Character Counts

Forgive my hidden faults.
Keep your servant also from [these] willful sins;
may they not rule over me.
Then I will be blameless,
innocent of great transgression.
May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart
be pleasing in your sight,
O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer.
—Psalm 19:12–14

I was fishing Lick Creek one day and cast my fly into a willow. It was the
last fly of that pattern and the only one that was working. I said a very bad
word. There are some things bad enough to make a preacher cuss, but my
reaction surprised me. I hadn’t used that word for a while. I wondered where
it came from. But I was safe. Carolyn was fishing one hundred yards or so
downstream, and we were more than one hundred miles from my parish and
twenty miles from the nearest town. There was no one around to hear.

Late that evening while I was attempting to set up the trailer, one piece
of equipment would not work right. It was a warm, humid night, and soon I
was wringing wet and utterly frustrated. Carolyn tried to be helpful, offering
advice since she couldn’t offer anything else at the time.

I got annoyed and suggested that if she should like to try to start my car I
would sit in hers and blow the horn. It’s an old joke that she didn’t find funny.
Nor did I—I followed up with some angry words. Again, it surprised me. I
rarely talked to her that way. But mostly I was chagrined because there was
someone around to hear. I looked up from under the trailer into the eyes of
two nearby kayakers who were taking in the whole scene. But once more I
was safe—they were from California.

As Carolyn and I talked about the two incidents the next morning on the
way back to Boise, I realized afresh that what I was in private was the real me.
I had kidded myself into believing that my public image was what I was, but
that was my illusion. The way I behave when there’s no one around to hear or
see is me! Everything else is a sham.

Dickens wrote about telescopic philanthropy—compassion for those at a
distance but not for those at hand. I’ve always applied that principle to others,
to those who decry apartheid but act as shamelessly as a South African
bureaucrat toward those of other races in the United States. I don’t apply the
truth to myself. As Tolstoy said, “Everybody thinks of changing humanity
and nobody thinks of changing himself.”

I can talk about compassion for others and yet be utterly tactless and inconsiderate to my own family. In which case, what I am at home is what I am. Or I can think myself reasoned and self-controlled, but what I do and say when angry and unobserved gives me away. My character is what I am when I’m alone.

I have a mountain friend who winters in a backcountry ranch all alone.
He doesn’t have a radio and doesn’t read much. Most of the time he’s snowed
in. I asked him once what he did while he was there by himself. “Well,” he
mused, “I get to know myself real good.” That sounded like wisdom then,
and it still does. If I would know myself well, I must know myself when I’m
alone.

There’s old Adam within, with vast potential for greed and selfishness.
I know I can’t change him much. Frontal attack has never worked for me.
As soon as I resist sin, I endow it with more power. This same power it uses
against me. Inner transformation, thus, is God’s work. As Mother Teresa put
it, we may will holiness, but He must do it.

What’s needed is more of God in me. He must work His work. Righteousness is His gift, which I may receive. David’s prayer in Psalm 19:12-14 becomes my own.

Taken from Seeing God, © 2006 by David Roper. Used by permission of Discovery House Publishers, Box 3566, Grand Rapids MI 4950l. All rights reserved.