My Weakness—God’s Mercy to Keep Me From Self-Idolatry

I’m not sure how much women struggle with their sense of worth, or self-image. But I do know that, every now and then, I throw some of these “pity-me” parties. One particular morning, I woke up feeling quiet and overwhelmed. Nothing in particular, yet everything mattered. My thoughts started racing in my head, bringing forth past failures and shameful moments. As if my thoughts alone were not trouble enough, they decided to awake my emotions, too, and slowly I was tensing up inside, like a bottle ready to explode. All my failures and mistakes of days and weeks before as a mother, wife, friend, sister, daughter, took a hold of me, and I was left feeling worthless. And I lost it to tears. Then, because you can’t escape your own kids in your own house, they found me. This “show”-ing of myself must have made, again, quite a strong impression on my girls’ little hearts and mind; their eyes were watching me as amazed and speechless as the last times it happened. My husband, who was just about to head to work, joined the party of eyes watching me. He was just as startled as the girls. “What happened?” Have you ever watched yourself cry? I saw myself in my kids’ eyes. They were afraid. I guess because I tend to look uglier when I cry. I was suddenly spitting up short-breathed-phrases, mudded with tears and winnings: "I do not know who I am anymore…I am not good at being a mom. A wife. A friend. A woman... So and so thinks such and such of me!” You get the picture. 

What just happen to me? Surely, no woman finds pleasure in such low moments of self-denigration. When they happen, they leave me embarrassed, discouraged, and defeated. And for the longest time, I didn’t understand the process of how a Christ- loving woman works herself up to such moments, and how the Bible counteracts these reactions in the most practical way.

1. Why should I focus on Christ instead?

The focus of my spiritual eyes directs the path of my life while living in the midst of daily “entanglements” and “sins.” The direction of our lives follows the focus of our eyes. What we gaze at most often directs our living. It either builds us up or it tears us down. For Christians, “fixing our eyes” on Christ is what defines and sustains our daily “race.” Of course, it is not the act of looking, but rather it is the whom our eyes behold that directs us to victory—Christ, the author and the perfector of faith, the One who lovingly chose the cross for the salvation of our sins.

Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, ²fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfector of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. (Hebrews 1: 1-4)

The focus of my eyes is a statement of who my god is. “Fixing our eyes on Jesus” is not just another way of gaining victory in the spiritual warfare: it is the only way to victory!  Notice how the verse doesn’t say, “focus on Jesus and oneself”, or on Jesus and something else, it is just Jesus. He is to receive all attention, dedication, and worship. He is uniquely the end of and the means to eternal life. The reality is that when Christ is not the sole focus of our eyes, then something or someone else takes His place. We can’t just not behold anything. We are looking for something or someone to gaze at.

The focus of my eyes is warfare for Christians. Our eyes, while they direct our focus, are far too often too fast for our minds. They tend to go at times way ahead of  thoughts.  They never stay put on one thing too long. If we are to finish the race, we must fight to keep our minds and focus on Jesus Christ. The writer of Hebrew pinpointed this very struggle of growing weary and losing heart in this process of keeping our eyes focused on Christ alone. His advice is to redirect our eyes and minds on Christ’s sacrificial love on Golgotha! “Consider” Christ by re-directing the eyes on Him. Over and over again.

³For consider Him who has endured such hostility by sinners against Himself, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.

                       

It is equally important to understand that even as our eyes are predisposed to wonder (James 3:30), sin has an evil advocate who delights in us losing focus on Christ. In “The Screwtape Letters” by C.S.Lewis, Screwtape (the Devil) advices his nephew on how to actually prevent Christians to live God-focused:

Whenever they are attending to the Enemy Himself [God] we are defeated, but there are ways of preventing them from doing so. The simplest is to turn their gaze from Him towards themselves. Keep them watching their own minds and trying to produce feelings there by the action of their own wills…(16).

Focusing on ourselves means not focusing on Christ! And Screwtape makes it sound so “simple” of a means. It is outrageous that this technique though simple, accomplishes so much damage in Christians! How simple it is, indeed, for us to look at ourselves more than to Christ? Can you think of such ways in which you are actually provoked to look at yourself and not at Christ?

2. Whom am I actually watching when I have an adult temper-tantrum?

 Instead of focusing on our Lord and His accomplishments, I lowered my eyes on me. Who I am and what I can do/or don't do became the focus of my mind, heart, and eyes for days. Slowly, my heart, emotions, and thoughts were being deceived into not fighting the good fight with Christ as my focus. I was being baited into lowering my eyes onto myself and not on the promises of the gospel.

With “me” as the center of my gaze, I just enthroned myself my own god. I am more than capable of taking anything good and making it idolatrous. John Calvin says that “every one of us is, even from his mother’s womb, a master craftsman of idols.” I produce idols out of many desires and things, but I am certain that beyond all, I am my worse idol. And though seldom at times, this truth surfaces when I explode in front of my family and friends. In times like these I am made aware of how much more of a lover of myself I am than of God. I am a faithful lover of myself when I build myself up in front of family and friends, but just as equally, when I am disgruntled with my image and how others view me, including how I view myself. I wanted too much of myself and my own image. Author Ken Sande reiterates the gospel truth that though idols can be born from good desires as well as wicked desires, “it is not often what we want that is the problem, but that we want it too much” (The Peacemaker, 104).

I want too much to impress my family and friends, and masquerade the weaknesses and faults I have. When I fail, which I do regularly, my image becomes weaker and weaker.  And the more I fail, the more I seem to want to rise up. And the process distorts my desires (“I want people I love to think good of me”) and makes them idolatrous (“I’m miserable when the people I love do not think very good of me” or” I’m miserable when I am not perfect”). Someone said that “trials do not cause us to be what we have not been; rather, they reveal what we have been all along. The harvest the trial produces is the result of the roots already in our hearts” (Lane &Tripp). My adult temper-tantrum was not an isolated, out of the blue burst of emotions. When it happened, it revealed what was already happening in my heart—the desire to build myself up, while losing sight of Christ!

As counter-cultural as it is, living as a Christian woman nowadays actively involves decreasing in self-value, and being of a lesser importance. What I have been chasing all along—that became evident in my self-opinion and expectations—is anti-scriptural. At the Cross, I come not with my accolades, strengths, and successes in marriage, parenting and friendships, but with weakness. It is the humbling, self-less, Christ-exalting quality of weakness. It is the quality that the world despises and that we, women, tend to want to cover. And yet, in my weakness—the quality I seem to dislike the most in myself, the one that I want to replace with my own version of strength—Christ ‘s power is strongest (2 Corinthians 12:19). Biblical weakness is not lack of strength, sickness or disease. Rather it is the powerful, active, mature process of daily decreasing our self- worth and image by allowing God’s importance to increase instead! “He must become greater and I must become less,” John summarizes it for us (John 3:30).

Therefore, I praise God for the weaknesses He allows in my life. Not only do they constantly redirect my focus on Him, but they are also God’s mercy to prevent me from becoming idolatrous. I join Paul in his declaration of boasting all the more gladly about my weaknesses, “so that Christ's power may rest on me” (2 Corinthians 12:9).