Tag Archives: false self

Perspectives

14 Wednesday Aug 2013

Posted by in All, Self

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Who am I?

Am I then really that which other men tell of?  Or am I only what I myself know of myself?

Who am I? This or the Other?  Am I one person today and tomorrow another?  Am Iboth at once?

—“Who Am I?”, Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Comedy-Tragedy

These questions so eloquently captured by Bonhoeffer have haunted me.

Have you ever had this thought: “If another person knew me, really knew me, they couldn’t possibly like me”?  You know the “real me” person I mean, the “inner you” that you go to great lengths to hide–yeah, that’s the one right there living in the shadow of the person you project–if they really knew that person they wouldn’t like you…or so you tell yourself because you know yourself better than anyone.

Have you ever had a really good friend tell you that they see good something in you that you know couldn’t possibly be true because, after all, you see the backstage areas of your life?  You nod at their comment in appreciation, perhaps even feeling a little flustered while protesting against their observation, while down deep wishing that what they said were indeed true.  What they say can’t be true, you tell yourself, because they don’t know the “real you,” and you, of course, know yourself better than anyone.on you project–if they really knew that person they wouldn’t like you…or so you tell yourself because you know yourself better than anyone.

Have you ever had some well-meaning fellow Christian tell you that God loves you for who you are?  You nod your head knowingly because it is a fact straight from your Bible; however, somewhere down deep you know it is a lie…after all, the “real you” is unlovable and, after all, you know yourself better than anyone.

What if you are wrong?  What if you aren’t the best judge of who you are.

What if you are wrong?  What if you aren’t the best judge of who you are.

What if there are other persons who know you at least as well as you know yourself and perhaps better than you know yourself?  I am coming to believe that there are three valid perspectives of me…

God’s Perspective

The first perspective is that of God.  If I am a follower of Jesus, then God has adopted me as His child.  To use the language of the Apostle Paul, God sees me-in-Jesus (Christ).  That’s a funny theological concept.  How can I be in another person?  Well, it is a bit of a mystery in the same way that two married people in a healthy marriage slowly and mysteriously become as one, their very persons separate but intertwined.

The practical outworking of this is that when God looks at me He sees me in the same way as He sees His Son, Jesus.  After all, I am His son, too (or daughter, ladies).  Imagine God looking at you that way.  And here’s the best part: He already knows about that shadowy person inside that I try to hide even from Him, and He still sees me as His most beloved child.

Sure, there’s a bit more to this perspective.  God wants me to really become like Jesus, so in addition to offering His unconditional love He helps me through His Holy Spirit to live my life in a way that I am being actually transformed into the likeness of Jesus.

Don’t get too bogged down in this extra stuff just now; the point is that God sees me as His child in the very same way He sees His real Son, Jesus.  God looks at me and sees me-in-Jesus.  That is His perspective.

Other’s Perspective

What about these other people who see something in me I don’t see.  Well, it is not just any other people that will see this truthfully.  It is too easy to fool the masses; with a few deft moves I can pull the wool over their eyes.  Or, they might see only a snapshot of me and rush to a good or poor judgment of me.

No, I’m talking about those very few people who really know me.  Those people I let into the innermost circle of my life; those to whom I tell of my hopes and dreams and expose my weakness and failures.  I hope you have a few people like that in your life.  These are the people who will see Jesus in you.  You cannot really know yourself without them.

As I draw closer to Jesus I become more like Him.  I am indeed a cracked pot, as they say, which is a good thing.  It is through those cracks that the light of Jesus shines through.  Jesus-in-me begins to shine through those very cracks in ways of which I am not aware unless someone else points them out to me.  This is what those closest to me begin to see.  And, it’s not really them seeing me differently; rather, it is Jesus-in-them seeing Jesus-in-me.

My closest friends look at me and see Jesus-in-me.  This is their perspective.

My Perspective

Then there’s my perspective.  Unfortunately, it is the one in which I put the most stock.  It is me looking at the backside of the tapestry of my life and seeing all the loose and knotted threads.  I see the mess behind the mask.  I hear the voices unkind toward you and me in my head.  I experience the doubts and fears of life.  I recognize the false bravado.

In other words, I see the sin in me.  I’m seeing the shadow person I think I hide because he is unlovable and if you or God knew him you would reject me and I’d rather die than be rejected for who I believe am.

