Why I Gave Up on Finding Myself
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but “you be you” has become the mantra of our day. I am constantly being told that being true to myself is life’s most important pursuit. Once I discover that true self, it is dishonest and unhealthy for me not to align my outward reality with the true self that I have discovered.
This is the “gospel” – the good news of deliverance – that secular culture offers. By telling me to be true to myself, I can cast off the bondage of outward expectations and be true to my deepest longings and desires.
But this is not just about gender and sexuality. This cultural mandate to discover and be true to myself affects every aspect of our lives. In everything from marriage to career to how I respond to the pandemic, I am being told that sincerity is the final test of truth and authenticity is the highest virtue. And the more daring my departure from traditional expectations, the more my choices will be celebrated.
A moving target
There are problems, of course, with this cultural mandate. One is that it is a moving target. When will I ever know that I’ve plumbed down to the lowest, deepest level of my selfhood to discover who I truly am?
Very little of my self-identity as an adolescent has survived into adulthood; I’ve learned far too much about myself to be satisfied with the ideal version of my life that I envisioned as a teenager. (For the record, my youthful career ambitions ranged from theology to NBA stardom to psychology and marketing. Neither teaching nor the pastorate even made it onto my radar as an adolescent.)
Even adulthood cannot bring any great clarity in this matter. Because my assignment is to find my true self, I must think of this as a life-long quest. If my self-understanding is greater now than it was ten years ago, I should expect that it will be even greater ten years from now. My self-understanding must constantly evolve as I discover deeper and deeper aspects of my true self.
A corrupted source
I don’t know if you noticed how many times the word “self” appeared so far in this piece (15). This highlights another problem with the cultural mandate to discover and express my inmost identity: there’s only so much self-scrutiny I can stand.
Why? Because the more deeply I examine my inner self, the more disillusioned I become. When I look deep within, I find that my heart is, as Calvin put it, a “factory of idols.” Or, going even further back, the Hebrew prophet Jeremiah put it best: “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” (Jer 17:9, KJV).
An unforgiving tyrant
But the biggest problem with this cultural mandate to be true to myself is that it is tyrannical. Because there is no higher authority than my inner voice, I have a deep, life-long obligation to align my life – my habits, my priorities, the totality of my outward expression – with the unquestionable authority of my impulses.
You can see the problem with this: my true inner self can make enormous claims on my life that can have a catastrophic impact on my relationships, on my career, on the trajectory of my life. But because my inner life must hold absolute sway over my life, I have no choice but to accommodate those inner longings, regardless of the cost.
All this means that this cultural mandate to find myself is no gospel at all. This call to enhanced selfhood requires me to commit to a life-long quest I can never hope to complete, it demands that I delve deep into the cesspool of my heart, and I must sacrifice everything to the demands of my wandering desires.
This is not a gospel – not good news at all. It is an invitation to a particular kind of hopeless private misery, the prison of the self.
The call of Jesus
But none of this is the reason I’ve had to give up on finding myself. I can and must disregard this cultural mandate because I am a Christian. My Master said that if I want to follow him, I must not discover myself but deny myself (Mark 8:34).
Jesus knew what a tyrant the self can be, and he came to deliver us from bondage to the self. He invites us to take on the “yoke” of following him, learning how to obey him, how to suffer well for him, how to be part of his new community.
Denying myself sounds like heresy in our self-obsessed culture because it is. Jesus lays claim to be the lord and king over all that I am, banishing all the pretenders to the throne of my life: not just the claims of my selfhood but also the claims of my tribe, my profession, even my family.
Jesus is telling me that it is only as I surrender all my allegiances to his lordship that I can ever discover what I was created to be. God did not design me to be a self-absorbed individualist, an angry tribalist, a workaholic professional, an anxious parent. All these identities swear allegiance to idols that will ultimately betray me.
In following Jesus, I find my deepest identity in the love he showed me by dying for me while I was still in my sin. I find my identity not in my inward desires but outwardly, in the hope that the Spirit will finish His sanctifying work in my life, reshaping my priorities and reordering my loves toward a whole new version of myself that looks and thinks and acts more like my Master, Jesus.
So instead of peering into my wicked heart to find my true self, I look outward to find my identity in Christ. This means that regardless of my family status, my professional status, the state of my personal relationships, or even the state of my conscience, I find my worth not in my performance but as the object of God’s lavish, unfailing love.
I can acknowledge that my heart is wicked and still have joy in my identity because my joy is not based on the state of my heart or on my outward behavior but on who I am in Christ.
Anchoring my identity in Christ means that on my best days, I can’t make God love me more, and on my worst days, He won’t love me less. This is a self-image that can carry me through the peaks and troughs of my turbulent life.
So, no, I don’t need to be a slave to the cultural mandate to find and be true to myself. Jesus has called me to give up that hopeless quest and instead follow him.
Persevere,
Paul Pyle
Discipleship Weekly