Life's Final Exam

Socrates famously said that “The unexamined life is not worth living.” I don’t know about you, but self-examination is difficult for me and often painful. Without being maudlin or, hopefully, self-centered, when I examine life, it is so much easier to point my finger at others and act the know-it-all critic of what I see “out there.”

Some of my friends seem to be walking a roof ledge of despair. Too many people are examining their lives and coming dreadfully close to a personal death wish. They’ve weighed their own existence and found it wanting. As I reflect on my own, I find an optimism and sense of purpose that makes their despair seem all the more tragic.

Coming face to face with my sins and foibles and weaknesses and follies, I sometimes stand astonished that a good God would permit such a poor, vile creature like me to go on living, enjoying His blessings, taking up room in His creation. My lustful thoughts, my thoughtless words and mannerisms, my indulgent life-style, my wastefulness and laziness, my ignorance and apathy...my carefully guarded secrets that, if known, would cause even my closest loved ones to despise and pity me...these dark blots on my character haunt me and cause me to tremble.

But.

The supreme irony of my life is that Someone infinitely more just and fair and knowledgeable than I has examined my life, has passed sentence on me, and has transferred all the guilt of all my crimes onto the record of His only begotten Son. Jesus paid the penalty for each and every sin when He suffered on the cross two thousand years ago!

We should examine ourselves. We need to be honest and thorough. We are called to see ourselves the way we truly are. Those who claim they look back on their lives with “no regrets” are, in my opinion, either lying or deluded. I may not have been abused physically as so many have, but I have suffered abuse on an emotional level, and I confess that I’ve submitted others to various kinds of abuse in my thoughts and with my words. None of us has treated God or others with the selfless love our supreme Lover and Lawgiver demands from us.

When I reach my most honest level of self-examination, I must admit that I’m not qualified to pass final judgment, even on myself. Another Voice gives me daily assurance that I am not my own. I belong to the One whom I have believed. Jesus Christ the God-man, who now sits on the throne of Heaven, has all authority to command all things and all people, including me.

And because I’m His, ruled by Christ, taught by Him, examined by Him, rebuked and corrected by Him, directed and empowered by Him, given life and health and purpose by Him, promised eternal forgiveness and paradise by Him...

Because of those realities, self-examination can only send me to my knees in supplication, confession, adoration and praise. Never to despair.

(518 words)