In reality, this shadowy figure is not separate from me but is part of me.  As I draw closer to the light of Jesus I begin to see him more clearly for the wretched person that he is (I am).  He is (I am) not something to hide…he is who I really am: the person God has redeemed by the death of Jesus.  I’m seeing me-as-redeemed.  Having this view of me allows me to see God’s great mercy and grace toward me.  Sadly for us and for God’s kingdom we too often find our identity from this perspective alone.  We too easily dismiss ourselves as unworthy to do God’s work here.

The Apostle Paul is a good case study.  We know he is God’s son (perspective 1).  We know from his writings (two-thirds of the New Testament) that he was a great man of God (perspective 2).  Yet, he calls himself the chief of all sinners (perspective 3).

Each perspective offers me something.

God’s perspective gives me the deepest truth of who I am.  From His perspective I findmy ultimate identity, security, and significance.

The perspective of my friends gives me hope that God is at work transforming my life, that His promises are not empty promises.  I really am changing; my friends see it when I don’t.  Through the eyes of close friends I see who I am being transformed into.

My perspective reminds me of God’s grace and mercy as I see what I have been redeemed from.  I see the inner ugliness and it reminds me what God did for me through Jesus on the cross.  Out of this perspective I can begin to offer  God’s love to others.

Mandella Quote

Each perspective is important.  Bonhoeffer finishes his poem with a reminder of the bedrock answer to the question, “Who am I?”:

Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine.  Whoever I am, Thou knowest, O God, I am thine!

Naked and Unafraid

20 Thursday Jun 2013

Posted by in All, Humankind

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[All of creations stops, there is silence in the heavens and the earth…will they or won’t they?  The crunch of a stolen bite taken from forbidden fruit is deafening.  At the sound of the proprietor approaching the offenders drop the evidence and run.…] then the Lord God called to Adam, and said to him, “Where are you?” He said, “I heard the sound of You in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid myself.” And God said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?”

Paraphrase from the first book of the Bible–Genesis ch 3, verses 9-11 (New American Standard Translation)

God prohibited the first humans, Adam and Eve, from eating fruit from the tree of knowledge so that they would not know good from evil and become “like God” (Genesis 3:5, 22).  They took a bite anyway.  Then, realizing they were naked they hid from God in fear.

There is so much to think about in these few verses, so much explanatory power regarding the state of the world today.  However, one particular thing is on my mind: being naked and afraid.

I don’t know specifically what was in their respective minds to cause fear when they suddenly realized their nakedness; however, I know what is in my mind, and it is more than about a lack of clothes.

We throw around words of nakedness with ease: transparency in Government, authentic community, being real with each other.  Our language suggests we want such nakedness with each other, but do we really?  Yes and no.  Imagine standing before another human naked in the deepest sense of that word, no barriers at all.  Your most intimate thoughts, feelings, hopes, dreams, desires, fears…all that you are fully revealed, open for inspection by another.  I think we each desperately long for that kind of acceptance, but we fear laughter and ultimately, rejection, because to be accepted is to be loved; rejection is death.

We so yearn for acceptance and fear rejection that we consciously and unconsciously create a false self, a Glittering Image, so that we will find love in the acceptance from another.  Some of our falseness we are aware of, we call it The Mask behind which we hide.  Our talk of “being authentic” only refers to each coming out from behind our respective Masks.  However, our false identity is far deeper than The Mask; we are mostly unaware of it until something happens to bring it to light.  Our idea of an acceptable “normal” has been constructed by the influences of parents, friends, favorite celebrities, authors, teachers, the media, advertisers, businesses, our culture…we are helpless to see beyond what we have come to believe and the things to which we cling.

We are helpless, that is, until something happens that challenges what we believe about “normal.”  I recently had such an experience.  I now find my self with no status to hide behind because I’m not making any money.  I have no 40-hour-a-week job to define myself.  I have no office and co-workers in which to busy myself in and with.  I have no established church family to immerse myself.  I have no strategic goals to work toward to give me the illusion of self value.  It is a new kind of nakedness and through it more of my own Glittering Image has been revealed.  This experience is showing me more of what I cling too and use to define myself and find acceptance from you.

It is an uncomfortable place to be and questions swirl in my mind–

Where have I placed my sense of security?  In a paycheck or money in the bank?  What happens when I am no longer in control of that?

It is an uncomfortable place to be and questions swirl in my mind–

What does it mean to work?  What counts as “work”?  I now have a “job” as a Christian missionary.  God has to make connections with people, it is out of my hands.  I can only wait on Him, but what if I “work,” as I have previously defined it, less than 8 hours a day?  What then?

How do I measure productivity?  I’m not building widgets, and meeting with people produces little immediate, measurable results.  Am I just a drain on this society that so values results?

