“And he bowed himself, and said, What is thy servant,

that thou shouldest look upon such a dead dog as I am?”

(2 Samuel 9:8)

Some people with a gift for writing publish their autobiographies. Last week I received notice of the publication of an autobiography by a friend of mine, a federal judge, who has recently retired. Some people who are artists paint self-portraits. But all of us, whatever our talents may be, have mentally painted our self-portraits and in our own minds have written our autobiographies.

You see, you have a mental image of yourself that you carry around with you all the time. It is truly a self-portrait, painted on the canvas of your self-consciousness. What is that self-portrait like? Do you paint yourself too big, like the bumptious guy who is all inflated with the wind of his self-im­portance? Or is your self-portrait too small, like the painfully timid soul who carries about a miniature picture of himself or herself as a dwarf or pygmy?

Rembrandt and van Gogh painted an incredible number of different self-portraits. At first blush, this seems a bit immodest. But on second thought, it is quite meritorious if a self-portrait is to be painted at all. Time changes things, all things, even ourselves. Just as on occasion it is a good thing to write down one’s own, brief philosophy of life, so is it also a helpful thing from time to time to scrutinize one’s mental self-portrait, observe how it has changed, or hasn’t changed, and check it by truth and reality.

Have you had a photograph made recently? The proofs may surprise you with the realization that you have been picturing yourself as you were ten to fifteen years ago. And things are just not what they used to be.

Sometimes we observe that some people we know have matured while others have not. What about our own goals, values, objectives in life? Have these changed perceptibly for the better, matured any, or are they the same as they were when we were teenagers? How many disillusioned and frustrated elderly and middle-aged people there are whose disillusionment and frustration stem from the fact that the attractions and powers and capacities of youth are falling away, or have already gone, while the appetites, desires, and values of young manhood or young womanhood are still dominant and unchanged. T.S. Eliot in his play The Cocktail Party charac­terized such people as having only “the desire of desire.”

It is not only time but also distaste that may dictate our doing a new self-portrait. One of the biggest troubles we have in life is the distaste we feel for our self-portraits, those mental images we carry around with us. And no wonder. An honest appraisal of our moral and spiritual stature reveals a very sorry spectacle.

Leslie Weatherhead, the British minister, in his book Prescription for Anxiety writes: “One of the inevitable things about life is that we have got to live with ourselves. What a misery it is to live with a person you despise, a person who has allowed fear to defeat him — even if it is yourself! And unaided we cannot help despising ourselves, the more we know ourselves.”

The crippled Mephibosheth, bereaved of his father, Jonathan, and his grandfather Saul, despoiled of his kingly heritage and his house and lands, said to David, “Why do you take the trouble to look on such a dead dog as I am?”

The biblical record tells us the tragedy of poor Mephibosheth. He was a small boy, only five years old, when a messenger came rushing into the palace with the shocking news that the battle with the Philistines was lost and that his father, Jonathan, and his grandfather King Saul had been killed. In her terror, his nurse snatched up little Mephibosheth to run for safety and dropped the boy, crippling him. When King David summoned Mephibosheth into his presence, Mephibosheth called himself “a dead dog.” That was the way he was picturing himself. Life’s crippling and devastating blows reduce us often to such a state of self-despising.

We all have fallen so short of our moral code. There is such a wide gap between our goals and our achievements. We have violated and neglected friendships. Some of our best intentions in our closest and dearest relation­ships have resulted in chaos and confusion. We despise ourselves for what we are. It seems the only decent way to feel about the failures we know we are. We need a new self-portrait desperately, but how are we to get it?

Samuel Rutherford, the Scottish mystic, said, “Blessed are they who save us from our self-despisings.” Surely here is a precious beatitude that is worthy of standing alongside the other Beatitudes of Jesus, not only because of our deep need for the miraculous rescue, but because of Jesus’ amazing power to save us from our self-despisings. It is at this point that his saviorhood means so much to us day by day.

