Mirrors

"Mirrors"
Luke 19:1-10

One of the things I got sick of, reading about the personalities involved in the budget talks and government shut down that recently ended was what I’d call “image control.”  The President, representatives, and senators most in the forefront of the debates seemed more concerned about their image than the substance of what they were debating about--particularly the economic health of our nation.  The whole thing got to be more about personality conflicts, and who would be able to “save face” than about what was going to be best for our country.  Image has become more important than integrity; appearances more important than depth of character, innuendo more important than truth.

We seem to be preoccupied with appearances.  What others think about us, based on all kinds of externals, seems to have more sway in our lives as to the kinds of people we want others to see--rather than our own sense of personal integrity.  We fashion ourselves more by the reflections we see in other’s eyes and faces, and how they are reacting to us than anything else.  We would like to think it isn’t so, but it is.  We have heard, and probably believe in our heads, that our sense of self-esteem should come from within, rather than from what others reflect back at us.  But we give our sense of self-esteem over to others more often than not.

In the British Journal of Plastic Surgery there was an article titled, “The Quasimodo Complex.”  In the article, two physicians reported on their study of 11,000 prison inmates.  All of the inmates were doing time for violent crimes.  The doctors doing the study compared these inmates to the general population in one particular category.  In the general population, 20% of all people may be said to have surgically correctable facial deformities, such as protruding ears, misshapen noses, receding chins, scars, birthmarks, or eye deformities.  But the physicians research revealed that among the prison population a full 60% showed such characteristics.

The authors of the study, who named the phenomenon after Quasimodo, Victor Hugo’s “Hunchback of Notre Dame,” ended their article with some disturbing questions.  Had these criminals encountered hostility and rejection from classmates throughout school years because of not being “facially normal?”  Could the cruel mocking of other kids have pushed them toward a state of emotional disturbance that ultimately led to criminal acts?  Certainly we have seen too much in the news lately about school children who are taking their own lives because they were being bullied severely for being different in one way or another.  Bullying is another reflection back at us, as to what others think of us.  If the reason kids or adults are being bullied becomes a determining factor upon which one bases personal self-esteem, it’s not too much of a leap to understand why kids are taking the lives of their classmates as well as their own.  Or are possibly headed toward a life of violent crime.

What I’m struggling to put together here is the connection between image and self-esteem.  The questions I ponder, when I read through articles like that one, are:  How is self-image and self-esteem really created?  If we are so concerned with what other people think about us, and fashion ourselves and our self-worth according to those concerns, then whose image is it really?  Is “self-image” a contradiction in terms?  And likewise, would the term “self-esteem” be a similar misnomer?  Is image and esteem really generated by the self, or is it formed out of the reflections we see of ourselves from others?

I think we have been fooled into thinking that what it means to have self-esteem is to be able to accept yourself, feel a sense of self-worth despite all the external messages.  Isn’t it hard to believe in yourself, when it feels like no one believes in you?  Think about it, really.  How good can you feel about yourself when all else about you is reflecting back the opposite?  How can you feel like you have been molded into the very image of God out of the dust of the earth, when everyone else just thinks you’re a clod?

We may not be the islands of self-contained esteem, no matter how much we think we are or can be.  We can try to be like Linus, when he says to Charlie Brown, “I think the world is so much better today than it was five years ago.”

Charlie Brown replies, “No!  How can you say that?  The world’s going to the dogs.  How can you say it’s a better place today than it was five years ago?”

To which Linus says, “Of course the world’s a better place than it was five years ago.  I’m in it now!”

What happens, though, when it seems like all the messages you receive are saying, “The world (whatever that word describes for you) would be a better place without you”?  Our town.  Our school.  Our church.  Those kinds of messages are devastating to any semblance of self-esteem.  I feel for you, if any of you have been on the receiving end of such messages.  It feels like no matter how you try to pump yourself up with self-esteeming, pat-yourself-on-the-back messages, they are never quite powerful enough to counteract the demeaning and belittling ones that you receive from others.

The sad truth is, according to the biblical story of creation, we kind of got ourselves into this fix.  God created one human being and put that human being in direct relationship with the physical creation:  plants, trees, water, sky, planets.  Then God created all animal and sea life, and put that singular human being in relation to all those critters.  Our survival and depth of relationship was intertwined with all theirs.

But, that one single human being got lonely.  That human being decided being in relationship with the physical world and all its teeming life was not enough.  Being with another human would be great.  See, what it doesn’t say in that Genesis account is that God then asked that first human being, “Are you sure you want that to happen?  It could get messy?  Why not just enjoy the animals, pick some fruit and be happy?”  But the first human being would not be convinced.  Instead the first human decided that interdependence with another human would be much better than being alone and independent.  Up to that point, self-esteem, self-awareness, and self-image was truly that.  Once the next human being was created, at the first human’s insistence, all that self stuff went out the window.

With the second, and the third, and so on, human being, self-esteem is not self-created anymore.  It is interdependently bestowed.  It is molded and adapted by us in the impressions that we see reflected back at us by others.  God must have seen it coming.  The first human had no idea what had happened and how much had suddenly changed by adding just one more human to the mix.  And a female at that!  (Just kidding!)

Now everything has shifted.  We have more power to create a sense of esteem in others, than they do just for themselves.  It is in the wielding of that power that people are made or destroyed, become a blessing or a curse.  It is in our ability and willingness to love or not to love, to endow others with esteem or not.  And in the final analysis, that mutual ability does more to build a person up, to enhance not just image but deeper things like character, integrity, and the ability to love in return.

