One tragic and paradoxical consequence of the Fall is this: we have become bent inward, seeing the whole world only with reference to our own wills and desires and self-interest, but at the same time we have lost the ability to see ourselves – and our wants and desires and self-interest – with true objectivity. We are consumed with thinking about ourselves yet at the same time we are woefully self-unaware.
These claims, as significant as they are, can hardly be regarded as controversial, and are easily illustrated, both from our own particular cultural/historical moment and from the pages of Scripture. Cain was so bent inward that after his offering was rejected by God, he murdered his brother. He radically misunderstood both himself and his own self-interest, cared nothing for his brother’s interest, and committed a heinous crime against him. Saul, after he was rejected as king, would have murdered David if he had been able to do so. He only deepened his guilt and misery as he pursued David day after day. David himself, after seeing Bathsheba, was so overtaken by his desire to have her that he was willing to murder her husband Uriah. But this same David was so lacking in self-understanding that when the prophet Nathan came to him with the story of the rich man who slaughtered the poor man’s ewe lamb for a meal, he was furious with the rich man, not understanding that he himself was that man.
Jesus uses an absurdity to expose precisely this paradox in the Sermon on the Mount when he says: “Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is a log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.” (Matt. 7:3-5) The man with the log in his eye is entirely blind – blind to himself, blind to God and blind to the world. He is in no condition to serve his brother by removing the speck from his brother’s eye. Yet he thinks so highly of himself that he believes he can both see and remove that speck.
Our inward bend always results in a lack of proper concern for others as well as a misguided concern for ourselves. In this connection, even when we act in apparent concern for others, we do it still trying to bend the arc of concern back toward ourselves, “serving” them for what we believe we might gain. We want to be well thought of. We want to be thanked. We want to manipulate for position. We want a myriad of other things – for ourselves. Worst of all, we effectively try to remove God from his throne as we attempt to make ourselves the little lords of our own lives. Out of this inward bend comes all our boasting, all our greed, all our fear, all our insecurity. Although we may sometimes produce the appearance of doing good as we secretly or subconsciously pursue our supposed self-interest, the actual result in the real world and in our own lives is all manner of evil and misery.
This situation is, without doubt, rather bleak. But a primary thing that God is doing for Christians in our sanctification is to heal us of this inward bend that so terribly distorts our understanding of ourselves, of God, and of the world. Sanctification inexorably moves us away from making everything self-referential, away from seeing ourselves as the center, and toward rightly seeing God as the center; it teaches us that we can only see things truly when we see them not in reference to ourselves, but in reference to God. Only as we are progressively healed in this way can we actually begin to do good in the world. And as we are healed, the effects of the Fall begin to be reversed in our lives. We begin really to know ourselves as we first look upward to God – and then outward in love to the world.