Look at You
"Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves. Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you, unless, of course, you fail the test?" 2 Corinthians 13:5
I have sat at nearly every seat at the audit table.
I started my career in public accounting at a large regional CPA firm in Central Florida, as a bookkeeper while still finishing my accounting degree. I eventually made my way into the audit department, where I served as the in-charge on my first audit engagement as a staff accountant. Baptism by fire. From there I moved to the client side as a controller, which put me on the receiving end of the same process I had been running.
Not every audit went as expected. Not nearly.
I have been the auditor. I have been the one being audited. And I have sat alongside others as they prepared their organizations for audits. And I have learned something from all three seats at the table.
And I welcomed the process.
Not just tolerated it. Not just endured it as a professional obligation. Actually welcomed it. Something clarifying, even purifying, emerges when someone knowledgeable comes behind you, examines the work carefully, and tells you honestly whether it holds up. That audit feels less like a threat and more like a gift. It tells you where you actually stand, not just where you hope you stand.
In technical accounting language, an audit means examining, on a test basis, evidence supporting certain amounts and disclosures in order to form a basis for an opinion. In plain English, it means asking someone who knows what to look for to look carefully and tell you the truth about what they find.
That sounds less like an accounting procedure and more like friendship.
The examined life
Paul offered blunt instruction to the church at Corinth, blunt in the way only found in genuine care. Examine yourselves. Test yourselves. Do not assume. Do not coast on the faith you declared last year or the commitment you made a decade ago. Look carefully. See whether it holds up.
No anxiety lives in that instruction. No one here wants to disqualify you. Paul writes, and I write, as someone who knows that an unexamined life, in faith as in finance, tends to drift in directions we did not intend and might not see.
Socrates said the unexamined life is not worth living. He meant it philosophically. Paul meant it spiritually. And after thirty years of working in and around organizations whose financial health was directly tied to whether their leaders looked honestly at what the numbers actually said, I would argue it applies operationally as well.
Rarely did the ones with the worst problems struggle the most. Rather, the real struggles often plagued the ones most resistant to examining themselves honestly. The ones who found reasons to delay the audit. The ones who preferred the comfort of not knowing to the discomfort of finding out.
The struggle reveals the problem: resisting examination, resisting accountability, resisting the truth.
Someone to look behind you
Are you willing to invite an auditor into more than just your financials?
Do you have someone you trust enough to tell you the truth? Someone who will look past the surface and tell you what they find without flinching?
A spouse, a best friend, a small group, a mentor.
Jesus.
If we let him, he can look into our lives, past the performance and into the character, and point out where we need correction or where our lives actually hold up better than we thought.
Letting someone in that deeply costs something. We want to manage the narrative, present the version that ties out, and hope no one looks too closely at the supporting documentation.
Examination ushers in a value worthy of the discomfort.
The examined life, in faith and in finance, truly is the one worth living.
Who is your auditor? The person in your life who tells you the truth about what they see? If you do not have one, that might be the most important thing on your list right now.