FIT TO BE SEEN

Here's something I wrote back in 2006, unedited:

 "I have no pleasure in seeing my friends, unless I can believe myself fit to be seen." - Mr. Frank Churchill (in Emma, by Jane Austen)

This line occurs in a conversation between Emma Woodhouse and Mr. Frank Churchill, when the said characters are engaging in a conversation about how Mr. Churchill spent an entire day away in order to get his hair cut.

I think that there is some deeper significance in this one line that I can overanalyze and share with you all.

"Without question, one of the most frustrating things about the Christian life is the apparent contradiction between what God reckons us to be and what we, by experience, know ourselves to be." - Robin Boisvert

That summarizes what is likely every Christian's most arduous and tortuous battle.  We know what God deems us to be, and still it is impossible to ignore what we know we are by the acts we carry out, the thoughts we conceive, and the words we utter.  Our lowly self-esteem trumps our Lord's undeserving favorable gaze of affection towards us.

But, there are those shining moments of spurious glory where our actions, thoughts, and words somehow find themselves in line with the status we have with our Lord.  These are those seasons where we think we can finally deem ourselves to be deserving of God's love and grace, where we believe ourselves "fit to be seen."

And if we are not in one of these seasons?  Well, then all pleasure of "seeing" God, of communing with Him, of praying with Him, of serving Him, is gone.

The painful irony and quandary is, to put it gently, irreverent to God.

We place the sight we see in the mirror above His perspective that we read about in the Scriptures.

If we were to take Mr. Frank Churchill's quote and tweak it to fit this example, it would sound something like this:

"I have no pleasure in seeing my God, unless I can believe myself fit to be seen."

or, more specifically...

"I have no pleasure in conversing with, serving, or loving my God unless I can believe myself fit to converse with, serve, or love Him."

The word in this line that carries the most weight is "pleasure."  It is not that we just feel unworthy, but that that feeling takes away the "pleasure" in our relationship with God.  Furthermore, it is our wayward belief that determines the pleasure (or lack of) we find in our relationship with God.

A paradigm shift is in order.