Version of Yourself

I was talking with some friends recently, and we talked about the fact that we have books on our shelves in our room that we have had for years and have never read (books like Calvin's full Institutes of the Christian Religion). They all maintained that they would definitely get around to reading these books someday (liars) but I commented that I think we will never ever read them. I think we have certain books on our shelves, not because we will ever read them, but because we like the person we would be if we did read them. We look at that book and we see a version of ourselves that we would be if we actually did read the book, so we keep the book, not because we're ever going to read it, but because we don't want to give up on that version of who we could be (that version we prefer.)

I think we do lots of things in life for this reason. We make friends with certain people or do certain things or believe certain things, not necessarily because of the merit of the things itself and not even because we actually like the thing itself, but because we like the people we are when we do/have that thing. We like the person that that thing makes us.

I have a friend who has two huge dogs. She recently told me that she wants to get rid of the dogs because they're mammoth and chew everything, but that her husband said they should keep them. His reason for keeping the dogs was this: when we're 80 and look back on our lives, don't you want to remember having two cool St. Bernards? He was using this logic I'm talking about. Never did he say anything about enjoying the dogs or wanting them right now. That wasn't the defense. He just wanted to be able to say that he was the kind of person who had St. Bernards. He doesn't like the dogs. He likes the version of himself that he is when he has the dogs.

I think we all do this with things, and I don't even think it's a bad thing. I think we can honor the Lord by doing right and good things, not because we want to, but because we want to be the kind of righteous person who would do it. (I realize the potential legalism and the holes in this argument and I see them myself, but I think there is still a measure of truth here that's worth mentioning.)

I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing to do something, not because we like it or will enjoy it or will even use it, but because we like the person we are when we have it/do it. I just think we need to be aware of the motivation.

Mirror, Mirror

This year, I have really felt God speaking to me in ways that are louder and more noticeable than normal. (At least, I hope it's Him and not me just attributing my own thoughts to His voice...) Anyway, I think that in this, He is honoring a request of mine. At the begging of this year, I felt Him asking me to evaluate what I was actively, tangibly doing to contribute to the Kingdom. Not just "being nice" or "trying to love" or "being a witness with my life"or all those other things we say to ease our guilt over Kingdom laziness. But what was I presently, purposefully doing to make a real contribution to Kingdom work? What was I doing right then that, when I stood before Him, would be worth mentioning?

Not to minimize the value and true merit of working towards holy living in a daily way, but really, the answer was.... kind of.... nothing. Not really....

I thought about starting to pray that God would provide ways for me to begin being a powerful worker for Him, but what I decided instead was to pray for God to show me the things in my life that were currently keeping me from it and to help me to start changing those.

he has showed me many things, but the biggest and most important, I think, has been about identity. I feel that He keeps sending me the world Identity. He spoke to me through a book called The Mirror Effect (Pinsky). (It isn't a Christian book! Could He possibly use that?? Who can say...)

This book talks about a mirror effect, in which everyone around you serves always and only as a mirror. In your eyes, people aren't really who they are, but they're just mirroring back to you who YOU are. You look at someone, and their opinion of you tells you who you are. If a professor likes you and gives you a good grade, you're (in your own eyes) smart and good. If your boss at work doesn't like you and criticizes you, you're (in your own eyes) bad. If you make a new friend who seems to like you, you're lovable. If you get dumped, you're disgusting. If you get a promotion, you're valuable. If your date stands you up, you're worthless. And on and on and on, with every interaction, every new opinion.

There is no sense of "this is who I am, this is always who I am, regardless of what happens during the day" - what happens during the day is what tells you who you are.

When babies are developing, they earn object permanence. This means the understanding that, if your mom walks out of the room, she's not gone, she's just away. If you have a toy, and then the toy is put behind someone's back, it isn't vanished, it's hidden, but still there. The fact that babies don't have it for a while is what makes a game like peek-a-boo fun. They can't see you, so they think you've really gone away. But as they grow, it is important that they learn object permanence, so they understand that, even though they can't see something, it isn't gone forever. It isn't completely changed. The change is situational, not forever.

I say this because, with the mirror effect (and with me!), there is very little object permanence with your identity. There is little sense that, this is who I am, and even if a circumstance changes or someone's opinion changes or something good or bad happens, who I am is constant.

What results is a severely selfish mindset in which no one has any value, except to tell you about yourself. It also results in an identity that has no permanence, but is constantly shaped and reshaped by the whims and opinions and feelings of absolutely everyone. And there are lots of people. And they rarely agree. So your identity and worth are never stable. It's very stressful.

Anyway, what I think He has been telling me is that my identity has been very unstable. I am very little object permanence with it.