From where does my self-worth come?  “Missionary” is not as cool a job title as “airline pilot,” which I once had.  Am I defined by my title and job description?  From where do my real identity and value come?

God, it seems, is no respecter of my comfortable paradigms.

God, it seems, is no respecter of my comfortable paradigms.

I know most of the answers in my head; however, living as though I believe them is different.  The questions are no longer theoretical, they are real and immediate.

All of our answers are in some way illusionary.  We believe we know what it is to be “normal.”  We believe we can control our destiny and manage our own security.  We believe we can define ourselves by what we do or what we wear or what we have.  In reality, we have never been able to do any of these things.  Like Adam and Eve, we move through life relying on our own knowledge of good and evil, each putting up a Glittering Image for all to see because, in our fear of being seen naked, we hide from ourselves, from each other, and from God.

So strong is the pull of the Glittering Image that I can already feel the urge to use my job as missionary to fulfill my need to for acceptance.  I could quite easily begin to  define myself as “one of God’s people called into missionary life.”  It would be very easy to bask in the wide acceptance of my fellow Christians, perhaps even allowing myself to be placed on a pedestal because of the “great sacrifice you’re making for God” as a missionary.  I can easily slip in a casual comment that I’m more Jesus-like in my poverty.

Our need for acceptance tugs even more subtly and more tragically.  I’ve discovered that even trying to be like Jesus can become another form of a Glittering Image.  Before I’m burned at the stake, history shows us that people have outwardly tried to be like Jesus with the inner motive of power, greed, etc.  These are the obvious examples.  But even more dangerous to the Christian, one can strain and groan to be outwardly like Jesus (as we have constructed Him) because in some circles it is not acceptable to be a Christian struggling with real problems, wrestling with serious questions about one’s faith, battling despair…to be living a life that is not “fine.”  Sadly, in some churches it is simply not acceptable to be “naked and unafraid.”

With the God of the Bible we can find unconditional love in our nakedness.  We don’t have to cover ourselves and hide in the bushes.  But, and this can be difficult for us, it is love on His terms, not as we have distorted it.  His love casts out our fear.  God longs for us to become who we were created to be, more human not some false representation, and He wants to help; He sent us His Spirit to help us.  Even as we hide in fear at our nakedness–as if we could really hide from God–He is singing over us.  What else do we really need but Him and a group of friends similarly loving Him and trying to love each other in the same way?

 

The Glory of Jesus Given to Us?

05 Monday Nov 2012

Posted by in All, Love

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The glory which You [God the Father] have given Me [Jesus] I have given to them [Jesus followers], that they may be one, just as We are one; I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me. –Jesus; The Biblical Gospel of John, 17:22-23

“It’s very good that you exist.”  Believing this of another is the ultimate in positive affirmation that the other exists, and it is, I have been claiming, the biblical basis of love.  It is what God said about us in the beginning (Genesis 1:31).  It is what we must hear God say to us and more importantly, it is what we must experience from God to be able to love in His way.  It is what we must offer to others if we claim to follow Christ (1John 4:7-21).  However, it is easily misunderstood.

It seems to me that our American culture (all of Western culture?) has taken this “very good that you exist” thing wrongly because of the way our culture has redefined tolerance as affirming anything that makes the other person “happy.”  Consequently, a critical element of love, implied in the statement, has been overlooked.  It is indeed very good that I exist.  I need that affirmation from God and from others in my life.  What it doesn’t mean, however, is that everything I do is good or even that every aspect of who I am is good.  The God of the Bible does not tolerate all behavior and being in the way our society has come to expect.  In other words, who I am and what I do is not indiscriminately excused by God if it is indeed not “good” according to His nature (see my recent blog on forgiveness).  Therefore, as a Jesus follower I cannot indiscriminately affirm aspects of being or behavior that are not “good” according to God’s morality and commands. This applies to me and others–and I’m assuming with great humility that I can know to some extent “good” as defined by God.

I believe that God yearns for our “goodness,” that He wants the best for us; this is clearly seen in the Bible in God’s promises, culminating in Jesus’ death for us and His subsequent resurrection.  Returning to God’s own statement of the very goodness of creation (Genesis 1:31), what is meant there by “good” is “the purpose for which it was created.”  It is very good that all of creation, including you and me, exists for the purpose God intended.  Therefore, it is good that I exist within the context of my becoming fully whom I was created to be.  You, too.  For me, this “becoming” means to journey towards a life ultimately free of the lies in which I have come to believe and the inner wounds I have suffered, a life free of the fears with which I live and the hurt I inflict on others.  I believe Jesus makes this explicitly clear that it is also God’s desire for us in what He says He gives us (see the passage at the top of the page).  He explicitly gives glory to those who follow Him, the very same glory given to Him by God, His Father.

