Flipping the Portrait Upside-Down

I took up pencil-sketching as a hobby a while ago, and one of my favorite things to do is draw faces. So I decided to do a self-portrait.

Carefully studying every last angle and plane of my face in a mirror, noting eye shape and the cast of the light, I drew jawline and neck, eyebrow tilt and the slight crook of my nose. I erased and drew, started over and tried again. Finally, a face took shape.

And it was awful. Cartoon-esque, caricature-ish. The eyes were far too big and the face too wide.

I took a deep breath, turned to a blank page, reset my mirror, and tried again. I sketched and sketched and sketched. The lines were familiar, I was using the same inspiration, but I had more familiarity with the shapes. That eyebrow tilt? I made it more accurate. The chin? It wasn't quite as pronounced as I'd originally thought. My upper lip? Way thinner than my first try.

When I finished, I still cringed. It wasn't as much like a cartoon as the first time, but it was a far cry from what I'd hoped for. Still, it wasn't terrible. I posted it on Facebook, hoping for suggestions. An artistic friend of mine came through for me: "Try drawing yourself upside-down," she said. "Turn your board over, start at the neck and go down until you reach the top of your head."

Huh.

I tried it. The flipped perspective did wonders. Looking at every angle and plane and shape in a new way gave a fullness to the whole picture that nothing else could have done. When I finished the portrait, I turned it upright. And lo and behold, it was exactly like looking in a mirror. I'd finally succeeded at drawing an actual self-portrait.

Oh, the satisfaction of accomplishing my goal! How did I arrive at that final picture?

I had studied every line of my face from the top to the bottom. I knew what I considered perfection: my eyes tilted downward just a degree too much for the perfect "almond" shape. My nose carried a shade too much "crook" for the smooth straightness that I'd have liked. My forehead arched slightly too high, and life and care had etched a few lines into it. My mouth was far from being symmetrical; the left side dipped farther than the right.

I couldn't draw any of it perfectly until I turned it all upside-down and saw every angle from a flipped perspective.

"Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror. Then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known" (1 Corinthians 13:12). 

I've begun reading through the book of Genesis again; it's been years since I've done that. I spent my time this morning in the Garden of Eden, where the first portentous darkness casts its shade over the glorious beauty of God's creation. "Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, 'Did God really say you must not eat from any tree in the Garden?'" (Genesis 3:1)

Hold up, there, serpent! A.) Is this a usual thing, talking animals? Because the Bible has no record of surprise on Eve's part that there's a snake sitting there shooting the breeze with her. And B.) the serpent is putting words in the mouth of God. God didn't really say: 'You must not eat from any tree in the Garden.' Only the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and the tree of life. All the other trees were available for breakfast, lunch, dinner, or... you know... elevenses (thanks, Tolkien).

Eve straightened out the serpent immediately, and explained how the system was set up. "We can eat from the trees in the garden, except for the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. If we eat from that one, we'll die."

"Heh. You won't die. And, don't you know, wisdom is desirable?" (I hope you've gotten that this is my paraphrase by now).

Back to 1 Corinthians 13:12: "Now I know in part, then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known." Ephesians 1:17: "I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know Him better." 

Yes, wisdom is desirable, but look at the whole picture of what was happening. God created perfection, did He not? Sin was not yet a thing; there was, as yet, no gap in the fellowship between God and His creation. As yet, sin did not exist.

Until Eve's fatal decision to reach for that fruit. What was once unthinkable... became thinkable. What was once perfect trust became... broken. Where once there was no exit door on perfect fellowship, suddenly, an exit sign materialized: one with angels and flaming swords that kept sinful humanity from entering that perfect fellowship again.

So now, we live with imperfection, with that horrible, bottomless chasm between us and the Creator. As Paul prayed in Ephesians 1:17, "may He give us wisdom, so that we can know Him better." We used to know Him completely. Until sin. So now, we see distortedly, as though through a mirror. 

In Genesis 3:15, we see the first hint of the Great Bridge over the bottomless chasm. "And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers. He will crush your head, and you will strike His heel."

The first mention of the Savior of the world comes minutes or hours after the fall of mankind. The whole story of salvation turns the story of sin on its head. 

Give us wisdom. We see flashes of God here, there, everywhere, small parts of the whole portrait. We seek Him out; we struggle to understand Him. We notice the lines, the shades, the angles, and we try to recreate what He so perfectly laid out before us in the first place until we messed it up.

But until we realize that Jesus flipped the script, bridged the gap, paid for our sins with His perfect blood, died so that we could live, lives so that we cannot die...

We'll still be looking through that mirror. We have to flip the picture to understand perfection. We have to see through a different lens than the one we have always used.