Book 1, Chapter i, Section 2
07.10.09
On the other hand, we can’t really know much about ourselves until we’ve really learned to open our eyes and see God, and after doing so, look at ourselves in the mirror again. If we don’t look to God first, we see ourselves as generally good people. “I am a good and wise person,” one will say. “I deal justly with the people around me,” says another. But when we confront the evidence about ourselves, we realize that exactly the opposite is true: We are not good and wise, nor are we just. But the point is that we don’t inherently realize this if we’re only looking in the mirror at ourselves all the time, and we never look to God. God represents the defining standard of goodness, wisdom and justice.
We think even the smallest amount of goodness that we do represents the standard for all goodness. How hypocritical we are! We don’t recognize that everyone around us is broken too. If all we see are broken people, even the slightly little bit of good seems like an instance of shining virtue and justice.
It’s like this: Imagine living in a pitch-black cave with absolutely no light whatsoever; wouldn’t even the tiniest flicker of a candle seem like a brilliant and radiant light? And then think about how brightly shines the sun! This is exactly how it is when we look in the mirror and measure ourselves. When we only look in the mirror, if we see even the tiniest flicker flame of goodness in ourselves, we think we’re almost god-like in our goodness and brilliance. But when we look at God, the cave door is rolled back and the brilliant fiery light of his goodness sears our eyesight. We look at him and realize suddenly that the tiny little flame we saw in ourselves is nothing more than a wisp! He is perfectly good, perfectly wise, and perfectly just. His brilliant light sets the standard that we long to attain – who, after looking at that bright light, can possibly be awed by the dim flicker of a candle?
How foolish we are to think that our goodness is anything compared to God’s perfect goodness! How silly we are to think that our muddied thinking is anything compared to God’s perfect wisdom! How impotent we are to think that our constantly shifting opinion is anything compared to God’s perfect justice! It ends up that everything that we thought was good about ourselves is so inferior to God’s perfect virtue that we realize immediately that we don’t measure up to Him at all.