INTRO-SPECTION OR “OUT”-SPECTION?
“Therefore, my brothers, be all the more eager to make your calling and election sure…” 2 Peter 1:10.
“Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves.” 2 Corinthians 13:5.
Introspection is something we are often urged from the pulpit to do. From a “western” way of interpreting the Beatitudes, for example, Jesus is seen as encouraging His disciples to keep looking inside, to be aware of how spiritually bankrupt we are, to mourn over our sinfulness and to hunger and thirst for righteousness as though it were a quality we don’t have and is just out of reach.
The verses I have quoted above, however, are not a call to introspection, but a reminder to be sure that we are “in the faith” and faithfully following our calling and election. 1 Corinthians 11:28 calls on those who participate in the Lord’s supper to examine themselves, not morbidly introspectively but to ensure that their attitude to fellow believers is right, recognising and acknowledging the “body of the Lord”, the church, lest they suffer the consequences of mistreating one another which was sickness and death.
As I read through the Old Testament, I often find the writer’s invitation to God to examine his heart. “Search me, O God and know my heart: test me and know my anxious thoughts…” David prayed in Psalm 139:23. God does not want us to spend our lives bewailing our sin and our human frailty. His desire is that we should experience His peace and joy as a witness to the miracle of His life that He has given us.
According to the Hebrew way of interpreting God’s word, the Beatitudes were Jesus’ reminder that true happiness comes from carrying out God’s desire for us to make other people’s lives better. His law, recorded in different places in the Old Testament, centred on worshipping God as their source and being merciful and generous to their fellow Hebrews and to the strangers who lived among them because God had been merciful and generous to them when they were slaves in a foreign land. God’s law was not intended to make them good but to set them free from greed and selfishness so that they could show the surrounding nations what God is like.
In the Sermon on the Mount, which many people claim to be their standard for living, even those who have never believed in Him, Jesus gives us a vivid picture of the character of kingdom citizens and the way they should live as members of the kingdom of God. None of the things He talks about are possible outside of the grace of His Spirit, empowering people to live in a way completely opposite to the ways of the kingdom of darkness.
The problem with introspection is that it focuses on the problem and sucks us into misery and despair. Rather, we change, not by looking within, but by looking at Jesus and doing what He did – loving and serving others.