Search my Heart

A reflection for Ash Wednesday

Alexander Whyte was one of the best Scottish preachers of the early 20th century.  One day an elder in Whyte’s church reported to him that an American evangelist had held a meeting in another part of the town and had told the crowd that one of Whyte’s closest friends was not a Christian.

Hearing this news, Whyte fairly exploded and stomped about his study as he contemplated the slander of his friend.  When he had calmed down, the elder said, “I’m afraid there is more, Dr Whyte.  The American preacher also told the people that YOU are not a Christian.”

Perhaps the elder expected Whyte’s reaction to be even worse.  But it was completely different.  Whyte retreated to his desk and covered his face in his hands.  Then, looking up at his elder, he said, “Leave me, my friend.  I must examine my heart.”

What Alexander Whyte did that day is a practice that is spoken of much in the Bible, but is practiced very little by Christians today – it is the discipline of self-examination.

Today is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent and traditionally it is a time when we reflect about our lives and our relationship with God.  But very often, our activities in Lent tend to focus more on outward actions, like giving up chocolate, than inward examination.  So this is a short blog about this topic which I hope will help us understand it better and practice it in our lives and by so doing, experience spiritual growth.

So, what do we mean by self-examination?  The end of Psalm 139 explains it very well:

“Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts.  See if there is any offensive way in me and lead me in the way everlasting.”

The practice of self-examination has two aspects to it, like two sides of the same door.  During Lent, we tend to focus mostly on one aspect – the examination of our conscience, in other words reflecting on areas of our lives which need God’s purifying, cleansing or healing.  Although this blog will focus mainly on this first aspect of self-examination, I will be mentioning the second aspect later on because one aspect cannot ultimately be separated from the other.  The second aspect is reflecting on how we have experienced God’s presence and help in our lives.

But let’s return to the examination of our consciences.  Why should we practice this activity?  Doesn’t it sound a bit like pious navel gazing?  I want to give three reasons why we should engage with this activity.

First of all, we need to examine our consciences because of the human ability to deceive ourselves.

1 John 1.8:

“If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.”

Human beings are terribly good at avoiding acknowledgement of wrongdoing.  And we can also be rather clever at making our own choices about what is right or wrong.

Jewish Scholar Abraham Herschel writes:

“The shallowness of our moral comprehension, the incapacity to sense the depth of misery caused by our own failures, is a simple fact of fallen humanity which no explanation can cover up.”

Secondly, we need to practice self-examination because we must overcome pride.  None of us like to admit we are proud, but I see it very easily in myself.  In the ancient Collect prayer for Ash Wednesday, we say to God that we “worthily lament our sins and acknowledge our wretchedness”.  When I read those very direct words, the first thing that pops into my head is, “Surely I’m not that bad?”  I don’t like to describe myself as wretched.  It’s not that I think I’m perfect, but I don’t like to think of myself as being as bad as wretched.  Surely it’s only others who are like that? 

What I fail to see is that before a God who is utterly holy, anything less holy can only be wretched by comparison.  I wonder if you see something of me in you as well.

Part of our avoidance of this pride issue is that we don’t want to fall into an old-fashioned legalistic way of thinking where we are forced to minutely inspect our lives for tiny specs of sin.  This was something that happened quite a bit in the Victorian era.  Queen Victoria herself, when she was growing up as a princess in the Royal household, had to keep what was called her Behaviour Book.  In it she had to record daily how she spent her time and particularly any failings of the day.  On the 21st August 1832, when she was 13, there is an entry in her book, which is underlined several times, an entry where she really chastises herself.  The entry reads, “Today, very, very, very, terribly naughty!”

Self-examination should not be a legalistic activity, but actually a very liberating one, because thirdly it promotes spiritual growth.  Sin is something which affects our relationship with God.  One piece of evidence that we are growing spiritually is that we know that the battle against sin is being won in our lives, bit by bit.  No, we will never be perfect in this world.  But if there is never any sense that the influence of sin in our lives is decreasing, we must ask ourselves whether God’s transforming work is welcome in our lives.

So, there are three reasons for examining our consciences.  Now how do we actually practice this?

The key is to regularly find a bit of space and time to think about your life. One of the ancient forms of prayer which has come down to us from the monastic tradition is called Compline.  This word comes from the Latin for the word, “completion”.  It is a short form of prayer used at the end of each day before retiring to bed.  And part of that prayer time is space to think back over the day, to recall and give thanks for the times when we knew God’s blessings and also reflect on things we experienced where we came face to face with our own failings and ask for God’s forgiveness.

So, the end of each day can be a good time to do this activity.  There is a clear sense in which this brings completion to each day.

But we also need to be open to learning about ourselves as things happen to us.  The story I told at the start is a good example of this.  The comments of the American preacher made Alexander Whyte decide he needed then and there to consider where he stood before God. 

So, we can learn to allow all the circumstances of our lives to be places where we may grow in self-knowledge.  For instance, if an occasion has made us angry, we can consider afterwards the reasons for that anger.  Was it justified, for instance, was it an anger at an injustice being perpetrated?  Or was it an anger that was directed with a more nasty, personal edge on it?  These are the kind of questions we can ask about ourselves, which can be turned into prayer.  So, it’s important we understand the ways in which we acknowledge our human frailties. 

One of the oldest prayers of the Christian Church is known as the Jesus prayer, or the sinner’s prayer:  “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner.”

In Psalm 103, the writer says that God “remembers that we are dust.”  In the tradition Ash Wednesday service, where the minister makes the sign of the cross with ashes on the forehead of each person, the minister says these words, “Remember you are dust and to dust you will return.”

So, we practice self-examination through quiet times of reflection about our lives, bringing them with all honesty before God.

And, finally, what are the benefits of self-examination?

First of all, it promotes humility in our lives.  Francois Fenelon was a spiritual writer in the 1600s and he wrote:

“Let us profit by the faults we have committed, through the humble consciousness of our weakness, without discouragement.”

Knowing our own weaknesses encourages our dependence on God.  It breaks the power of self-reliance in us and therefore deepens our relationship with God.

Secondly, self-examination brings us into a deeper experience of God’s forgiving love.  This is the second aspect of self-examination, the other side of the same door which I mentioned at the start of the blog. We cannot grow in self-awareness of our failings without growth in experiencing the forgiveness of God.

This was the experience of a woman who met Jesus in chapter 8 of John’s Gospel.  She had been caught in adultery.  Those accusing her only got to acknowledge her human failings.  The woman, by staying with Jesus, got to acknowledge her own failings, AND also and most wonderfully, the forgiveness of Jesus. 

No self-examination of our consciences should be done without praying a prayer of confession in order that what we have identified may be dealt with by God’s forgiveness.

Finally, through self-examination, we experience spiritual growth.  As we allow the light of God to shine upon our lives, identifying weaknesses, so the power of God gets to work in those areas.  As a result, we should experience the strength of God to resist temptation and to both think and act in ways of personal holiness.  The transformation is one from the inside out.

I really love the cartoon series that used to appear in one of our newspapers.  The cartoons were called Peanuts and featured a boy called Charlie Brown, his dog Snoopy and their friends. 

Charlie Brown was the kind of boy who thought a lot about things and there is one cartoon where he says, “Sometimes I lie awake at night and ask, “Where have I gone wrong?”  And a little voice in my head says in reply, “This is going to take more than one night.”

We are imperfect people and our struggle against sin will take more than just one night!  But the work of Jesus on the cross, which we celebrate each Easter, is that the ultimate power of sin has been decisively broken.  And because of that, we bring all our human frailties to God, in the sure knowledge that His forgiving power and love will constantly renew our lives.