Looking Through the Wrong Lens

Posted on March 29, 2019 Updated on March 24, 2023

By Linda Rex

PREPARATION FOR EASTER OR LENT—In our relationships with one another, we can find ourselves at odds with someone we used to be close to. Over time, through various situations and conversations, we become more and more convinced that they are opposed to us or have negative feelings toward us, or that our relationship is broken and unrepairable. We begin to believe things about them that may or may not be true.

How we interact with one another as human beings can be largely based upon how we see ourselves and the world we live in. If we are looking through the lens of our pain and our brokenness, we are going to see ourselves and others, as well as God, as “in a mirror dimly” (1 Cor. 13:12 NASB). This lens will cause us to believe lies about them, us, and even God which will create disorder, division, and distrust. These things are destructive to relationships.

The way we were raised in our family of origin impacts the way we do relationship in profound ways. What we believe about people, and about God, is often informed by our experience with the significant people in our lives as we were growing up. How we respond to certain situations can be automatic, based on unhealthy ways of relating we learned at the feet of our broken and hurting parents and grandparents. Add in factors such as post-traumatic stress disorder or other mental/emotional challenges and we find ourselves really struggling in our relationships.

The culture in which we live is also full of lies regarding relationships. We are taught by all the media we watch and listen to that romantic/sexual love is the greatest good. Advertisements tell us that if we would only purchase and use this or that product, we would have an amazing love life and would experience the ultimate bliss. Movies and stories tell us that we can have a love-filled, pleasure-oriented life, with ourselves and other people at the center, and our experience of love will always be good—and when it’s not we can and should move on.

From the time of Adam and Eve, we as human beings have sought to find such a life through the means of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. We base our concept of life and of love upon our feelings, our passions, and our desires. We believe if we do or say the right things, we will produce a good relationship with God and each other. It is a human-based, human-centered existence which in the end, we find, results in death—the death of relationships, dreams, and hopes, and sometimes even our physical death.

Our true life, though, is in God himself and in his love for us. As the psalmist says, “Because Your lovingkindness is better than life, / My lips will praise You” (Psa. 63:3 NASB). Jesus says he is our life, the way of our being, the truth of our existence (John 10:25-26). Real life comes from giving our life away as Jesus did—from pouring ourselves and God’s love into another and receiving that love back. This love we share in is humble, sacrificial and willing to serve. This type of love is counter-cultural and only comes about as we turn to Christ and receive it from Abba in the Spirit.

One of the most difficult things I have had to face recently is the reality that in a certain significant broken relationship we were duped, we were deceived. We had based our decisions about our relationship upon a false paradigm. The lenses we were looking through were the lenses of our pain and brokenness, our weakness, fears, and insecurities. The people in our lives were unable to help us see the truth or to deal with the difficulties we were facing because they too were working out of a false paradigm.

The lenses we were looking through were clouded and blurred. We were not seeing correctly because we were not using the glasses of God’s unconditional love and acceptance. We could not see the truth of our relationship because we believed things about ourselves and about one another which were (as we see them now) lies. We based our decisions upon partial information and unwise counsel, as well as our own pain, grief, and fear.

Today I feel a deep sense of humility and also of sorrow as I look at these things with clearer, more honest eyes. What seemed so real to me then I have found was a lie perpetrated by the evil one, the one who seeks to kill, steal, and destroy, to divide and conquer (which unfortunately he succeeded in doing). Sure, there may have been some basis in reality: there were things being done and said which were not appropriate in any relationship. But, the upshot of it all is, if we both had understood and embraced the magnitude of God’s grace and had been living in the truth of it, these difficult struggles would have been handled by both of us in entirely different ways.

I grieve most of all for the years of joy which are now lost, and most especially for the dear ones who were hurt by us. This is the human journey—we must ever live in humility and dependence upon God’s grace. And I realize now that I can never depend upon my own judgment, for I can easily be looking at things through the wrong lens.

Turn to Jesus, I remind myself. He is the lens through which we need to see all of life, even our past failures to love. The reality is that we are not going to get it right. We must trust that he will redeem, heal, and restore all that we have lost.

The prodigal son wasted his inheritance on self-indulgent decadent living. We don’t know what happened after he returned home and the celebration occurred. Did he regret all the wasted years and his lost inheritance? And what about the older son? Did he ever get beyond trying to win his father’s love by doing the right thing and being good? (Luke 15:1–3, 11b–32)

The common factor in both these people’s lives and in our lives is Jesus, the One who went into the far country of evil, sin, and death and brought us home to the Father. He teaches us of the Father’s heart of love—that he is pacing the porch and anxiously looking down the road, longing to see our form rise above the road in the distance, so he can run to meet us and welcome us home.

Whatever lens we may have looked through in the past we need to replace with the lens Jesus has given us in his life, death, resurrection and ascension. Jesus has replaced our clouded, blurry lenses with the clear lens of Abba’s love and grace. We grow in our deep knowing of God and that informs and heals our deep knowing of one another. We open ourselves up to the transforming, healing power of the Holy Spirit, grow in Christlikeness, and find healing in all our relationships, including those we discarded as spent and empty.

There is real life in Jesus—drink it in, soak it up, wallow around in it. Allow Christ’s life in the Spirit to penetrate every part of your existence. You will never be the same again.

Dear Abba, thank you for loving us in so many ways. Your love and grace are amazing, and we are such need of them. Wash us again in the pure, light-filled water of your Spirit of life. Let Jesus fill us, renew us, and transform us. Remove our blurred, broken lenses and replace them with your eyes of love and grace. May we, from this day forward, see things as you see them and live and walk in truth, through Jesus our Lord. Amen.

“Therefore from now on we recognize no one according to the flesh; even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him in this way no longer. Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.” 2 Corinthians 5:16–17 NASB