I’ve always been freakish about my eyes. If anything or anyone gets close to them, I flinch, duck, or awkwardly step away. I can’t wear contacts. I can’t even put eye drops directly into my eyes. Instead, I have to put the drops on my eyelids and blink them in. Pretty pathetic, I know. If my friends want to gross me out, all they have to do is reach up and touch their eyes and I’m done. Let’s just say Lasik surgery isn’t in my future.
One of the most traumatizing movies I’ve ever seen is Minority Report, in which people in the future are subjected to iris scans wherever they go. Tom Cruise's character even secretly gets his eyes replaced by a surgeon in order to avoid detection. I’ll never forget watching that scene in the theater, one eye closed and the other barely open, begging director Steven Spielberg to stop.
In a way, we also need a new set of eyes so we can see differently. Too many of us live with a distorted perspective of God. We see God as an all-powerful police officer aiming his speed gun at us. We believe that God loves; we just aren't convinced at the core of our being that he loves us. We think he’s good, but we’re acutely aware that we aren’t. No matter how many messages we hear about grace, we wonder if we are forgiven. And we either jump on the performance treadmill to try and earn God’s love, or we wallow in guilt and condemnation. Perhaps we run from the God thing altogether.
This distorted perspective also affects how we see ourselves. We look in the mirror, and instead of seeing one loved and forgiven by God, created in his image, empowered to influence the world for him, we see something else. We see images from the past. Maybe it’s the parent who was always critical of us, the schoolyard bully who picked on us, or the boss who laid us off. We play the destructive video clip over and over in our minds and come to the same conclusion: I’m a failure … fat … insignificant … ugly … worthless … dumb … hopeless … unworthy … unloved … a nobody.
However, God has a different view of us. Ephesians 2:10 says, “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” We are not mass-produced by an uncaring God. None of us are “irregulars” who can’t make the cut. We’re individually, intentionally created by a master craftsman, and He has a purpose for each one of us.
Embracing God’s perspective on you is so important, because it allows you to become the person God created you to be. You may still feel like a mess. (Just as I do at times.) But now you’ll be God’s mess. And he has wonderful things in store for you.
