The Mirror is Not Your Friend

Human beings are evil. We are hardwired to curate our self-image, excuse our failures, and cling to the stories that make us feel good about ourselves. The truth is, we are hypocrites—fluctuating between condemning unspeakable horrors, often hidden from public view, and idolizing the very politicians and institutional cowards who cause or permit them.

The same psychological games we play to deceive ourselves work flawlessly when we’re told to choose the “lesser of two evils” during election season.

Listen to yourselves, habibi. You reject Scripture—yet somehow affirm its judgment against you when you call one of your human choices the “lesser of two evils.”

You hypocrite.

Most people will never acknowledge their complicity in the killing fields of Gaza. It’s far more comfortable to live in self-deception than to face the truth about the monsters we really are.

Evil functions under a triple constraint.

First: your reflection, shown in a natural mirror, not of your own making. You want to look away, to forget what you see. So, you rush to the second constraint: the mirror of your fairy tales—the one that says you are the “fairest of them all.” Or worse, the artificial mirrors in your data centers, which regurgitate what everyone wants to hear, calibrated to the desires of monsters.

Between these two lies the third constraint: your neighbor. The neighbor who also sees your reflection, not in the natural mirror of Scripture, but in how you behave when you follow yourself, even though they are as blind as you.

In the end, the natural mirror does not care if you “speak the truth.” It already knows that you, like your virtue-signaling, murderous, failed politicians, are blind, arrogant, and evil.

The mirror has only one objective: to force you to see the truth it reflects about you, and not to let you look away. Can you accept this? Can you sit with it? Or will you, once again, project your truth onto someone else caught in the same triple constraint?

You hypocrite.

You blind fool.

On that day, no amount of pleading will bring you comfort.

This week, I discuss Luke 8:31.

Photo by Kyle Johnson on Unsplash

Show Notes

“They were imploring him not to command them to go away into the abyss.” Lk 8:31.

“For if anyone is a listener of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks at his natural face in a mirror; (τὸ πρόσωπον τῆς γενέσεως — literally, “the face of birth” or “natural face”) for once he has looked at himself and gone away, he has immediately forgotten what kind of person he was.” (James 1:23–24)

παρακαλέω (parakaleō) / נ–ח–ם (nūn–ḥet–mēm) / ن–ح–م (nūn–ḥāʾ–mīm)

Encourage, exhort, and comfort. Feel regret, be sorry, and console yourself. Provide comfort. Saul disobeyed God’s command by sparing King Agag and taking spoils from the battle. God, through Samuel, declares that he regrets [נִחַמְתִּי (niḥamti)] making Saul king:

“I regret [נִחַמְתִּי (niḥamti)] that I have made Saul king, because he has turned back from following me and has not carried out my commands.” And Samuel was furious, and he cried out to the Lord all night. (1 Samuel 15:11)

Later in 1 Samuel 15:30, Saul, like Legion, makes a self-serving plea, concerned with his reputation rather than divine obedience.

David’s so-called consolation [נִחַם (niḥam)] in 2 Samuel was not repentance or discernment—it was political sentimentality disguised as pastoral care. It resembled the rhetoric of a liberal American politician who publicly laments starving children in Gaza, yet quietly approves weapons sales, enforces food embargoes, and suppresses dissen