“O…to see ourselves as others see us.”

“O…to see ourselves as others see us.” So wrote the Scottish bard, Robert Burns. This famous line comes from a poem (“To a Louse”) in which Burns describes himself sitting in a church service behind a young lady dressed out in her Sunday finery.

The poet notices a louse making his way among the ribbons and bows of the woman’s fancy bonnet. Burns might expect to see such a “blastie” (an ugly little creature) on an old wife’s flannel nightcap, or perhaps on some small ragged boy, but not on such a refined lady trying to make an impression upon her fellow-worshippers!

He concludes the poem with the famous stanza (here rendered in a rough English equivalent to the Scottish brogue) that offers the familiar moral to the story:

O would some Power the gift to give us

To see ourselves as others see us!

It would from many a blunder free us,

And foolish notion:

What airs in dress and gait would leave us,

And even devotion!

If we were given the ability by God to stand outside ourselves and “see…as others see us,” perhaps we would be delivered from some of our blunders and foolish notions, our inflated social airs — perhaps even our devotion might improve.

Burns has put his finger here on a significant feature of fallen human nature — an often inflated and distorted self-image. Jeremiah wrote that “the heart is deceitful above all things” (17:9), and that heart-deceit can distort our perception (and evaluation) of circumstances, of other people, and of ourselves.

Hypocrisy

The Bible contains frequent warnings against hypocrisy.

This is the most extreme form of “not seeing yourself as you truly are.” This is a life of pretense — knowing that there is a huge disconnect between who we are inwardly and the person we wish to be (or appear to be) outwardly to others. The “hypocrite” (as the Greek word indicates) “wears a mask” (as in the theater) to hide his/her true self behind a false appearance that will be more attractive to others.

Hypocrisy was the characteristic sin of the religious leaders of Jesus’ day, who often drew a biting rebuke from our Lord. For example:

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people's bones and all uncleanness. So you also outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.” (Matthew 23:27–28)

It was the desire of the Pharisees to appear to be righteous to others — and in this they were largely successful — but in reality they were inwardly lawless. They needed Jesus to tell them how they looked to him, the “Heart-Reader” (Jeremiah 17:10). Only so would they be led by the Holy Spirit to the repentance that would bring their inward and outward lives into correspondence.

Sadly, most of them refused and perished in their hypocrisy. As Jesus declared:

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’” (cf. Matthew 7:21–23)

Thus we are warned to “put away all…hypocrisy” (1 Pet. 2:1). It is a deadly affliction of soul.

Self-examination

By God’s grace, most of us have been delivered from intentional hypocrisy, though we all have our moments and our “blind spots.” The great pastor John Newton wrote:

‎While we remain upon the earth we are in the Lord's school, and a principal we have to learn is the knowledge of ourselves, and this can only be attained by painful experience.… To have some tolerable ideas of the human heart in general is one thing, to know our own hearts is quite a different thing. (Letters of John Newton, p. 342, emphasis added)

We must seek to live an “examined life.”

Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Or do you not realize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless indeed you fail to meet the test! (2 Corinthians 13:5)

Using the Word of God as our guide, and trusting in the transforming power of the Holy Spirit, we try to examine not only our outward actions, but also our inward attitudes and motivations, seeking to bring them into line with the will of God as embodied in the Lord Jesus himself.

We are trying, with Spirit’s help, to “see ourselves as others see us” — God himself being the most significant Other. We pray, with the Psalmist,

Search me, O God, and know my heart!
Try me and know my thoughts!
And see if there be any grievous way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting! (Ps. 139:23–24)

Such honest heart-searching is an essential aspect of our “growing in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 3:18).

Ask another brother or sister to tell you what they see

If you are conscientious about your self-exam-ination before the Lord, you will find it very helpful to seek the input of others in the process.

Far from being defensive and fearing the honest evaluations of others, believers who want to know themselves truly and live transparently before others are eager to have help (especially from those who spend a lot of time with you and know you well).

As we said, all of us have our “blind spots” — truths about ourselves that we’d prefer not to acknowledge and fix, or even things we are so close to, that have been so much a part of us for so long, that we may not see them for what they truly are. Here “another pair of eyes” is indispensable.

The other day I came across a quotation by William Wilberforce that was very much on topic here:

…unless we have accustomed ourselves to self-suspicion, if I may use such a phrase, we never benefit as we might from the friendly reproofs of a real friend. We may receive his remarks with civility, and even give him credit for his kind intentions, but we shall be almost sure to let it appear to any acute observer at least, that we rather tolerate his frankness out of principle, or put up with it in consideration of the friendly motives by which it has been prompted, than that we listen to it with a sincere desire of profiting from it, still less that we welcome it as one of the most valuable services that could be rendered to us.

The grand preparation that is needed is humility; that sense of our own infirmities and our own weakness, which is felt by every true, at least by every flourishing Christian. We read in the Scripture that 'our hearts are deceitful above all things:' by which is meant, that we are all prone to flatter ourselves. Now it is the first office of the Holy Spirit to teach us to know ourselves, and immediately to suspect ourselves as the first effect of that knowledge. I know how difficult it is in practice from my own experience; and because it is so difficult, it is here that we need the special aid of the Holy Spirit, and should earnestly pray for his blessed influence to teach us to know ourselves.

Proverbs reminds us “faithful are the wounds of a friend” (27:6), where the “wounds” in question are rebukes (v. 5). Love is willing to take the risk of telling a friend the truth, even if it is an unwelcome truth. But here Wilberforce is urging “flourishing Christians” to have the humility to invite, indeed to welcome the input of others as “one of the most valuable services that could be rendered to us.”

If we are serious about growing in grace, and if we understand, as Wilberforce reminds us, how prone we all are to flatter ourselves, we will seek the special aid of the Holy Spirit and of a Christian friend in helping us “to see ourselves as others see us.”