Most days, I don’t recognize my own reflection.
There’s no hidden symbolism in that sentence — I genuinely just have trouble recognizing who I see in the mirror each morning. It’s weird. After about 6-12 months of hard exercise, I’ve put on about twenty five pounds of muscle. It took a lot of discipline, but it feels good. As a result, my body has gone from “worryingly skinny” to “slightly less worryingly skinny.” Truly, a Grecian statue; I have achieved the pinnacle of the masculine form.
But in all seriousness, while that kind of growth is rewarding progress, it doesn’t reflect any kind of radical transformation: I’ve filled out a little bit in my elbows and chest, put on a little volume in my arms, and that’s about it. Don’t get me wrong, I’m proud of the progress. Small gains become the sum of their parts, and the result has been pretty meaningful to a naturally skinny guy like me. But we’re talking about incremental changes, not sudden transformation. So while some of my clothes may fit a little more snugly, and while I may get a few extra glances around town, at the end of the day I’m still just me: a guy who is visually identifiable as a writer and not ever as a football player*.*
But as small as the changes are, and as humble as the growth has been, something inside me rebels; I still feel like this body doesn’t belong to me. I feel like I stole someone’s identity. I’m confronted almost every day with a self-image my mind can’t easily accept. In my mind, I am still unhealthily thin. Even this astonishingly small change has been (I’m more than a little self-conscious to admit) startling and disrupting to my self-perception.
It’s a kind of body dysmorphia — a minor, harmless one in my case, although for others it can present far more seriously. This dysmorphia supplants the evidence of my eyes, displacing the body that I actually have with an old body that I remember. And it lies. Yes, I have grown stronger. Yes, I look stronger and healthier. No, I am not the sad result of a drunken night of passion between a dejected skeleton and a squeaky rubber chicken — although as origin stories go, that one totally rocks.
And despite this dazzling, near-superhuman feat of athletic achievement that I’ve so dazzlingly and athletically achieved, in my mind my body still invites comparison to that sad little tree from the Charlie Brown Christmas special. Yes, I still picture myself as some kind of long-lost cousin to one of those gangly, inflatable dancing guys you see in front of the coolest used car dealerships.
God sure knows how to keep me humble.
All the work I’ve been doing? Boy, it’s working. But I still feel tiny, thin, and weak. I feel like I’m always cosplaying as someone who doesn’t look totally ridiculous at every moment of every day. And now I have a condemning voice on loop that tells me that I will always be exactly how I perceive, and that nothing will ever, ever change that. No matter how much I work out, I know that I’ll always be hideously thin. It’s totally crazy. And in the end, I’m pretty helpless before that voice. So in the end, I have no choice but to accept that I am completely unable to evaluate my own appearance; I am simply not an objective judge of my own self. I need a better standard.
And I suspect that many Christians aside from me face this exact same struggle when it comes to our spiritual lives.
Because in the same way that dysmorphia prevents me from perceiving my own body correctly, spiritual dysmorphia prevents all of us from seeing our own lives according to the objective truths of who we are in Christ.
“By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him; for whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything.”
1 John 3:19-20
For many of us, that condemning voice has an awful lot to say: about our lives, our identities, and the security of our salvation. It forces us to see ourselves perpetually in terms of who we once were, or who we think we ought to be, instead of on the objective basis of what the gospel insists is true of us. We don’t accept the changes that have been made, whether incremental or immediate, as a result of the free gift of transformation and renewal that the gospel of Jesus brings to us right now.
In the same way that dysmorphia forces me to obsess over my perceived physical deficiencies, spiritual dysmorphia compels us to see ourselves only in terms of lack. It feeds us an endless buffet of lies, and we are only too happy to pay the bill.
We stare at our reflections and we hear:
- Your heart is truly hideous.
- All your desires turn towards sin.
- Your whole life is unbelievably selfish.
- Everything about you screams “hopeless.”
- No part of you could never please God.
But the reflection lies.
John explains this in his first letter. When you are in Christ, the voice of truth will reassure you, not condemn you. When it comes to your truest identity, there is no condemnation that can share any space with the most crucial facts about you. However you choose to describe yourself in Christ, you can only possibly be reassured by what you find. So whenever your heart condemns you with voices like those above, you can tell it that God is greater than your heart, and that he knows everything.
You can tell yourself what God knows:
- He knows your broken heart.
- He knows your sinful desires.
- He knows your dodgy motives.
- He knows your fearful future.
- He knows every single part of you.
And at the end of all that knowing, he still eagerly calls you his beloved child. His heart swells in love for you; his affections are unyielding and his love is energetic. He rejoices in your victories and grieves over your sorrows. Yes, you may know that you are a hopeless failure that God could never love, fix, use, or redeem; and yes, you may know that you are ugly, twisted, and wretched beyond all hope of love. But God knows better. Whatever condemnation you may think you know to be true, God has something better to say. He is greater than your heart.
God knew exactly who you were when he chose you. He knew your future, your every mistake, and every aspect of you that most makes you cringe. He knew all that, and he chose you with joy. You are his beloved child, never to be cast out, and raised to the highest place with Christ. So that reflection you despise? God sees something vastly different. What he sees in you, he loves — he isn’t ever embarrassed to be associated with you.
Oh yes, that reflection lies.
And we can’t do this alone. God has given us a gift to help us live in the light of truth more readily: he has given us a community of believers to walk with us in faith, hope, and love through all things. So let those around you bring encouragement:
“Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith.”
Hebrews 12:1-2
When I can’t see the growth that God has made in my life — the incremental transformation of a thousand days of daily acts of obedience — I have people around me who can point me to the truth. They tell me what I fundamentally cannot see when my eyes are blinded by dysmorphic reflections. That God has changed me. That by his grace, I can continue to grow and learn. I can throw off the weight and sin that clings so closely, keep running this race, and look to Christ, who loves me and chose me. I can’t see it; I can hardly believe it. But good friends can. And they tell me when I can’t tell myself.
So if spiritual dysmorphia is telling you that you haven’t ever changed or grown, it’s probably lying. But don’t take my word for it — bring your fears to other believers. Tell them how you feel, and see what they have to say. I would be shocked if any mature Christian who you’ve been in close community with for longer than 3-4 months could not point to one or many ways in which you have demonstrated some kind of growth in the ways of Christ, in the fruits of the spirit. It might be subtle, or not what you were hoping for, but God has promised to complete the good work he began in you. You’re just too close to see what he’s done.
You are not a good mirror. Let others hold the mirror up for you.
When you submit your life to Christ as Lord, you have to submit your insecurities as well. You are not given the option: you can no longer be meaningfully defined in any capacity by anything except that which you can find in the fountain of blood that flows from Christ. He is your one true mirror, the one place your reflection will not cast dimly, and the only source by which you will discover the answers to every question that haunts you. So come behold your Savior.
Scripture tells us that as we behold this Christ, we will be transformed into that same image, day by day — incrementally, by this “long obedience in the same direction.” So no, perhaps you don’t recognize your reflection in the mirror. But perhaps that isn’t true because of how awful you are. Perhaps that’s true because the reflection you see looks a little more like Christ than it did yesterday.
And when you are in Christ, that reflection never lies.