I had the opportunity to listen to an atheist's sermon this week. It stirred up a lot of thoughts, but one has been haunting me this whole week. While speaking, the man kind of told the story of life from his perspective--it was atoms and molecules evolving over time to come to a place where life has meaning because we give it meaning--because we choose and emote and live, the sun has meaning, for example. And as he painted this picture of life and how we are all connected to one another and all other natural matter, I had just a moment or two where I felt what I would feel if I did not believe in God. For just a moment, I identified with the reality he was painting to the point where God disappeared and it was just us--the natural world--existing and moving and living.
And as I imagined the world of space and time swirling and moving--dancing almost--to create atoms and life, I felt a profound sense of emptiness. The natural world felt distant and cold compared to what I'd felt a moment before.
What I realized in those moments is that my entire reality, my entire identity is built on the belief and experience that I am created and loved by the God of the universe. I believe and live life like there is a God whose primary character is love who creates and brings order and brings life. And even though I don't understand why horrible things happen, and even when the world seems so dark and excruciatingly painful because of all the evil that exists from day to day, I wake up in the morning and I go to bed at night knowing that God searches me and knows me, that he knit me together in my mother's womb, that he knows when every sparrow falls, and he knows the number of hairs on my head. I am precious and valuable because he loves me--not because of what I have done, because of who I am, or because of where I have been or where I am going. I am one who is loved.
This belief affects me profoundly. It gives me hope and confidence and a measure of peace and purpose in life. It gives me reason to love and to live and to care. It motivates me to be the best kind of human being I can be. It makes me want to give of myself and make life better. Because I am loved and cared for, I want to be loving and care for other people.
I've mentioned my studies of stories of people who met Jesus, and how the "eternal life" that he offered people was not so much about life after death, but about life with the eternal one. In our Sunday night meetings, we often talked about what life with the eternal one is like. Many times people conjured up pictures of a utopian existence--palm trees and clouds and all the other icons we associate with peace and rest. But for me, it's this sense of knowledge and relationship with a good and loving God--that's what life with the eternal one is like. It's being one who is loved, nothing more and nothing less.
Showing posts with label identity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label identity. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
Saturday, June 25, 2011
New identity
"Conversion to Jesus is best defined as the transformation of identity in Christ, the conversion of a person in his deepest being; conversion means the transformation of an 'I am who I am' to an 'I am who I am in Christ' identity." Scot McKnight & Hauna Ondrey, Finding Faith, Losing Faith (Baylor Press, 2008).
What would make someone accept Christ's view of her rather than her own view of herself? If being a Christian is really allowing Jesus to give you an identity, to name you, to tell you who you are, then what would make someone willing to allow him to have that kind of power in her life?
Well, who do we normally allow to tell us who we are? Our parents. Our friends. The people we allow closest to our hearts.
So it seems like one of the most important steps toward faith for a person whose barrier is her identity must be to learn who Jesus is. More than that, to really know Jesus, as you might get to know a human being in your life, and to learn that he is trustworthy and good. And even more than that, to actually begin to trust him at an emotional level.
I saw a lot of that going in the Encounters with Jesus stories we've been doing on Sunday nights. One after one, the people met Jesus. Usually they'd heard something about him before. They also had the benefit of seeing his effect on other people within the community before they had their own encounters. Then they met with him, and they trusted him, and most of them accepted his invitation into a life based on who he is and what he said about who they were.
So it seems to me that the only answer/response to a person's identity barrier to faith is to introduce her to Jesus. It's to pray night and day for the Spirit to move in her life. It's to walk with her as Jesus would. It's to invite her to hear the voice of Jesus in the stories of the gospels, and eventually to hear his voice in her own life.
Intellectual barriers to faith can be discussed at an intellectual level, and there are hundreds of resources to suggest that might answer those questions. Emotional barriers can be responded to with thoughtful questions and loving listening and a commitment to walk alongside a person. But identity barriers will only be overcome when a person trusts the One who is offering a new identity. I think that will only happen when someone truly encounters the living Christ.
Come, Lord Jesus. Come. May those in our lives who do not yet know you experience your presence in as real a way as Nicodemus, the woman at the well, or Zaccheus did. Transform your church to be your true image-bearers in the world, so that those who encounter the church can encounter you. May your invitation to "come, follow me" reverberate in the hearts and souls and lives of our friends. Your voice is the only voice that has the power and gravity and love to issue such an invitation and to proclaim a new identity. Come, Lord Jesus. Come.