That’s one of the reasons I really like this story of Zacchaeus.  We can only guess at what his sense of self, his self-image, his self-esteem might have been.  We do know how little he was esteemed by his neighbors:  zilch.  In fact, he was despised.  He lived amongst people who overlooked him literally (because of his shortness), and personally because of who he was and what his occupation was.

He was a tax collector.  He was the chief tax collector in his area.  Which, like I said in last weeks message, meant he was a Jew who was hired by the occupation Roman government to collect the Roman taxes from his own people.  Zacchaeus was the IRS man everyone loved to hate in Jericho.  He organized the collection of taxes and was allowed by Roman law to tack on a collectors fee as high as he wished.  Basically he was committing robbery legally.  Not much different from today.  Politicians tax us and then set their own salaries.  Same thing Zacchaeus was doing back then.

How does a person like Zacchaeus sustain any sense of esteem when even though he may be his own worst enemy, no one else would give him the time of day?  The only attention he got from anyone was negative.  The only relationships he had were based on contempt and hatred.

Self-esteem is like a solar collector.  When well-wishing and appreciation and love are shining like the sun, we collect that energy and use it to our self-empowerment.  But when none of that shines, as none of it shined for Zacchaeus, there is no empowerment for living.  Such lack of energy only creates a small, miserly, and bitter person.  A terrible cycle is started.  No one wants to show appreciation to the Zacchaeus’.  Which causes them to lash back.  Which makes others withdraw all the more.  Which causes the Zacchaeus’ to be more bitter.  And on and on it goes.  How will the cycle be broken?

Jesus was riding through town.  Zacchaeus was curious.  Zacchaeus wanted to see, but the people who lined up along the parade route kept elbowing him back, pushing him away.  All along the road, they just kept shoving him back.  Maybe more to get away from the crowd than to be able to see Jesus, Zacchaeus climbed a tree.  Nobody could shove him from up there.

Jesus came along that way and stopped under Zacchaeus’ tree, looked up, and invited himself over to Zacchaeus’ for dinner.  How unusual.  Nobody ever wanted to come to his house.  Nobody ever talked in such pleasant tones to Zacchaeus.  Nobody smiled at Zacchaeus.  Nobody paid any public or private attention to Zacchaeus.  No one ever shined so brightly for Zacchaeus’ esteem collectors to be so charged.  Jesus mirrored something back at Zacchaeus that he’d never seen before.  Esteem.  Pure, bright, unfiltered esteem.

Jesus wasn’t validating Zacchaeus’ lifestyle.  He wasn’t telling Zacchaeus that just because he wanted to come over for a meal that Zacchaeus was a good man.  Jesus wasn’t telling Zacchaeus that he was a model citizen, and one of the communities greatest benefactors.  But Jesus was validating Zacchaeus as a person, loved by God.  He was telling Zacchaeus that he wanted to come over for a meal because Zacchaeus was a man with whom God was concerned.  Jesus was telling Zacchaeus that he had the potential to be a man of faith, hospitality and love.  He had it in him to be one of Jericho’s greatest benefactors.  Jesus mirrored all that to Zacchaeus.

Zacchaeus responded to what he saw in Jesus’ mirror.  He never responded, in a positive way, to what he saw in other’s mirrors.  But in Jesus, he saw a reflection that had so much drawing power that he wanted it to be true.  That’s what he wanted for himself.  Zacchaeus turned his life around because of what he saw.  His life of taking changed to a life of giving;  his greed was transformed into hospitality and philanthropy.

I came across a book titled, In His Image, by Dr. Paul Brand and Philip Yancey.  In one of the early chapters, Dr. Brand told of his experience with fighter pilots in England during WWII.  The RAF pilots who flew the agile but deadly Hurricane airplanes were largely responsible for fighting back Hitler’s bombings of London.

But the Hurricane airplane had a design flaw.  Fuel lines to the front mounted engine snaked alongside the cockpit.  If the fuel lines took a direct hit, the cockpit would erupt in an inferno of flames.  The pilot could eject, but in the one or two seconds it took him to find the lever, heat would often melt off every feature of his face.

Dr. Brand would do reconstructive surgery on these pilots during the war.  Most of the procedures he used were invented along the way.  One such pilot was named Peter.  After numerous surgical procedures, he had a face but it looked nothing like his enlistment pictures.  Peter encountered painful rejection.  Many adults quickly looked away when he approached.  Children, cruel in their honesty, made faces, laughed, and made fun of him.

Peter wanted to cry out, “Inside I am the same person you knew before!  Don’t you recognize me?  Don’t you realize I got these burns protecting you?”  Instead he learned to turn towards his wife.  “She became my mirror,” he said in appreciation and love.  “She gave me a different image of myself.”

What a great statement.  Certainly that is what Zacchaeus is saying when he promises to repay those he cheated and give half of his wealth to the poor.  Jesus gave him a new and different image of himself.  Jesus became his mirror, and the image in the mirror challenged him to become what he saw reflected there.

Esteem is something given to us by others, mirrored to us by others, reflected back to us, shined at us by others.  If you are feeling despised, abused, abandoned and unloved, there are often no good words you can say to yourself that will make you feel better about yourself.  Whether we admit it or not, those good words have to come from outside us.  And also, we have to be those mirrors for others, who desperately need to see something good and positive reflected back from us, to them.  Like Jesus did for Zacchaeus, esteem is something we do for each other, that our lives depend on from others.