I have seen in myself that I allow my own performance and my situations and other people's emotions and opinions to all be my mirrors - that is how I will define myself. What I felt God telling me, though, is that He gave me a mirror. The Bible is supposed to be my mirror. In it, I see that I am beautiful, cherished, lovable, desired, sought after, worth dying for - and this identity is as unchanging as the Book that presents it. I think that God wants us to know that who we are and how we are defined should be a stable thing that doesn't shift. And when it is rightly based in Him and His, all of a sudden, that is possible. What other people think and what happens to us and how we perform are all certainly things that matter and that should often be taken seriously and dealt with, but they are just that: things to deal with, flashes in the pan that pass as quickly as the time that contains them. They can be important things, maybe even Kingdom things, but they do not define who we are in the yes of God, and should therefore not define who we are in our own eyes.

I feel like I should have a wrap up point, but I guess I don't. I just feel like God has showed this to me about myself, and I think it's worth noting.

Anything Good

When we wonder how it is the God can allow such bad things in the world or why bad things happen to good people or all of that, I think that we are showing our hand. I think we are revealing our own misunderstanding of how deeply we ruined things when we sinned. I think we have no idea how big a deal our sin was and how completely we altered what God had created, in a massive, cosmic way. I think we have absolutely no understanding of the bigness of our choice and its consequences.

Christ’s work on the cross shows us just how big a deal our sin was, because it shows the great lengths it took and what quality of person it took to bring about a solution. If Christ's death was the only sacrifice that could, in goodness, match the bigness of our evil, then that should show us how HUGE our sin is.

This should result in a life with God as an act of thanksgiving – not because he’ll smite us, but because we are so thankful for the grace we didn’t deserve – rather than a performance, our lives should be a thankful offering, once we understand where we were without Him.

For God to have created something so wonderful and for us to have ruined it as deeply and powerfully and colossally as we did, we should not sit and look at bad things that happen and wonder how God could allow this. I think, if we understood the extensiveness of our sin, we would sit and wonder how God could possibly inject anything good. The fact that we are surprised and disgusted at bad things, as if they're so unfair, is proof that we don't understand the depth of what we did.

For God to have provided a way for us to spend a happy eternity, that is already immeasurable grace. I think it would be WAY MORE than fair for him to say, "I am going to make a way for you to have a good and happy eternity, but because you did such a bad thing, I am not going to worry about your life on earth. Go ahead and have the horrible, evil, pain-filled life that you chose, I'm not going to do anything about earthly life, but because I'm merciful, I'll let you have a good eternity, I'll make something good out of the more important of the two." Absolutely more than fair. But He goes beyond that! And takes steps to even heal our lives here! And we wonder why there is anything bad left, as if it's His fault? The fact that we would either blame Him for bad or feel ourselves entitled to anything good is proof of how blind we are to our own choice of evil. And just how huge that was.

The mystery should not be that God could ever allow anything bad but that He could ever possibly inject anything good.

Fashionably Unorthodox

I just want to say that I think we are in trouble as a generation in that we have equated orthodoxy with stodginess. Maybe this is the product of youth and something that each new generation does in its own way, but I just want to make the comment that I see our generation doing just that. Orthodox theology is associated with prudishness and judgment, while emerging, off-beat, hip theology is very cool. I have felt these leanings myself. A professor of mine in college made a good care for theistic evolution and against 7-day creationism. I found myself very swayed by him, and as I examine this swaying within me, I realized that, while his points were very solid, I was not being swayed by the convincingness of his arguments but by how cool I knew I would feel if I could reasonably reject something I had taught to me as so inherently, fundamentally true. Oh, I would pretty big stuff. I'm smart enough to know that I couldn't just reject it for no reason and cling to some other random belief. But upon having something else presented to me with enough substance to it that I could reject my old ways and take up this new, edgy belief and still be able to justify it? Well, that was all the rationale I needed. What I really wanted was to feel that free, independent, yummy feeling of rejecting something I had assumed for something much more daring and new that felt crisp and cool on my tongue, after years of having repeated back the same words, of which I had grown very bored.

My point is this - we are in a very dangerous place when we move into new beliefs, not because they are actually better, but because we have equated newness with coolness, and oh we want to feel cool. We don't want to be stuck in the stodginess of all the old people, so we label orthodoxy as uncool and justify this by calling the old beliefs "judgmental". If we have believed something that isn't good, only because we have always believed it, then that is worth getting rid of. I'm not afraid of or against moving into a new idea. But we need to ask why we are moving. Why do we like this new idea? Is it really a better idea? Do we feel God prompting this movement? Or are we just suckers for the glossiness of something new? Do we feel cooler and more enlightened and less stuck when we move forward, no matter what we're moving into?

I think, when we move, we need to consider where we're moving. But equally important is the consideration of WHY we're moving? What's prompting us? Is the new thing really better? Or does the traditional/old thing just feel smothering or boring or normal, and we're tired of that?

I see some of this as our generation of Christians moves away from some of orthodoxy Christianity (namely, into universalism). I am afraid that so much of this is motivated by the desire to feel new and edgy and cool, rather than by informed study and prayerful decision.