What would make someone accept Christ's view of her rather than her own view of herself? If being a Christian is really allowing Jesus to give you an identity, to name you, to tell you who you are, then what would make someone willing to allow him to have that kind of power in her life?
Well, who do we normally allow to tell us who we are? Our parents. Our friends. The people we allow closest to our hearts.
So it seems like one of the most important steps toward faith for a person whose barrier is her identity must be to learn who Jesus is. More than that, to really know Jesus, as you might get to know a human being in your life, and to learn that he is trustworthy and good. And even more than that, to actually begin to trust him at an emotional level.
I saw a lot of that going in the Encounters with Jesus stories we've been doing on Sunday nights. One after one, the people met Jesus. Usually they'd heard something about him before. They also had the benefit of seeing his effect on other people within the community before they had their own encounters. Then they met with him, and they trusted him, and most of them accepted his invitation into a life based on who he is and what he said about who they were.
So it seems to me that the only answer/response to a person's identity barrier to faith is to introduce her to Jesus. It's to pray night and day for the Spirit to move in her life. It's to walk with her as Jesus would. It's to invite her to hear the voice of Jesus in the stories of the gospels, and eventually to hear his voice in her own life.
Intellectual barriers to faith can be discussed at an intellectual level, and there are hundreds of resources to suggest that might answer those questions. Emotional barriers can be responded to with thoughtful questions and loving listening and a commitment to walk alongside a person. But identity barriers will only be overcome when a person trusts the One who is offering a new identity. I think that will only happen when someone truly encounters the living Christ.
Come, Lord Jesus. Come. May those in our lives who do not yet know you experience your presence in as real a way as Nicodemus, the woman at the well, or Zaccheus did. Transform your church to be your true image-bearers in the world, so that those who encounter the church can encounter you. May your invitation to "come, follow me" reverberate in the hearts and souls and lives of our friends. Your voice is the only voice that has the power and gravity and love to issue such an invitation and to proclaim a new identity. Come, Lord Jesus. Come.
Thursday, June 16, 2011
The power of a chosen identity
I am one of those people who has actively chosen her identity.
In my identity formation years, those years that we typically sort of separate from our parents and decide who we're going to become, I was living in Asia. More than that, I'd just moved to Asia. It was my first time living outside my own culture, so I had all those thoughts and feelings and questions that you have when you move to a new culture. But those questions and thoughts and feelings coincided with the time that I was going to be deciding who I wanted to be.
I remember realizing that I actually had a choice about that. And that maybe those choices were broader than I'd grown up thinking. I remember realizing that my home culture valued dark skin (tans), while all my Asian friends thought it was great that I was so fair. They wanted my skin. I realized that what we think is beautiful is so much informed by what our culture tells us is beautiful (or by what we don't have). That made me think that I could choose. If they wanted to be white, and we wanted to be dark, why couldn't I just be happy with my own skin, my own teeth, my own hair, my own body? And that made me think about other things. Like the political system. I grew up believing that our form of democracy is the best in the world. It gives the most freedom, etc. But they don't have the same system where I lived. And people were generally happy with it. In fact, most Singaporeans really believe that Singapore is the best place in the world. (I learned later in a Sociology class that this is called ethnocentrism, and every culture has it).
Anyway, moving overseas when I did really opened up my eyes to see how many things that I believed were based on my culture. And it kind of gave me permission to question everything. So I did. My process of identity formation was to hold up everything I knew and question its value. Of course, at this time I had to figure out how I was going to measure that. How was I going to decide what was good and what was bad? How was I going to decide which things from my original culture I was going to keep and which things I was going to adopt from my new culture? And because I was a Christian--I already had a relationship with God that was real and personal and becoming ever more so because of how much time I was spending with him (a whole other story...)--I decided to measure things based on how they held up against what I believed the Bible showed about who God is. God's character, I guess you could say.
So I went through that process. When I was deciding what I was going to value or how I was going to approach things or what things were going to take my time and energy, I held them up to God's character and to the moral principles that Scripture taught. And little by little I chose my identity. I chose it. I made a rational decision about who I was going to be, where I was going to go, and what was going to be meaningful to me.
