Exaggerated Caricature?

While going through some old mementos, I came across this caricature drawing of my friend, Trina and myself, drawn years ago. The purpose of a caricature drawing is to emphasize and exaggerate certain features, usually, in a humorous way.

But, looking at the drawing, years later, I see how I came to view exaggeration as the absolute truth, choosing to believe my own imposed definition of “fat” as the absolute feature of who I was as a person. It didn’t matter if I weighed 80, 100 or 200 pounds; like a funhouse mirror, all I saw were the exaggerated, extreme and usually negative perceptions of myself.

God tells us, through His Word, how powerful perceptions of ourselves, as human beings, can be in our lives:

“For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he…”

Proverbs 23:7

Indeed, if we examine this “mind over matter” perspective further, we see how, in life, there are two perspectives that we can choose: either a positive or a negative, often exaggerated perspective. Check out the passage here in Numbers 13:

13: 30 “And Caleb…said, Let us go up at once, and possess it; for we are well able to overcome it. 13:31 But the men that went up with him said, We be not able to go up against the people; for they are stronger than we.

13:32 And they brought up an evil report of the land which they had searched unto the children of Israel, saying, The land, through which we have gone to search it, is a land that eateth up the inhabitants thereof; and all the people that we saw in it are men of a great stature.

13:33 And there we saw the giants…and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight.”

When we look at ourselves, do we see the “promised land” of a “future and a hope” (Jeremiah 29:11) or do we see giants (literally)in ourselves, talking us out of life, love, happiness and significance, all because we see that our features and our bodies are simply “too big,” “too this” or “too that?”

Are we viewing ourselves accurately or as a negative caricature? If we answer the first, God’s truly drawing us as His Image (Genesis 1:27).

If, however, we answer with our caricature self-perception, then who’s doing the drawing?

Let’s, therefore, agree with the Great Artist, Who always views us in the following thoughts:

“…I am fearfully and wonderfully made…”

Psalm 139:14

“But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.”

2 Corinthians 3:18

“Since you were precious in my sight… I have loved you…”

Isaiah 43:4

“All things were made by him; and without him was not anything made that was made.”

John 1:3