A Dirty Mirror
I made a video yesterday for our service @ Fellowship. It wasn’t a bad video and it illustrated the point I was trying to make very clearly. I attempted to demonstrate James 1: 23,24 which says:
Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like.
So I had this idea. I have a mirror in my office, and each Sunday morning before I go to preach I check myself for inconsistencies in my dress code like a zipper not reaching new heights or toilet paper on my person or a collar going rogue. So I thought, “what about illustrating these verses by showing me checking myself in the mirror in my office and then ignoring some obvious problems, complete with a Star Wars musical score in the background?
I thought the video was quite good for the time I had to make it, but in it I missed a huge detail! My mirror was filthy. And the camera was clear enough to see this detailed faux pas. I’m sure it didn’t get unnoticed, and I felt really stupid. But then I thought, “This is probably what happens when I look at ‘the Bible’ to justify my own stance on what’s right and allow it to fit into my system of thinking, rather than allowing it to be alive as it claims to be and , so it can ‘judge the thoughts and attitudes of my heart’ and then ‘teach, rebuke, correct, and train me in righteousness’.” My thoughts begin to skew what the Word of God through the Spirit of God (because that’s how this is powerful, not because of a piece of paper) wants to reveal to me, and probably I walk away distorting what God really wants for my life.
Literally I look into a mirror that’s dirty (my perspective outside of the Spirit of God) and walk away without a good understanding of how I can best “abide in Christ”.
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Great thoughts, Marty.
Maybe this is obvious and I always missed it before. But while watching the video, after hearing the verse in context, I was really struck by something I never noticed before. The metaphor is actually quite powerful.
Without scripture, we don’t know what a mess we are. Without scripture, we don’t know what we need to fix and how to go about fixing it…
And yet, if we use scripture to get a sense of these things, but don’t go on to actually do anything about the fact that we’re a mess, the whole exercise is quite pointless.