If someone now introduced me to a new way of life, a new way of thinking, a new god... I don't think there's any way I would walk away from what I've already chosen. In all my conversations with my atheist friend, I can appreciate every point that he makes. I think a lot of them are valid--at least I can understand why and how believing there is no God leads him to make the decisions that he makes. I can understand how another system, many other systems, can exist that give people a basis for morality and ethics and a philosophical approach to life. But I have no reason to want to abandon my own. I have no reason to walk away from my own. Because I chose it. I already ascribed value to it. I have been living according to it now for a good 20 years. To turn my back on it now would be to lose my identity. A hard-fought-for, already proven identity. Why would I do that?
If it's true that Jesus invites us into an identity--or even to our true identity--as created ones, the children of God, loved of God, ambassadors of Christ, then the fact that a person has already chosen a different identity must affect her openness and willingness to consider following Christ. It's so much bigger for her than for people who don't have an identity yet (like children), whose identities are ascribed to them by others, who don't like the identity they have (like as a "poor" person or a "murderer"), or for those whose identity is not that much different from the identity that Jesus offers.
What about the identity that Jesus offers is so compelling that it would motivate someone to lay down an identity he has chosen and receive the one that Jesus is offering?
. . . ?
In my identity formation years, those years that we typically sort of separate from our parents and decide who we're going to become, I was living in Asia. More than that, I'd just moved to Asia. It was my first time living outside my own culture, so I had all those thoughts and feelings and questions that you have when you move to a new culture. But those questions and thoughts and feelings coincided with the time that I was going to be deciding who I wanted to be.
I remember realizing that I actually had a choice about that. And that maybe those choices were broader than I'd grown up thinking. I remember realizing that my home culture valued dark skin (tans), while all my Asian friends thought it was great that I was so fair. They wanted my skin. I realized that what we think is beautiful is so much informed by what our culture tells us is beautiful (or by what we don't have). That made me think that I could choose. If they wanted to be white, and we wanted to be dark, why couldn't I just be happy with my own skin, my own teeth, my own hair, my own body? And that made me think about other things. Like the political system. I grew up believing that our form of democracy is the best in the world. It gives the most freedom, etc. But they don't have the same system where I lived. And people were generally happy with it. In fact, most Singaporeans really believe that Singapore is the best place in the world. (I learned later in a Sociology class that this is called ethnocentrism, and every culture has it).
Anyway, moving overseas when I did really opened up my eyes to see how many things that I believed were based on my culture. And it kind of gave me permission to question everything. So I did. My process of identity formation was to hold up everything I knew and question its value. Of course, at this time I had to figure out how I was going to measure that. How was I going to decide what was good and what was bad? How was I going to decide which things from my original culture I was going to keep and which things I was going to adopt from my new culture? And because I was a Christian--I already had a relationship with God that was real and personal and becoming ever more so because of how much time I was spending with him (a whole other story...)--I decided to measure things based on how they held up against what I believed the Bible showed about who God is. God's character, I guess you could say.
So I went through that process. When I was deciding what I was going to value or how I was going to approach things or what things were going to take my time and energy, I held them up to God's character and to the moral principles that Scripture taught. And little by little I chose my identity. I chose it. I made a rational decision about who I was going to be, where I was going to go, and what was going to be meaningful to me.
If someone now introduced me to a new way of life, a new way of thinking, a new god... I don't think there's any way I would walk away from what I've already chosen. In all my conversations with my atheist friend, I can appreciate every point that he makes. I think a lot of them are valid--at least I can understand why and how believing there is no God leads him to make the decisions that he makes. I can understand how another system, many other systems, can exist that give people a basis for morality and ethics and a philosophical approach to life. But I have no reason to want to abandon my own. I have no reason to walk away from my own. Because I chose it. I already ascribed value to it. I have been living according to it now for a good 20 years. To turn my back on it now would be to lose my identity. A hard-fought-for, already proven identity. Why would I do that?
If it's true that Jesus invites us into an identity--or even to our true identity--as created ones, the children of God, loved of God, ambassadors of Christ, then the fact that a person has already chosen a different identity must affect her openness and willingness to consider following Christ. It's so much bigger for her than for people who don't have an identity yet (like children), whose identities are ascribed to them by others, who don't like the identity they have (like as a "poor" person or a "murderer"), or for those whose identity is not that much different from the identity that Jesus offers.
