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January 22 - February 6, 2021
Finding that unique self is, as noted by Thomas Merton, the problem on which all our existence, peace and happiness depend.2 Nothing is more important, for if we find our true self we find God, and if we find God, we find our most authentic self.
there are many false ways of achieving uniqueness. These all result from attempts to create a self rather than receive the gift of my self-in-Christ. But the uniqueness that comes from being our true self is not a uniqueness of our own making. Identity is never simply a creation. It is always a discovery. True identity is always a gift of God.
Christian spirituality involves a transformation of the self that occurs only when God and self are both deeply known. Both, therefore, have an important place in Christian spirituality. There is no deep knowing of God without a deep knowing of self, and no deep knowing of self without a deep knowing of God.
Self-knowledge that is pursued apart from knowing our identity in relationship to God easily leads to self-inflation.
Truly transformational knowledge is always personal, never merely objective. It involves knowing of, not merely knowing about. And it is always relational. It grows out of a relationship to the object that is known—whether this is God or one’s self.
Because personal knowing is based on experience, it requires that we be open to the experience. Knowing God’s love demands that we receive God’s love—experientially, not simply as a theory. Personal knowledge is never simply a matter of the head. Because it is rooted in experience, it is grounded in deep places in our being. The things we know from experience we know beyond belief. Such knowing is not incompatible with belief, but it is not dependent on it.
People who have never developed a deep personal knowing of God will be limited in the depth of their personal knowing of themselves. Failing to know God, they will be unable to know themselves, as God is the only context in which their being makes sense. Similarly, people who are afraid to look deeply at themselves will of course be equally afraid to look deeply at God. For such persons, ideas about God provide a substitute for direct experience of God.
The interweaving of the deepening knowledge of self and God that we have seen in Peter’s experience illustrates the way genuine knowing of God and self occurs. Peter could not truly know Jesus apart from knowing himself in relation to Jesus. He did not know himself until Jesus showed him who he was. But in learning about himself, he also came to truly know Jesus. Deep knowing of God and deep knowing of self always develop interactively. The result is the authentic transformation of the self that is at the core of Christian spirituality.
Relationships develop when people spend time together. Spending time with God ought to be the essence of prayer. However, as it is usually practiced, prayer is more like a series of email or instant messages than hanging out together. Often it involves more talking than listening. It should not be a surprise that the result is a superficial relationship.
Another struggle for me was the feeling that meditation was a waste of time. I wanted to judge it by what I got out of it. When I did, it often seemed to be a dreadfully inefficient spiritual practice. But productivity and efficiency miss the point. What God wants is simply our presence, even if it feels like a waste of potentially productive time. That is what friends do together—they waste time with each other. Simply being together is enough without expecting to “get something” from the interaction. It should be no different with God.
Genuine self-knowledge begins by looking at God and noticing how God is looking at us. Grounding our knowing of our self in God’s knowing of us anchors us in reality. It also anchors us in God.
The truth is that God loves you with what Hannah Hurnard calls “a passionate absorbed interest.”3 God cannot help seeing you through eyes of love. Even more remarkable, God’s love for you has nothing to do with your behavior. Neither your faithlessness nor your unfaithfulness alters Divine love in the slightest degree. Like the father’s love in the parable of the prodigal son, Divine love is absolutely unconditional, unlimited and unimaginably extravagant.
Neither knowing God nor knowing self can progress very far unless it begins with a knowledge of how deeply we are loved by God. Until we dare to believe that nothing can separate us from God’s love—nothing that we could do or fail to do, nor anything that could be done by anyone else to us (Romans 8:31-39)—we remain in the elementary grades of the school of Christian spiritual transformation.
Thomas Merton warns, “There is no greater disaster in the spiritual life than to be immersed in unreality, for life is maintained and nourished in us by our vital relation with reality.”1 The truly spiritual life is not an escape from reality but a total commitment to it.
Typically the trait that we prize is in fact part of who we are. But the truth always is that this trait is simply one among many. We live a lie when we make it the sum of our being.
However, what we get when we choose a way of being that is separate from God is the life of the lie. It is a lie because the autonomy that it promises is an illusion. We do not become free of God by a disregard of Divine will. Instead, by such disregard we forge the chains of our bondage.
The most basic function of our compulsions is to help us preserve our false self. But maintaining this illusion is the source of all our unhappiness. As Basil Pennington observes, unhappiness is always a result of “not being able to do something I want to do, have something I want to have, or concern about what others will think of me.”6 This brings us back to the core of the false self—placing my value in what I have, what I can do and what others think of me.
We all tend to fashion a god who fits our falsity. If my false self is built on an image of moral rectitude, I will tend to bolster this by casting God in the same light. Or if my investment is in an image of self as whimsical, spontaneous and playful, it is almost inevitable that I develop a picture of God painted with these same colors. Having first created a self in the image of our own making, we then set out to create the sort of a god who might in fact create us. Such is the perversity of the false self.
First, ask God to help you see what makes you feel most vulnerable and most like running for cover. It may be conflict. Or perhaps it is failure, pain, emotional upset or loss of face. Allow yourself to feel the distress that would be present if you did not avoid these things. Then, listening to God’s invitation to come out of the bushes in which you are hiding, step out and allow God to embrace you just as you are. Second, prayerfully reflect on the image of your self to which you are most attached. Consider how you like to think about yourself, what you are most proud of about yourself. Ask
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We do not find our true self by seeking it. Rather, we find it by seeking God. For as I have said, in finding God we find our truest and deepest self.
There is no true life apart from relationship to God. Therefore there can be no true self apart from this relationship. The foundation of our identity resides in our life-giving relationship with the Source of life. Any identity that exists apart from this relationship is an illusion.
The way of the true self is always the way of humility. Pride and arrogance move us toward our false self, but humility and love allow us to live the truth of our being. Jesus was on his way to knowing his calling because he was perfectly and completely the True Self.
Set aside some time to meditate on the Gospel account of Jesus’ trip to the temple at age twelve (Luke 2:41-50). Conduct an imaginary conversation with Jesus, asking him where he found his clear sense of his identity. Listen to him speak and watch him act. See what you can learn from his knowing of himself in relationship to God. Then pick up this conversation with Jesus as you meditate on his public declaration of his calling in the synagogue as recorded in Luke 4:16-22.
Our persona is how we want others to see us. Our identity is how we see and understand our self. This continues to develop through life. If it didn’t retain some fluidity, transformation of our self would not be possible. However, because human transformation at its core is the transformation of identity, all other changes that are part of the transformational journey flow from this.
God’s intended home is our heart, and it is meeting God in the depths of our soul that transforms us from the inside out. This is why the self is so important in the Christian transformational journey. It must be encountered, not bypassed. It must be embraced and deeply known if it is to be transformed.
