When I Look at You…

Steven Bartlett has sat across from some of the most successful people alive — billionaires, world-class athletes, people who have what the rest of us are chasing. Near the end of a long conversation with the Oxford mathematician Dr. John Lennox, he stopped and said the most convincing thing Lennox had shown him wasn't an argument or a book. It was a peace. A settledness Bartlett said he almost never sees in anyone — except, he'd noticed, in Christians.

Most people would sit in a compliment like that. Lennox didn't. Instead of keeping the focus on himself, he turned it outward, back across the table:

"When I look at you, I see someone who's of infinite value, made in the image of God. So what I say to you or think about you is hugely important to me. And I wish you well."

This brought tears to my eyes. Because I think this question is so important: What do you see when you look at me? What do I see when I look at you?

In South Africa, they greet each other with a single word — sawubona. It means "I see you." And it means more — I see your worth, your dignity, your life. As John Mark Comer says, "To me, to be seen is to feel loved." There is a deep connection between seeing someone and loving them.

The self we show

Most of us don't lead with the true thing.

When you walk into a room, you present your best self — or a self you wish you were, or the one you think the other person wants to see. This is the outer self. At best it's authentic but incomplete, still hiding things. At worst it's an imposter — a false self, built out of masks and personas and ego.

The self we hide

Beneath it are the exiled parts of you.

The unacceptable emotions — anger, worry, sadness. The sins you don't want anyone to know. The heart wounds you picked up along the way, where the marks of the nails are still there on your soul. The empty, hollow, undeveloped places you were never able to face, because they felt too unacceptable to touch.

So when someone looks at you, they see the mask. But is it the truest thing about you?

What's most true

Years ago, Deb Hirsch — an author and speaker — said something at a conference that changed the way I see people. It still does.

She was in a room full of pastors and Christians, and she asked them what was most true about people. When you look at someone, what do you actually see? Almost unanimously, they said the same thing: sinners. People who have fallen short.

It disturbed her deeply. She knew that what you see when you look at another person is one of the most important parts of any relationship. So she began to teach a simple order: Genesis 1 and 2 came before Genesis 3.

Genesis 3 is true. It's where sin enters and corrupts all of us. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). That is true of you and true of me.

But is it the most true thing about you — or about the people you'll see today? Is it what a father sees when he first looks at his newborn? What a mother sees when her child has just fallen? What a lover thinks, looking into the eyes of the one they love?

There's something deeper. Something that was there before the failure.

Before there was sin, there was the image of God. He made you and called you very good. The first thing that was ever true about you — and about every person you meet — is that an Artist fearfully and wonderfully made you in His image. His fingerprints are on you; you are His workmanship (Ephesians 2:10). This is the most true thing about you.

Then the image got distorted — bent like a reflection in a funhouse mirror — by sin and the brokenness of the world. And most of us went to work covering it with something more acceptable.

Can you see it?

But can you see it?

Can you see who God made you to be — His beloved, made on purpose, with a purpose? Can you see past the outer layer, past the hidden part, down to that first truth?

I think this is why Lennox's simple words moved me to tears: When I look at you, I see someone who's of infinite value, made in the image of God.

And this is the gospel: God sees it too. He asks you to lay down the false self and receive forgiveness and grace for the self that is genuinely sinful and broken — so you can finally live as your unveiled self, in the presence of God and others.

Sit with this:

• Think of someone you've quietly filed under their worst moment. What changes if you look for the image of God in them first?

• Where are you most afraid to be seen — and what might it be like to be known there, and loved anyway?

If you want a quiet, structured way to let God reach the parts under the mask, start here: Steps to Listening Prayer.

If something here stirred — if you're tired of being seen as your worst moments, or you can't seem to see yourself the way God does — you don't have to work it out alone. Growth Counseling offers faith-integrated, clinically grounded therapy for people across Pennsylvania. Reaching out is hard; the first step is small. Book a free 15-minute consultation.