esau, and Jacob had lied—he did not give his real name, he did not present his true self. The difference between the two situations was that when God asked him his name, he was exhausted, he was in crisis; and he responded with his true name, which has connotations of being a supplanter and deceiver in Hebrew. As soon as he saw himself as God saw him—as a sinner in need of grace—he received grace in the form of a new and better name: Israel, which means “May God prevail.” The desired outcome of our struggle with God is that God prevails, that God’s will is done.
So again, is crisis essential to true self-assessment?
Nick: I feel closest to God when I am in crisis, when I am disappointed in myself. It’s when I need Him the most.
Donald: We display our true colors in a real crisis. But are there levels of crisis and stress, and if so do we react differently depending on the level? If so, perhaps we should be wary of assessing ourselves when we think we are in crisis, in case it is not at a level that reveals the truth about us.
Jay: Is it more important to know ourselves, or God? True crisis makes us realize that we have reached a limit beyond which we cannot go on our own. We accept that we need help, and that is when we are most open to receiving it from God. There is no barrier left between us and Him. But in seeking to know God, we erect barriers.
Donald: In crisis we are fragile, we feel small. In knowledge, we feel big and grow arrogant.
Jay: Crisis can then be viewed as a blessing. Might it be viewed as God’s intervention to help us realize our fragility and make us open to Him?
Donald: We grow stronger through struggle.
Kiran: Without crisis, when everything is easy, we never develop depth—we remain shallow. The book When Breath Becomes Air describes how the experience of cancer changes people, often giving them strength.
Jay: Before the Fall there was no need for crises, because we were always in intimate contact with God. Crisis is the only way we can become intimate with Him again.
Donald: Will there be crisis in Heaven?
Jay: To me, Heaven will be like the garden before the Fall, so there will be no need for crisis. In a post-Fall world, crisis is necessary to remind us that God and his love and grace exist. There would be no point to a relationship with God before the Fall, if idid not require struggle after the Fall to recover it.
Michael: There is crisis on Earth. Is crisis possible in heaven on Earth?
Don: It took divine intervention to get Woman at the Well and Zaccheus to recognize that they were in crisis. Simon the Pharisee needed divine intervention to realize that his worldview was inimical to God’s. The Rich Young Ruler was not in crisis until Jesus pointed out the error of his thinking. In our sinful state, we need God’s help to expose us.
Jay: The thief on the cross is the pivotal example. He was in extreme, terminal, crisis—it could hardly be any worse. His admission of that is precisely and all that was required for his salvation.
Donald: We spend our lives feeling more or less “challenged” but crisis is an extreme form of challenge. There was neither challenge nor crisis before the Fall. Isn’t challenge what makes life interesting? Challenges are surmountable, crises are not. Challenges are good in testing us; but crisis leaves us with nowhere to go. Before the Fall, Adam and Eve faced neither challenge nor crisis. The lion could lie down with the lamb. Our lives are so tuned to challenge that it is hard to understand what life would be like without them—or even life would be possible. Do we think of heaven as a place free of challenge and crisis?
Michael: I don’t see it that way. I see heaven on earth as a Beatitudinal place where there is crisis which leads to direct encounter with God. An encounter with God does not happen in a happy land of milk and honey. It happens in a hard place. A moment of crisis is a moment of heaven.
Don: …as Jacob discovered.
Anonymous: Crisis can be internal, unseen by others. Adam and Eve did not know themselves before the Fall. The Fall helped them see what what was inside them—what sort of people they were. So might the Fall have been necessary, in some way? An eye-opener? Now we know we are sinners, and it is good that we know; but before the Fall, Adam and Eve were perfect, so what did they need to know? When they saw their true sinful state they sought to hide themselves. Before that, they had no sinful state so had nothing to hide.
Don: There is a sense of unawareness in Adam and Eve in the garden. They were at one with themselves, with nature, and with God. There was no distinctive identity. They acquired identity, and with it self-awareness, at the Fall. God wants us to see ourselves as He sees us—which is as sinners but also as His children.
Chris: The problem is that our self-assessment is flawed unless we are in crisis. The better off we are in life, the harder it is to see ourselves realistically, as God sees us. We forget our sinful state when life is good. We need crisis for two reasons: One is for realistic self-assessment; the other is to be able to show love and grace to our fellow wo/man. It would be nice not to have to be in crisis—I see it as being not present in heaven. I see love and grace being universal in heaven.
Donald: Challenges are an everyday tests. When we fail to meet a challenge, like when we fail to pass a test in school, we precipitate a crisis and are forced to examine ourselves.
Jay: We tend to forget that while one purpose of the test is to enable the teacher to find out what the student knows, the other is to enable the student to know what s/he knows and does not know. So we look at God’s tests as ways for Him to assess us, but really they are ways for us to assess ourselves.
Donald: In higher ed right now, everything is about “student learning outcomes.” It is an iterative process that seeks incremental improvement over time.
Jay: But God does not require improvement. His teaching strategies must be perfect, therefore the accomplishment of His teaching goal is a given. But it is not a given for us, His students.
Donald: God’s desired student learning outcome for us is a capacity to love. We fail that test on a regular basis.
Jay: If we passed, we would have heaven on earth.
Nick: I don’t think I’ll ever see heaven on earth; only in heaven!
Anonymous: We will be in heaven when we know ourselves as God knows us.
Jay: God calls specifically for heaven on earth.
Kiran: The statement in John 3:16, that “This is the judgment, that light has come into the world” means that light is shed on our true state and enables us to see ourselves. Those who don’t want to see their true selves will prefer to remain in the darkness. We all face that choice.
Nick: Our pastor challenged us to ask our friends this question: “What is it like to be on the other side of me?” We had some interesting responses.
Don: Most of us don’t want to know.
Anonymous: I’d love to know how others see me, provided the answer is honest.
Don: We love you, so our answer would be bound to be biased!
Donald: A “life sketch” at a funeral is an interesting exercise. We ought to focus on spreading the gospel, not on proselytizing.
Don: Could self-assessment make us feel better about ourselves?
Jay: Absent a confession of need, I don’t think so.
Michael: I agree. Crisis leads to God’s grace, which is the most positive thing that can happen to us.
Kiran: Abel seemed to have avoided crisis and made a positive self-assessment.
Donald: We all bring different baggage to our self-assessments.
Anonymous: God has a way of changing our self-assessments when we think we are good.
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