ALONG THE WAY · A PERSONAL REFLECTION
Learning to See
On discernment, the image of God, and the possibility of redemption.
Over the years, I have noticed something changing in the way I see people.
I cannot point to the moment it happened.
It came so gradually that I almost missed it.
Or perhaps it is not I who have changed at all.
Perhaps, all along, Christ has been teaching me how to look.
For years I believed discernment meant learning to recognize good people from bad ones.
The categories felt reassuring.
The righteous.
The rebellious.
The trustworthy.
The dangerous.
It is remarkable how peaceful the world appears once every soul has been assigned its proper shelf.
Christ never seemed in such a hurry.
He looked upon fishermen and spoke of foundations.
He looked upon a tax collector and saw a disciple.
He looked upon a persecutor and called him a chosen vessel before the man himself believed it possible.
He never denied what stood before Him.
He simply refused to believe that sin was the deepest truth about a person.
Over time, I have found myself wondering whether I had mistaken the wound for the identity.
The enemy has never created a single thing.
He has only learned to scar what heaven first called good.
He cannot make an image-bearer.
He can only persuade one to forget whose image they bear.
Perhaps that is why the Father speaks so differently than the accuser.
One begins with condemnation.
The other begins with beloved.
One says, “Become worthy.”
The other says, “Come home.”
It has taken me longer than I care to admit to learn the difference between those voices.
A tree does not wake one morning and decide to bear bitter fruit.
Something has happened beneath the soil long before anything appears upon the branches.
The fruit matters.
Of course it does.
Christ Himself spoke often of fruit.
Yet He also spoke of abiding.
Of vines.
Of roots.
Of life flowing unseen before it ever became visible.
Perhaps heaven has always cared first for the hidden places.
The longer I walk with Christ, the more difficult it becomes to hate people.
I still hate what sin destroys.
I hate what pride steals.
I hate the devastation left by deception.
But when I linger before the cross long enough, I begin to wonder what captivity must look like from the heart of the One who came to set captives free.
Our Lord was never indifferent to evil.
Neither was He indifferent to those enslaved by it.
There is a difference.
I suspect I will spend the rest of my life learning it.
The Scriptures speak of pneuma, psyche, and soma—spirit, soul, and body.
For much of my life I hardly noticed the difference.
Whatever I felt became what I believed.
Whatever I feared became what I followed.
Whatever I desired quietly took the reins.
It never occurred to me that my psyche—my mind, my will, and my emotions—was a wonderful servant and a terrible master.
Slowly, almost imperceptibly, I have come to understand the strange freedom of a soul that has learned to rest beneath the gentle leadership of the Spirit.
Not diminished.
Not ignored.
But finally at peace because everything has found its rightful place.
There was a time I believed freedom meant belonging to no one.
Now I know that everyone belongs to someone.
The only question is whose voice has become so familiar that we mistake it for our own.
The Kingdom never asks whether I will surrender.
Only to whom.
Looking back, I realize my prayers no longer sound the way they once did.
I spend far less time asking God to prove me right.
Far more time asking Him to make people free.
Perhaps I have slowly come to realize that justice reaches its fulfillment not when an enemy is destroyed…
…but when an enemy becomes a brother.
Was this not the triumph of the cross?
Not merely that sinners were judged.
But that sons and daughters were welcomed home.
When I look upon the world now, I still see brokenness.
I still see rebellion.
I still see wounds that run so deep they seem to shape an entire life.
But I also find myself searching for something else.
Not what sin has made of a person.
What grace might yet make possible.
I have come to believe that this is how Christ has always looked upon me.
Not as I was.
Not even merely as I am.
But as the Father’s love intends one day to finish.
Perhaps that is what it means to have the mind of Christ.
Not to think more highly of ourselves.
Nor more harshly of others.
But to look long enough that the image of God begins to appear beneath the dust.
And once you have seen even a glimpse of it…
I do not know how to look away.
