The Real You

Do not think that if you could shear away the excesses (apparently accrued through external struggle and impositions, skewing and burying the "Real You"), you would find great beauty. Do not believe that you would find glory.

Thinking in that way stems from an incorrect anthropology. As Jesus, Who knows humanity perfectly, said, "For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person." (Mark 7:21-23)

What proceeds from the heart of unregenerate humanity? Darkness. On our own, we are wicked, enslaved to transgression (Eph. 2:1-3). Many people believe that through seclusion and long, serene retreats, we can discover ourselves. We can remove the accretions that busyness and hardship have deposited on us, if only we capture a glimpse of who we "really are." 

No. Our fall is not in the external world. It is internal. It's within us. Our hearts are filthy and evil, bent on rebelling against God. 

No redemption will be found in discovering your authentic self. If you are seeing yourself truly, you will only find wickedness and insufficiency. 

Understanding this is incredibly liberating, actually, but only when you see Jesus Christ.

Jesus Christ is the only sinless and innocent One. He is the only One to look to--the only true Person in whom is true beauty and glory. He is the only One whose heart (whose very being, the fabric of self) was totally untinged by evil. From His heart proceeded pure and undefiled love for God above all and love for His neighbor as Himself. That is all. Nothing else. And this love took on its appropriate characteristics: compassion, mercy, wrath, forgiveness, and self-sacrifice. Only in Him!

And our hope rests on Him. Our hope rests in His redemption of our fallenness, not in discovering an unfallen version of ourselves (after all, there is none).

So don't try to find the real you. If you were to see the real you, you would shriek. If you see the perfect One, though, and the fact that He has lovingly offered Himself on the cross to cleanse you from your wickedness, then you will find true joy and beauty and glory. Then the accretions, which are no accretions but rather processions from your wicked heart, will be cleansed and taken away. Indeed, as you believe in Him, receiving the only perfect One, you are made into a new creation. "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come." -2 Corinthians 5:17

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Confessions of a Recovering Legalist

Image
Last week one morning, I woke up around 4 a.m. and could not go back to sleep. The more I lay awake, the more frustrated and discouraged I became. I couldn't fall back asleep, and I knew that I would likely feel grumpy for the rest of the day.  At long last, I got out of bed, my head a steaming pile of garbage, a whirring train of anxiety and stress. I went to the word, thinking that I would find joy and solace there. Instead, I slogged through a chapter and felt like I couldn't do much more.  That morning, I realized again that I was depending on getting my emotions just right before God to be "okay" with him. That I was hoping for a beautiful, soaring devotional time to feel "right" with him. Out of that realization, I started to journal, and I added to this journaling session through the rest of the week. Here are some of the realizations I came to (or, if I'm honest, came to again for the umpteenth time): "It's almost too good to believe tha...
Read more

The Terror and the King

Image
My soul makes its boast in the Lord. It seems to me that there is a scourge afflicting many Anabaptists. A black cloud hanging dark and heavy. A spirit of fear, of performance, of OCD. I remember being a young boy in the elementary classroom and needing to balance and control the feeling of fingers on chairs. I'd tap the chair with one finger and quickly, to balance, tap the same finger of the other hand. Balanced sensation. Safety. Control. A safety and control won by the labor of my hands. Hands on metal, hands on metal, and I'll make it all feel safe. I remember in college feeling a dark weight of guilt, like an oppressive burden that made the days feel as gray and gloomy as the Frostburg skies. Like a constant gavel sounding in my heart. If I were truly spiritual, truly approved, my soul would shun food and fast and pray. I would stay away from McDonald's after Cru nights to fast and pray. I would stay down on those cold November evenings, strongly and piously resisting...
Read more

A Weekend in Minneapolis

Image
I spent the past weekend in Minneapolis, visiting the always-delightful Peter and Erin Wadel, along with their two sons, as well as some of the Afghan students I taught two years ago.  Several days before I flew out, I developed some stomach sickness that lingered into the first several days of the trip. Thanks be to God, it didn't end up hindering my time with students and friends too much. Because of the stomach problems, I did tell A., one of my Afghan students, not  to prepare food for me when I came to visit. Nevertheless, when I showed up at his door along with Peter and his son, it quickly became clear that not only would we have the requisite snacks, but we would also have a whole meal. Heaping plates of rice and beef were plunked down before us, along with sweet pudding and the regular snack tray of almonds, candies, and other assorted nuts and fruits. And, of course, tea. Green tea, this time. I chose to risk it and ate a good bit of my rice and beef, and drank some ...
Read more