What about the identity that Jesus offers is so compelling that it would motivate someone to lay down an identity he has chosen and receive the one that Jesus is offering?
. . . ?
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Identity as a barrier to faith
Once in a while I get to know someone whose main barrier to faith, besides the spiritual barrier of pride and self-direction that all of us face, is their identity. For whatever reason and in whatever way, these people have adopted an identity that they view as incompatible with faith in God. I wrote about one woman whose primary barrier seemed to be her identity here.
After a lot of years and a lot more conversations with people, it seems to me that all identity-barriers are not the same strength. For example, identities that we are given by others but don't fully own might not be so hard to let go of. If I have someone telling me that I'm not good enough for anything, and I believe it and I start to live in that reality, then that can present as an emotional barrier to faith in God. I might believe that I'm not good enough to be loved by him and I might avoid receiving his love and pursuit of me. But if I didn't choose that identity and I don't really like it, then maybe it's not going to be so difficult for me to lay it down and walk away from it toward Jesus. Difficult, yes. Scary and vulnerable? Of course. But not impossible.
But what about those identities we choose? What about those identities that we go through the process of excavating from the dust of our lives? What if we uncover or decide to be something after a lot of thought and struggle? And what if that identity is contrary to everything that Jesus invites us into? Can that barrier be overcome? What does it do to the person to lose that identity? What would it take to make that person want to lay down one identity to receive the identity that Jesus is offering? Does the process of laying down one identity that's closely held and receiving another identity destroy a person?
These seem like such important questions to me. At the emotional barrier level, I feel like I've kind of figured the dance of give and take and listening and challenge and prayer that helps people move through those barriers toward Jesus.
But the identity level seems like a whole different ballgame. First, because the identity I've chosen or uncovered is important to me. So important that I can't even imagine letting it go. If I chose it, then I chose it for a reason. And if I uncovered the identity then I probably don't feel like I have the ability to choose another one, even if that other one looks really good to me. It seems that here, more than anywhere else, the Spirit has to move and Jesus's invitation to follow and assume a new identity has to come from him.
So these are just the beginnings of questions and thoughts for me, but I think I'd like to take these identity questions one at a time as I process them. I'd like to think out loud here about the possible implications for conversations and invitations to faith. I feel like this is my next step in learning to walk with people spiritually wherever they are in that process.
After a lot of years and a lot more conversations with people, it seems to me that all identity-barriers are not the same strength. For example, identities that we are given by others but don't fully own might not be so hard to let go of. If I have someone telling me that I'm not good enough for anything, and I believe it and I start to live in that reality, then that can present as an emotional barrier to faith in God. I might believe that I'm not good enough to be loved by him and I might avoid receiving his love and pursuit of me. But if I didn't choose that identity and I don't really like it, then maybe it's not going to be so difficult for me to lay it down and walk away from it toward Jesus. Difficult, yes. Scary and vulnerable? Of course. But not impossible.
But what about those identities we choose? What about those identities that we go through the process of excavating from the dust of our lives? What if we uncover or decide to be something after a lot of thought and struggle? And what if that identity is contrary to everything that Jesus invites us into? Can that barrier be overcome? What does it do to the person to lose that identity? What would it take to make that person want to lay down one identity to receive the identity that Jesus is offering? Does the process of laying down one identity that's closely held and receiving another identity destroy a person?
These seem like such important questions to me. At the emotional barrier level, I feel like I've kind of figured the dance of give and take and listening and challenge and prayer that helps people move through those barriers toward Jesus.
But the identity level seems like a whole different ballgame. First, because the identity I've chosen or uncovered is important to me. So important that I can't even imagine letting it go. If I chose it, then I chose it for a reason. And if I uncovered the identity then I probably don't feel like I have the ability to choose another one, even if that other one looks really good to me. It seems that here, more than anywhere else, the Spirit has to move and Jesus's invitation to follow and assume a new identity has to come from him.
So these are just the beginnings of questions and thoughts for me, but I think I'd like to take these identity questions one at a time as I process them. I'd like to think out loud here about the possible implications for conversations and invitations to faith. I feel like this is my next step in learning to walk with people spiritually wherever they are in that process.
Thursday, November 11, 2010
The Historian
I once had an ongoing conversation with an historian. We'll call her Mary for the sake of this post.
