FALSE MIRRORS - BY ATILOLA MORONFOLU

 High School Physics taught is that there are different kinds of mirrors. Plain Mirrors and False Mirrors. The false mirrors are the concave and convex mirrors, which give a false of reflection of your image. 

If you ever have the misfortune of having a wrongly constructed mirror in your bedroom, like many people do, you will always have an issue with your image. These mirrors might be slightly concave or convex, but you will not suspect because they appear plane to you, especially since the distortion is not usually obvious

The implication of this is that you might be on a weight-loss journey, but you will always be discouraged because you can’t see any improvement when you look at the mirror. Ever heard of the saying “this mirror always makes me look fat”? Yes, it really does happen with false mirrors

We have badly constructed mirrors everywhere. One moment, you are at home, looking all curvy and toned, and you get to the gym, look in the mirror and you are plump and stout.  

This is the same way many of us look into false mirrors when we want to see how our lives really look like. We get opinions of how we look from people who are by themselves distorted in their perspectives, and they reflect a wrong image of us to ourselves when they give us feedback. We take these things to heart and feel bad, not knowing that the mirror is false.

Some make us look too good to be true, like concave mirrors, and become sycophants, that we refuse to work on our weaknesses. Also, some constantly make us look so bad that it becomes impossible to take a quantum leap out of the cycle of condemnation

False mirrors are not completely useless. They are perfect for doing things like magnifying imperfections on our face, making a near object appear far or vice versa, and a thousand more uses. However, these are not the mirrors we should be looking at when we want to see our true reflections

In the same way, feedback is generally not bad. But they must be sieved and put in proper context. Feedback and opinions taken from a very wrong perspective actually have the ability to send you into a downward spiral.

Whenever we want to see who we really are, we have to get neutral opinion, the opinion of God’s word, what He says we really are. Anything apart from this will lead to nothing but distorted life view, and not propel us into the reality of what God wants for us.