So, what exactly is this glory Jesus gives us?  Theologian M. Robert Mulholland Jr. (Dictionary of Spiritual Theology, Zondervan) notes that an aspect of the Greek word doxa (glory) refers to the “essence of a person, that which makes a person who he or she is” (216).  In John 17:1, Jesus tells us that the Father (God) and the Son (Jesus, God-Man) “glorify” each other.  In other words, both Father and Son find their essence, their true identities only in relationship with each other.  Try this: a human father has no identity apart from his son (or daughter).  It seems obvious that for one to have identity as “father” requires the existence of one’s child.  Similarly, for one to have identity as “son” or “daughter” requires that one has a father.  And so it is with God.  God the Father finds His true identity as Father only in relationship with His Son, Jesus.  Similarly, the Son, Jesus, finds His true identity as Son only in relationship with His Father.  Mutual glorification, therefore, means that only in relationship with each other do Father and Son fully become who they each are (see John 17:1, 5).  And not just any relationship will do, such as acquaintance or friend, it must be a relationship of loving union…they, Father and Son, are one (see John 10:30).

This is the same glory Jesus is offering to us when we choose to follow Him: the glory He has with His Father, God.  Jesus is saying to me that it is only through the same relationship of loving union with God that He has can I find my true identity and become fully who I am meant to be.  (Some writers call this my true self as contrasted with my false self.)  This loving union is the relationship Jesus intends for us in John 17:3 when He defines eternal life as “knowing God and Jesus,” where “knowing” means the most deeply intimate knowing of another person one can imagine.  It is a “knowing” that is most often used when referring to the intimacy between husband and wife that takes a lifetime to achieve (and it is never actually “achieved” since the journey of becoming intimate is eventually interrupted by the death of one spouse–with God, my “knowing” Him, an infinite being, in this deeply intimate way will take an eternity).  Therefore, the glory offered to me by Jesus is to become my true self–the image of God I was created to be– through a relationship of loving union with Him (this relationship is sometimes referred to as the “transformative union” with God).

So, with this understanding of love as affirming the goodness of one’s existence and wanting the best for one, which can only in relationship of loving union with God, then what does it mean for me to love my neighbor as I love myself (Matthew 22:39)?

Self-love is me affirming that it is very good that I exist, where the goodness referred to is that I become freely me–my true self–the me I was created to be, the me whom is free of the baggage of the lies I’ve believed and still believe, the hurts I’ve experienced and caused, the fears that torment me, and the failures that haunt me; it is the me free from all the baggage that hold me captive and feeds my false self.  This is the goodness I intrinsically want for myself, it seems built in to humanity that we each want this for ourselves. I long for this in the depths of my soul…and I can only find it in  a relationship of loving union Christ.

Then, if this is the healthy way I love myself, what about my neighbors?  I surely must want this for them, too.  I must affirm that it is very good that they exist and I must want the best for them, as well, which is for them to become fully the person who God created them to be.  Therefore, I must want them to be in a relationship of loving union with God.  This means I must not want for them anything else, nothing, no matter how pleasant it may seem in the moment, that would interfere with this transformative union with God from starting or from continuing in a healthy way.  And, again, I must exhibit great humility in expressing what I want for and not want for my neighbor.

As for my enemies (Matthew 5:44)…well, the same thing must apply if I am to love them as commanded by God.  I must affirm the goodness of their existence and I must want for them the things that move them toward a relationship of loving union with God.  Only in this way, it seems to me, can I fully and rightly (righteously) hate the things they do to interfere with their relationship with God thereby preventing them from becoming fully themselves as they are created to be by God.

This, I believe, is what it means to hate the sin but love the sinner, whether that sinner is me, my neighbor, or my enemy.

Sadly, not everyone will appreciate this point of view; most, in fact, will not (see Matthew 7:13-14).  Our society spends a lot of money trying to convince us, and we try to convince ourselves and each other, that many, many things and behaviors are good for us when, in fact, they keep us from this type of relationship with God, and, therefore, from becoming who we are in Christ.  Generally, most of us don’t want to become fully who God created us each to be, at least from God’s perspective; rather, we continue to think we know better than God what is best for ourselves.

A relationship of loving union with Jesus, a transformative union: it is what Jesus means when He says He is the only way to God, the Father (John 14:6).  No other relationship will do.  None.

Becoming my true self in relationship with Christ, this is what it truly means to be “saved.”