Living Death 3 - A Realistic Self-View Thursday |
The extremes are either a person with a very poor view of themselves or a person with an overly gracious view of themselves. In both of these perceptions, there is an element of truth. In God's eyes we are both worthy of the death of His Son and yet it was the state of our condition that made His death necessary. We are both made in the image of God and yet needing to be restored to His design. As one popular author wrote "God loves you just the way you are, but He refuses the leave you that way."
The kind of inward suffering that I wrote about previously comes through having a realistic view of who we are. I will relate a personal experience to you only so that you might have a better understanding of what I mean.
Two years ago in the fall, I was sensing a strong sense one evening that God wanted to talk to me about my future. I took a walk around Pennington, NJ, where I lived at the time, in order to give Him my full attention. I don't need to go into all of what God communicated to me that night, but a big part of it was my coming to realize that anything I would ever become was because of who He was and not because who I am. There was a deep sense of surrender.Within a few weeks, me, my wife and boys all came down with the flu, you know, the kind that kept you down for 5-6 days with unusually high fevers every day? On the last day I woke up with the fever being broken and strange as it sounds, almost involuntarily, I found myself praying for a death to all my desires over and over again.
I woke up in utter disgust with myself. The games I play, the pride I struggle with, my feeble attempts at ministry, the kind of father and husband I am; all these things weighed down on me until I could not stand who I was any longer.
Now, I said earlier that there are two extremes of self-image and I am not one of those who suffered from a poor one. I do not enjoy beating up on myself. I am generally not a depressed person. These feelings, although they may sound dreadful, were totally rooted in hope. There was a sense that this needed to happen, that I needed to surrender on a much deeper level so that God could bring me higher.
An unknown author articulated how I felt perfectly in a famous book entitled The Cloud of Unknowing:
"He alone feels authentic sorrow who realizes not only what he is but that he is. In a word, he feels the burden of himself so tragically that he no longer cares about himself if only he can love God. This sorrow purifies a man and it prepares his heart to receive that joy through which he will finally transcend the knowing and feeling of his being."
Most people do not fall in the extremes of their self perception; we fall somewhere in between. One day we feel good about ourselves and the next day we don't like our own company. Mostly though, we don't take the time to think about it either way. You and I fill our lives with so much doing that we rarely take a look we are.
There are things that we have a tight grip on, things that we don't know how to change about ourselves, things that cause us to act in ways we wish we did not. But these feelings largely lay below the surface.
To see ourselves for who we really are is to cause such suffering that we will want to be free of ourselves and all that we hold onto.
To pray for death to self and mean it at first seems rather depressing. We are so used to getting our way with things. As time goes on, however, it becomes easier and easier until we get to the point were we dread the thought of returning to who we previously were. We come to see our previous way of living (before we learned the grace of dying to self), as bondage, enslavement to our own wills and desires. We come to understand what we thought was freedom was just free.
To live death requires a realistic view of who we are. This in turn will cause an inward suffering through which death to self can be a reality. Through this process the Spirit of Christ begins to live through us in fuller measure. And at last, we come to find our life to be lived much closer to its intent: full (of God) and free (from oursleves). Through loosing our life, we actually find it.
