One of the barriers to seeing yourself as God sees you is the inaccuracy of what you see as valuable. God does not value things the same way as you do.1
God knows everything.2 Among his knowledge is the true worth of everything. What the world treasures is abominable to God,3 and what the world despises is a treasure to God.4
What God values is what is truly valuable, but your valuation will be contrary to his until and unless you learn and subject yourself to what he values. As you increase in knowledge about and appreciation for God, you will begin to notice that what you value will change, as will how much you value it.
As you learn of and adopt God’s valuation, you will find that your idea of virtues and vices will change. Some virtues will seem more rare or valuable than before and some vices will seem more common or harmful than before. You will even come to see that some prior virtues are actually vices, and some vices are actually virtues. Accordingly, you will see some of your qualities as less impressive than you thought,5 and may see some of your qualities as more impressive than you thought.6
Footnotes
- 1. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. (Isaiah 55:8-9) ↩
- 2. O how great the holiness of our God! For he knoweth all things, and there is not anything save he knows it. (2 Nephi 9:20) ↩
- 3. ...that which is highly esteemed among men is abomination in the sight of God. (Luke 16:15) ↩
- 4. For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father. (Mosiah 3:19) ↩
- 5. For example, when David’s father caused his son Eliab to stand before Samuel, the Lord corrected Samuel’s initially overestimated impression of him: “And it came to pass, when they were come, that he looked on Eliab, and said, Surely the Lord’s anointed is before him. But the Lord said unto Samuel, Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature; because I have refused him: for the Lord seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart.” (1 Samuel 16:6-7) ↩
- 6. For example, Amos thought himself a shepherd, but God saw him as a prophet: “Then answered Amos, and said to Amaziah, I was no prophet, neither was I a prophet’s son; but I was an herdman, and a gatherer of sycomore fruit: And the Lord took me as I followed the flock, and the Lord said unto me, Go, prophesy unto my people Israel. (Amos 7:14-15) ↩