The video included with this blog is 13 minutes long. It is worth watching. Watch it with your children and grandchildren, if you have either. It is a Veggietales video that will bless your heart.
Who are you? Who am I? That is a question that we do not ask, but hovers in our minds. We often do not even know that it is hovering in our minds. Most of us are not as self-reflective as we think we are. We may spend hours in a slump or depressed, and think that we are so self-reflective and introverted. However, the reality is that we are often not asking the right questions, but rather, sometimes, wallowing in our misery. Sometimes, in a rather quirky way, we even get some reinforcement out of our wallowing. To give an example, have you never heard of the stereotype of the moody artist? Whether in theater, painting, sculpture, etc., it is expected that artists will be constantly and publicly self-reflecting on their angst, on their inner pain. They become emotional exhibitionist. It allows them to dump their negative self-images and suffering and be rid of them into the public arena. For some artists, however, this is not enough, and they will commit suicide, either by directly doing so or by doing it indirectly by way of drug abuse, etc.
Other people have no slump problems. They do not wallow. In fact, they appear to be rarely self-reflective. Some of these people go to the other extreme, and have a self-opinion that is exaggeratedly good. Now, it is true that one must maintain a good self-image in order to have energy to do the work which one is supposed to do. In many areas of life, one needs to step out with a certain degree of confidence and self-assurance. But, here I am talking about the people who have a beyond-rational-self-image. Perhaps a good example would be the black and white newsreel that can be found on YouTube (and other sites) of an inventor in the late 19th or early 20th century who jumped from the Eiffel Tower while wearing a self-designed parachute. He plummeted and died. Had he not had an exaggerated view, he might have tried first jumping from the roof of a one-story building. He would probably have suffered nothing worse than a broken leg, and would have lived to keep experimenting. Instead, he suffered from an overblown self-image.
Most of us are not either wallowing in misery or self-aggrandizing. We are also not necessarily, “living lives of quiet misery.” We are going about our everyday lives, dealing with the daily responsibilities, and not realizing some of the misconceptions that we carry around with us. If you have not watched the video yet, watch it now, or the next sentence will not make sense. Even when we are quietly living our everyday lives, many of us do not realize that we are carrying some baggage that has been put on us by other people. Human beings are social people. The Genesis story is making a particular point when it says that woman came out of the side of man. The Trinity is a community. We were created to be social, which means that other people can influence us in a way that would not be true had we been created to be solitaires. Because we are social, what other people think of us and reflect back to us, matters. It matters whether they think we are this or that. It matters how they judge us. Sometimes, it can matter so much that it leads to us destroying ourselves. Think of the tweens and teens who have committed suicide based on posts that have been written about them online. Sometimes, it “merely” diminishes us and has us walking through life with mistaken self-ideas and perhaps performing below the level at which we could function.
That is why it is so important to connect with God. This is why it is so important to go to the Divine Liturgy (or Sunday worship for non-liturgical Christians). This is why it is so important to partake of the Eucharist. This is why it is so important to go to Confession. This is why it is so important to pray. This is why it is so important to build relationships with sound and stable Christians. This is why it is so important to be part of a sound church. It is crucial that you learn God’s view of you. And, it is not simply that you are a sinner. Of course you sin. I sin; we sin; he, she, it sin; we sin; you sin. But, if all goes well, sin is something that is temporary. When the Resurrection comes, sin shall be gone and we shall be new. That means that who you are now and who you will be then is not basically a sinner. That is what you do. At your core, you are a person created in the image of God. That will not change either now or in the Resurrection. That will not change whether the person goes to be with the Lord or ends up in hell. Eternally, we are and shall be persons created in the image of God. That has great and incredible worth.
The challenge is to take that identity, believe it, and begin emotionally responding out of our real identity. Frankly, I am not there yet. But, “I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed, unto him against that day.”
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