Self Editing Can Be Deceiving!

2Corinthians 13:5
Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves. Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates?

Many times when doing my own editing for things that I write I miss simple mistakes that I’ve made. Oftentimes it’s only when my wonderful husband has reviewed the text and found numerous errors that I realize that I need a second pair of eyes to help me see things that I may have missed. I think the reason that I miss so many of the mistakes is because I know what I wanted to say so when I proofread the text my eyes skim over the words with the mind-set that I wrote it with. It is not as easy for me to see as someone else who did not write it. Sometimes it seems like my eyes are playing tricks on me because I could have just read over something and then I go back and find two more errors. Well, why didn’t I see it the first ten times I looked over it? My eyes see the error but my mind does not acknowledge it.

Can we see a parallel in spiritual things? The bible tells us to examine ourselves. However, why don’t we see what others see wrong in our lives. Sometimes we get fighting mad because someone who loves us told us one of our faults. We carry on for hours, getting angry because they saw something about us that we did not see or we saw it and did not consider it a fault. We begin to reason and pacify ourselves by thinking, “They don’t know me because if they knew me they would know that I am not like what they think they saw in me.” We wrongly conclude that if we didn’t see it in ourselves it couldn’t possibly be true because if anybody knows me it’s me. Wrong, many times we don’t see it because we created it or allowed it at some point in our lives and now it’s so much a part of us that our brains don’t see the wrong in it. We approved it for years sometimes.

I believe when the bible tells us to examine ourselves I believe God was referring to us seeing ourselves through the light of His Word, not according to our own standards and natural thinking. Your mother may have told you that a certain way you behaved as a child was cute but God’s Word may not consider it cute at all. So the next time you do self editing made sure you use the Word of God as our standard.

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