Do you remember that time Jesus met the leper by the roadside in Galilee? Leprosy does horrible things to people’s bodies, you know. A hand or a foot will just rot away. Where the nose or an ear was, the leper might have only an ugly, red, scabby hole. But leprosy does horrible things to people psychologically as well as physically. It makes them feel guilty and cast off. In Jesus’ day awful social and ceremonial laws controlled the lives of people sick with leprosy. The leper was cut off from his family and his city or village. He was forced to live outside the walls of the town. Everywhere he went he was compelled to cry, as a warning to others of his approach, “Unclean, unclean.”

One day one of these pitiable people came to Jesus, crying, “Unclean, unclean.” But in the roadway before Jesus, the man prostrated himself and in deep sincerity said, “If thou wilt, thou canst make me clean.” Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him and said, “I will: be thou clean.” And here is the wonderful part of the story: The man rose, not only cleansed in body, but healed of the deep psychological wound he had suffered. Others had hated and despised him so long he had come to loathe and despise himself, but the Son of God had loved him and touched his own hand to his festering flesh and healed him of his self-despising.

“When our hearts are filled with bitter shame (and we feel unclean and outcast), let us remember that Christ’s hand is stretched out to us,” says William Barclay in The Gospel of Luke. He would heal us of our self-despisings whatever their cause.

Do you remember that day in the gospel record when the responsible citizens brought to Jesus for judgment the poor woman taken in the act of adultery? Throwing her at Jesus’ feet, they rudely reminded Jesus that the law of Moses was clear in such offenses — the transgressor should be stoned to death. And they said to Jesus, “Now, since you are a teacher in Israel, what do you say should be done with such a sinner?”

Jesus replied, “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.” There followed a long, awkward silence. Then one by one, the indignant, violent men turned silently and slipped away until all were gone, and only Jesus and the woman were left. The miserable creature hesitantly lifted her shame-burdened gaze and looked into his eyes. “Woman,” he said, “where are those thine accusers? hath no man condemned thee?” “No man, Lord,” came the frightened reply. Then, said Jesus — and I feel his voice rang with triumphant courage and authority —  “neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.”

So Jesus healed another defeated soul of her self-despising. His “neither do I condemn thee” is no brushing aside of the austere moral law. Never a man lived who had greater respect for the righteousness of the Father, the moral fiber of the universe, and the inspired commandments of God than did Jesus Christ, who so respected that law that he never transgressed it, cost him what it might in blood, sweat, and tears.

Jesus condemned the sin, but he knew it was no longer necessary to condemn the sinner, who already had thoroughly condemned herself in the court of her own conscience. What she needed now was to be healed of her self-despising for her horrible failure. And as her Savior he began to act positively to whatever good he found in that poor, broken life of hers and to encourage self-respect to grow again based on the forgiveness of God and God’s confidence in any man or woman who will try again. For what is God’s forgiveness but his unlimited, unbelievable confidence in every person’s ability to rise again through the grace and goodness of Jesus Christ?

There came a day in the dark and desperate life of that poor cripple Mephibosheth when on his consciousness there dawned the recognition that, as Joseph Parker put it, “sonship was the principal fact of his life.” When preaching to his London congregation on Mephibosheth, Parker declared: “He was Jonathan’s son. True, he was lame; true, he was in an obscure [and a precarious] position; true, he had counted himself as little better than a dead dog.” But he was the son of Jonathan, whom David had loved, and David the king had vowed that if any of the sons of Jonathan could be found, he would show them the kindness of God for Jonathan’s sake. And he sought out Mephibosheth and restored to him his father’s and grandfather’s estates and brought him to eat at the king’s table all the rest of his days.

When will we learn that in the crucible of experience, in this vale of soul-making, in this comedy of errors that is our life, in the shame and mistakes and failures of our own autobiographies, the dominant factor that should undergird all our thoughts and emotions and self-analysis is the fact of our sonship or daughtership to the Eternal God, our kinship to Christ, our courageous elder brother, who has loved us and given himself for us.

Come what may, we are still God’s children. We may indeed be broken down, but the fragments are majestic, the ruins are grand. Christ has come to seek and to save that which was lost. He saves us from our self-despisings, and blessed be his name!