God pronounces a blessing for those who do not lean on their own understanding. Of course, in one sense, our own understanding is the only thing we have. The proverb does not mean that God somehow requires us to think with someone else’s mind, to look out at the world with someone else’s eyes. This is obviously an impossibility.
But God does require that we cultivate humility of mind, that we know and acknowledge our tendency to go astray, and that we submit ourselves to one another so that our inability to see our own foibles is corrected. This is why God wants us to live in community, and to do so in a spirit of mutual submission. Abandoning pride, learning such humility, is the hardest thing in the world to do. Even those people that we think doubt themselves excessively never doubt whether they ought to be doubting so much.
Those who are morbidly introspective have frequently been told not to do that. But they hear all such exhortations as temptations to “go easy” on themselves, which obviously can’t be right. But their real problem is that they are not nearly introspective enough. Those Pharisees who found the gnat in their drink did so through introspection, and good for them. But they missed the camel through a failure of introspection. People who miss camels in their coffee should not be faulted for an excess of scrupulosity. They are not nearly scrupulous enough.
Those prone to morbid introspection, speaking bluntly, will confess any sin whatsoever, except for the sin they are committing. And that is unbelief, not humility. It is pride and arrogance, not self-doubt. It is the opposite of self-doubt. So all of us are summoned here in order that we might surrender. We are called to surrender to the love of God. Let us do so now.