Finding (and Losing) Your Self
I came across this quote from the 1949 novel The Fires of Spring. A major character says:
There is a constant stream of messages in our culture:
Find yourself.
Make yourself.
Be yourself.
Be true to yourself.
Or the old Army slogan: "Be all you can be."
Like so many ideas, there is something positive and even biblical in these words.
What is positive and biblical is that the SELF is amazing, valuable, unique, and worth a great deal of good energy to maximize.
What is positive and biblical is that there is always MORE to discover about the SELF. You are always in process. You have depths you have not yet attained and horizons you have not yet discovered.
C.S. Lewis is one of those Christian authors who helps us understand the beauty, glory, and dignity of the human person fully alive in God.
For this is the journey that we make: to find ourselves. If we fail in this, it doesn't much matter what else we find. Money, position, fame, many loves, revenge are all of little consequence, and when the tickets are collected at the end of the ride, they are tossed into a bin marked FAILURE.
There is a constant stream of messages in our culture:
Find yourself.
Make yourself.
Be yourself.
Be true to yourself.
Or the old Army slogan: "Be all you can be."
Like so many ideas, there is something positive and even biblical in these words.
What is positive and biblical is that the SELF is amazing, valuable, unique, and worth a great deal of good energy to maximize.
What is positive and biblical is that there is always MORE to discover about the SELF. You are always in process. You have depths you have not yet attained and horizons you have not yet discovered.
C.S. Lewis is one of those Christian authors who helps us understand the beauty, glory, and dignity of the human person fully alive in God.
And that is where the above messages often go off track.
They all leave God out of the equation.
They all turn the journey about self into a SELF-MADE and Self-Determined effort.
They all fall short of acknowledging how difficult that journey is, how many dead-end detours there are, and the generous offer of a gracious God to REDEEM the self.
For not only is the SELF amazing and beautiful, the SELF is finite, fragile, at times very foolish, and at all times fallen.
They all leave God out of the equation.
They all turn the journey about self into a SELF-MADE and Self-Determined effort.
They all fall short of acknowledging how difficult that journey is, how many dead-end detours there are, and the generous offer of a gracious God to REDEEM the self.
For not only is the SELF amazing and beautiful, the SELF is finite, fragile, at times very foolish, and at all times fallen.
It is still true: You cannot pull your SELF up by your own bootstraps.
If our own personal limitations are not bad enough, there is also the problem of making a bad journey because the desired destination is the wrong end.
Contrary to popular opinion, the journey is NOT the destination. The journey is just that--the journey. A journey, by itself, does not make much sense without a destination. A good journey needs a worthy destination.
It is like the problem Alice faced and which the Cheshire Cat pointed out.
“Cat: Where are you going?
Alice: Which way should I go?
Cat: That depends on where you are going.
Alice: I don’t know.
Cat: Then it doesn’t matter which way you go.”
Alice: Which way should I go?
Cat: That depends on where you are going.
Alice: I don’t know.
Cat: Then it doesn’t matter which way you go.”
The journey is NOT the destination. A journey needs a destination. A good journey needs a worthy end.
These things are especially true when it comes to the Journey of Finding Your Self. That road must bend toward Jesus, and then through Jesus, and then with Jesus.
HEAR the words of Jesus on this...
Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it. What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul?" Mark 8:24-27
Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it. Matthew 7:13-14
We truly and only find our REAL SELF in Jesus. Apart from Jesus, we will find or make a distorted self, walking wrong roads to bad ends.
Here is the quote once more. Read it in view of what Jesus said.
Living Word is here to help you MAKE A GOOD JOURNEY to the only worthy END. And that END is both the beginning and the end, the alpha and omega, and everything in between.
It turns out the real journey is NOT to find your SELF.
The real journey is to FIND JESUS.
And in finding Jesus, then you find your TRUE SELF.
A self alive, reborn in the love of God, full of the Spirit of God, a new creation in Christ.
It is a privilege and joy to walk on those roads with you.
Pastor Brian Rice
For this is the journey that we make: to find ourselves. If we fail in this, it doesn't much matter what else we find. Money, position, fame, many loves, revenge are all of little consequence, and when the tickets are collected at the end of the ride, they are tossed into a bin marked FAILURE.
Living Word is here to help you MAKE A GOOD JOURNEY to the only worthy END. And that END is both the beginning and the end, the alpha and omega, and everything in between.
It turns out the real journey is NOT to find your SELF.
The real journey is to FIND JESUS.
And in finding Jesus, then you find your TRUE SELF.
A self alive, reborn in the love of God, full of the Spirit of God, a new creation in Christ.
It is a privilege and joy to walk on those roads with you.
Pastor Brian Rice