So Mary was struggling with her faith. She'd grown up in a very conservative, fundamentalist home and church. And she'd owned that life and belief system--surrendering her life to Christ and trying to follow him each day. She did all those things that we normally use to identify followers of Christ. She went to church, she read her Bible, and she acted like a Christian.
And then she went to college. She studied history--first with a lot of excitement and interest because of how it would encourage her faith and help her defend the truth of Scripture. Soon she learned that the study of history involves evaluating historical evidence for the probability of its truth. So she bought into this system.
And as she began to apply this system to the facts found in the Bible, she began to question the truth of the Bible because many of the stories she grew up believing did not measure up to the probability analysis.
When we first started talking, that's exactly where Mary was at--in this tension. She believed that her probability analysis that she learned in history was the best way to evaluate truth. She struggled, because now she had two different systems that were competing for her loyalty. There was still a part of her that wanted to believe that the God of the Bible is true. But she couldn't because she'd accepted this other system of evaluation instead.
I spent a lot of time talking with her about different standards of measuring truth and the different standards of measuring truth and the historicity of the Scripture and the death and resurrection of Jesus. She was willing to admit that Jesus's existence, death, and resurrection were probably true under her probability analysis. But she could not walk in surrender to God. Why not?
Further conversations revealed some possible reasons. First, somewhere along the way she took on the identity of an historian. She defined herself as one, and to accept Christianity in whole was to her to reject her historical measuring system. To reject that, she would actually have to reject herself.
She couldn't do it. Even though we made it through most of her rational arguments against faith and she was semi-satisfied with the answers to her objections, she couldn't take that final step in letting go of her identity for long enough to find another way to define herself. Unfortunately, she's not made that journey yet.
Another possibility had to do with some immense suffering someone close to her had had. Here, too, we spent some time talking about the rational issues of suffering in people's lives and evil and injustice in the world. But the answers--the good, rational answers to these questions did not penetrate. Why not?
I think it's an emotional barrier. It's not that she thinks there's no logical way for God and suffering to coexist. it's just that she can't believe that a good God would allow suffering. Emphasis on the word "can't." Right now, she just can't make it through.
So Mary was struggling with her faith. She'd grown up in a very conservative, fundamentalist home and church. And she'd owned that life and belief system--surrendering her life to Christ and trying to follow him each day. She did all those things that we normally use to identify followers of Christ. She went to church, she read her Bible, and she acted like a Christian.
And then she went to college. She studied history--first with a lot of excitement and interest because of how it would encourage her faith and help her defend the truth of Scripture. Soon she learned that the study of history involves evaluating historical evidence for the probability of its truth. So she bought into this system.
And as she began to apply this system to the facts found in the Bible, she began to question the truth of the Bible because many of the stories she grew up believing did not measure up to the probability analysis.
When we first started talking, that's exactly where Mary was at--in this tension. She believed that her probability analysis that she learned in history was the best way to evaluate truth. She struggled, because now she had two different systems that were competing for her loyalty. There was still a part of her that wanted to believe that the God of the Bible is true. But she couldn't because she'd accepted this other system of evaluation instead.
I spent a lot of time talking with her about different standards of measuring truth and the different standards of measuring truth and the historicity of the Scripture and the death and resurrection of Jesus. She was willing to admit that Jesus's existence, death, and resurrection were probably true under her probability analysis. But she could not walk in surrender to God. Why not?
Further conversations revealed some possible reasons. First, somewhere along the way she took on the identity of an historian. She defined herself as one, and to accept Christianity in whole was to her to reject her historical measuring system. To reject that, she would actually have to reject herself.
She couldn't do it. Even though we made it through most of her rational arguments against faith and she was semi-satisfied with the answers to her objections, she couldn't take that final step in letting go of her identity for long enough to find another way to define herself. Unfortunately, she's not made that journey yet.
Another possibility had to do with some immense suffering someone close to her had had. Here, too, we spent some time talking about the rational issues of suffering in people's lives and evil and injustice in the world. But the answers--the good, rational answers to these questions did not penetrate. Why not?
I think it's an emotional barrier. It's not that she thinks there's no logical way for God and suffering to coexist. it's just that she can't believe that a good God would allow suffering. Emphasis on the word "can't." Right now, she just can't make it through.
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