A Matter of Perspective

I was walking down the street when suddenly it began to rain. A few drops of water splashed onto my glasses, so I took them off, and suddenly the street, which I had seen so far below my feet, drew closer to me.

I take off my glasses so rarely, generally only to bathe and sleep, that I have lost any true sense of my height and think of myself as tall. But at that moment, when I took off my glasses, I realized just how short I am. This does not mean that there are no shorter people—no; if I compare myself with them, I always come out ahead. But if I compare myself, for example, with a professional basketball player—whew! There is no getting around it; once again I say, “How short I am!”

In our daily walk, we make thousands of comparisons between ourselves and the people around us, between their attitudes and ours, between their qualities and ours. I am sure that in most cases we come out ahead. I always remember how, when my son was in pre-university school and failed an exam, he would say to me, “But Mommy, almost everyone failed.” I would answer him, “That ‘almost everyone’ tells me that some passed; the question is, why aren’t you in that group?” That is how we are: we always win, because we compare ourselves with those who have as many faults as we do, or even more.

And what about Holiness? There we really are kings! Of course, we are looking at the thief, the murderer, the alcoholic, the drug addict, the adulterer—at those who do not know Christ! But what would happen if you compared yourself with Him?

Now your perspective is different: you are at the foot of the cross, you lift your eyes, and His height is so great that you lose sight of it among the clouds of heaven. What happened to you? What standards are you going to compare now? What became of your pride? You can no longer hold your head high and say, “I am better!” You who judged those around you, what are you going to say before the magnificence of your God?

Do you see? It is a problem of perspective: if you compare yourself with me, you win; if you compare yourself with Him, you are nothing. And as long as you are in this body of death, as Paul said, “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” (Rom 7:24). That is how it will be: you will stumble a thousand times and recognize that you judge your brother, and we will do it again and again “until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to the perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Eph 4:13).