Looking in the mirror

Personal Photo: Looking inward requires looking upward!

Self-reflection. What is it? How often do we do it? What does it mean for our day to day? Well, self-reflection can have a number of meanings when we consider our relationships with God, ourselves, and our peers. Looking inward can be broken down into many different pieces, and I have been spending quite a bit of time thinking about those pieces. One of them that comes early in the process of looking inward is understanding who we are, through the history of our hearts, the experiences that create roots, and the paths that lead us to today. A large part of being able to evaluate who we are comes from understanding what influences us. The people we grew up with, the way we were taught to love, the experiences that stuck with us, and so on. It is important. Realizing the things that make us who we are is vital when we seek out how we can then use that information to edit ourselves. We cannot move forward without understanding what brought us to where we are now. We can then focus on how we have been gifted by God, how we can impact others, and how we can realize the potential power we hold with us. I titled this article 'Looking in the mirror' because I find that so many people fail to do so. I want to recognize how critical it is for us to understand our individual perspective on the world and honor our roots as influencers of our behavior and character, but I want to also dive deeper into self-reflection as when we look inside ourselves to find chances to grow, see how we impact those around us, and connect with God.

I often consider most of us going through the world with a metaphorical mirror pointing outward to the world. We often are looking at that mirror to understand and focus on who we encounter, what kind of person they are, how we feel about things depending on the angle we see it from, etc. Deciphering the world in this way is completely normal, and it is a way for us to recognize that our perspective is often different than others. Throughout our lives, we encounter people of all different kinds, each with their likes, dislikes, passions, styles, preferences, characteristics, personalities, and more. The trouble comes in when we take our perspective, our view through the mirror, and never turn it around to view ourselves. We can get so consumed with our opinions of others, what people should and should not do, how our perspective is the almighty one, etc. This habit is an easy one to fall into, which is why I think we can all use a reminder sometimes that we need to flip the mirror around; we need to check in with ourselves every now and then.

Another concern when we are not reflecting upon ourselves, but rather only looking out at the world, is that it can be easy to devalue the person that we are. When we are so focused on other people, we can find that our self-perception is warped, outdated, and stale. We then forget who we are, forget that we are children of God, forget that we can focus on the Holy Spirit dwelling inside of us rather than the ways in which other people interact. This causes us to seek acceptance from people who do not need to give it to us, and we devalue the power and acceptance of God because we are so concerned with not getting it from our peers. It does not help that we live in a society that is constantly watering down individuality, teaching us to focus on other people, and putting value in status, possessions, and opinions. This pushes us to abandon the first step of self-reflection, which is understanding who we are; when we have no identity, we find we are constantly seeking the identity of our peers, which leads us to only seek acceptance from them instead of God. Individuality is a great thing; it helps us appreciate how God crafted us, it creates confidence in our faith and helps us touch the world in our own way.

This is a challenging balance, isn't it? It can be easy to slip into one or both of the above habits. The reason we do, the reason we either focus on the world to find fault with it or we focus on the world to seek acceptance from it (or both!) is because we stop working internally. We stop giving our souls time and space to grow and mature. We stop taking time to reflect on ourselves, to edit the person we are, and evaluate our stand in our faith. We are told to self-reflect in 2 Corinthians 13:5, which tells us to "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?" In this way, we can see that when we look inwardly, when we flip the mirror around, we are practicing our faith in Christ, we are searching for Him in everything that we do. Evaluating where we stand with Christ is the most important piece of self-reflection. It is critical that we do this, for we are told in 1 Corinthians 11:28-29 "That is why you should examine yourself before eating the bread and drinking the cup. For if you eat the bread or drink the cup without honoring the body of Christ, you are eating and drinking God’s judgment upon yourself." This verse is directly instructing us to reflect upon our faith, to see if we are living in Christ. If we find ourselves forgetting to look inward, abandoning self-reflection, we can trick ourselves into thinking that we are living for God and therefore bring judgement upon ourselves. We need saved, and we must always remember that in order to understand the ways that God can use us for His will, how we can grow in our faith, how we can influence and impact others in a positive way.

When we look at our reflections, when we take a good hard look in the mirror, we can then appreciate the ways God has crafted each of us, how we can be more like Christ, and how we can edit ourselves to be better representatives of God. We are always allowed to self-edit, to become stronger, to hold ourselves to a higher standard than we did yesterday. And who sets that standard? What is that standard? We are told in Ephesians 5:1-2 to "Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God." In this verse we are told to strive for the standard of Christ. We are, as children of God, always looking to act like Him in every possible way. We act like Him not because we can ever be Him, or be perfect like Him, but because we represent Him and we can distribute His love through our faith. Our faith must be an active faith, however. James 1:22 reminds us "Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says." Faith that is stagnant, stale, and stubborn, is a sad representation of what the Lord does in the life of a believer. This is why I am writing this article. When we are acting upon our faith, we find ourselves looking in the mirror, reflecting on the gritty details that we can act upon to be better, to be more like Christ, to see God's love for us and through us. Looking in the mirror and acting upon our faith goes hand in hand. They influence and impact each other, and therefore, we can see that when we are reflecting on the ways we behave, taking time with God to recognize areas of growth, and seeking ways to be more like the Lord, we are putting our faith into action, keeping the devil on his toes, and making a positive impact on the people around us and in ourselves.

In addition to recognizing that we are to be imitators of Christ, we are also told in John 3:30 that "He must increase, but I must decrease" I love this short, simple verse when we think about how we can use self-reflection as a way to grow and make a positive impact. We alone are destined to fail; when we stop evaluating ourselves in our faith, when we become too engrossed with the world around us, we have given too much power to our sinful nature. We need less of us, and more of God. We can only realize this need for balance when we take the time to reflect upon how we speak to others, how we can be kinder, how we can be more considerate, and so on. The more we reflect on how God is influencing our behavior, the less power our sinful nature holds.

Reflection allows us to "take a good look at the way we’re living and reorder our lives under God" (Lamentation 3:40). When the mirror we use to self-reflect is the word of God, we are able to accomplish this goal. Through evaluating our faith in Christ, we can prevent ourselves from focusing too much on the world, devaluing those around us and/or devaluing ourselves. Keeping Christ at the forefront of our self-reflection is what allows us to recognize how we can do better, how we can practice our faith more often, how we can keep our faith alive through putting the time and effort in, and more. The final verse that I want to recognize from the Bible is John 15:12, which states "This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you." This one, similar to how we are to be imitators of Christ, reminds us that in every single thing that we do, we are to represent the love of God. God's love for us is so vast and so strong, the very least we can do for Him is to spread that love. We all know what it means to love, we all know how we would want to be loved and cared about. When we take that knowledge, when we share it with our peers, when we practice that love by appreciating the paths and the roots that form who we are, we can grow exponentially, we can change the way others view themselves, the world, and Christ. The Holy Spirit's power within us brings that love to the forefront, and by turning that mirror around, we can see how He can continue to work on the ways we love, the ways we appreciate our individualities, the ways that we can be better representatives of God.