on Kyria.com

Free Newsletters

 [?] Kyria
(weekly)
Leadership
(weekly)

« Book Review: Three Cups of Tea | Main | Kate Gosselin and Starting Over »

February 2, 2010

Brought into Being

We can only truly answer “who am I?” questions in the context of community.

by Sarah Scherf

Who am I? What am I made for? What defines me?

These are ego-centric questions, yet ones we feel we must ask ourselves—and hone in on an answer—especially if we’re to be effective and influential individuals and Christians. But Mark Galli, in his article “I Love, Therefore You Are,” argues that this is precisely our problem: We are asking ourselves these questions, spending our energies in introspection, determining to bring ourselves into defined beings in order to have something solid to offer the world. This, he claims, is not the pursuit for which we were created.

We are taught in many ways not to define ourselves in relation to other people. The compare-and-contrast game can be a dangerous and hindering one. Scripture says we were knit in our mothers’ wombs (Psalm 139:13). This presumes that we are each unique and choicely created directly by the hands of God and (seemingly) independent of one another. From another angle, Jesus tells us to remove the plank from our own eye before pointing out the speck in someone else’s (Luke 6:42). We’re not to define ourselves by finding a contrast in someone else. That is an unhealthy (and often inaccurate) way to search for definition and personal quality.

So we are created uniquely, and we aren’t to feel superior or inferior by looking at the people around us. The bent part of our nature, then (hand in hand with the overwhelming western belief in the power in the individual), concludes that we must camp out inside and discover our essence, talents, and even weaknesses on our own. Yet another place where we (go figure) have got it wrong.

I first read Galli’s article in the spring of 2007, soon after my fiancée had broken off our engagement and determined that he didn’t actually love me. As is so often the case in raw and stinging times, I began to recognize that much of me had been lost in that relationship as it had progressed—there was much I had attempted to change and suppress and accentuate.

In this new state—all that I’d been chiseling off and glopping on having been rejected, thoroughly—I found myself utterly at the mercy of the friends who sat with me evening after evening on the screened in porch. It was as if my ears were wide open tunnels to my soul. I heard these sisters and brothers express to me what they knew was true about me, what they missed, what they knew was still there. These people were—quite overtly—defining me. I was very lost; these godly people found me—for me. I began to understand that on my own and in my own pursuit of myself, I actually was nothing. The reality is that we are only in relation to the people around us. That is how the triune God created us—in his relational image. And what a most blessed way to be.

Galli’s piece came with poignancy, because inside, I was learning every word of it already: “Our primary duty in life is not to find ourselves, to develop our gifts, or to make sense of life. Instead, we are called to love others so that they can come into existence, while they do the same for us.”

As we begin or continue in ministry, let’s keep this inherent reality always in mind. Our most essential role in someone’s life may be to simply tell her who she is, for “we share in the mission of [the] Trinity, which is to create and sustain other beings in love.”

Share thisshare this

Posted by Bonnie McMaken on February 2, 2010 12:53 PM

Comments

Preach, sister. :)

Posted By: C | February 7, 2010 4:06 AM

Post a comment:





Verification (needed to reduce spam):

resources



tags

August 2010
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
8 9 10 11 12 13 14
15 16 17 18 19 20 21
22 23 24 25 26 27 28
29 30 31