Good afternoon fellow readers,
Second post in two days but recently I have been reading something that just keeps running through my head and I think it something really important to discuss. As I sit here with my jumbo coffee (like everyday), I reflect on this book I read, along with the discussion I had with some of my friends on the topic of humility and our identity in Christ.
I think so many of us struggle with how we view ourselves in the world based on other peoples' standards, let alone our own standards, and I think we forget about where our identity is secured. Last week I read this really amazing book called the Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness by Timothy Keller... If you haven't read it, I suggest you do because it is pretty freaking amazing! It is a really quick and easy read but VERY eye-opening.
This book pinpointed exactly what not just I but so many others need to hear constantly. Keller based his entire short book around how Christians struggle to view themselves in a broken world and he ends up teaching us the way to finding Christian joy.
Keller points out that the reason why there is no peace in the world is due to the fact that there is pride and boasting. Not only that but the root of all evil stems from viewing ourselves too highly. We live in a world where everyone tries out outdo one another in every way. We constantly put each other down whether we mean to or not. We behave in ways that are not right to get what we want or to make ourselves feel better. We are on an endless cycle to fill ourselves and our ego up... which this make come as a shocker, but the ego is like a black hole; it can never be filled! Cray cray huh!?
The book goes into breaking the ego down into 4 parts: empty, painful, busy, and fragile. I will break them down into short segments...
1.) The human ego is empty. Humans try to build their identity around others things that are not God. Maybe it is food, money, drugs, sex, alcohol, the wrong friends. We try to search for a sense of worth, specialness, and purpose in all of these things.
2.) The human ego is painful. The ego is always trying to draw attention to itself and makes us think of how we look or how we are treated. When people hurt us, it is not our feelings that are hurt, it is our ego. Our feelings can't hurt, it's our identity. Humans place so much emphasis and dwell on how we are treated and we feel as if we should never be hurt.
3.) The human ego is busy. The ego is always busy trying to draw attention to itself to fill the emptiness. Humans do this in two ways: comparing and boasting.
4.) The human ego is fragile. Our ego can be deflated or inflated. We tend to think bad of ourselves when we are down or when we are too high of ourselves, we tend to put others down.
Keller really does a good job of breaking the ego apart but combines it all together to talk about our ego and identity and how we place so much emphasis and care so much about what the world thinks of us. We care so much of how people see us and what people do to us. We even care what we think of ourselves. We try to live up to the standards set by others and by ourselves, and in the end we fail; it does not deliver! Keller makes this really great point that I have to remind myself everyday and that is, "We should not care what others think about us or even what we think about ourselves. It is a trap!" By this he is saying that we will never be satisfied by what we hold ourselves against. We will never be happy and will view ourselves as a failure.
But the good thing is that in Christ, our identity is sealed. We are loved and Christ died for us! We are no longer guilty from our sins because that price has been paid for!
Another thing Keller points out is that our sins and identity are NOT connected. By that he is saying stop connecting how you live now as a Christian to your identity in Christ. Stop connecting your sins to your identity. Stop telling yourself that because you did something wrong means you messed up or that you won't be loved anymore. Stop thinking that your daily life ups and downs change how much God loves you or how your identity changes. Because on days you mess up and are a mess, you see yourself as worthless and unworthy to God. On days you are on cloud 9 or acing tests, you see yourself loved and worthy. NO! that is not how it works people! Christ died on the cross for our sins so we wouldn't have to bear the wrath and so that we could be saved. He died so that we could have peace and that amazing unending relationship with him! Because of him, we are his and that is all that matters! Because of him and his blood that was shed for us, we are worthy to him and THAT IS ALL THAT MATTERS NOW! So stop connecting every experience, every conversation, everything people say or do to us to who we are. The Lord is the only one who judges and his opinion is the only one that matters. Being a Christian means we are saved and pardoned from our sin. We are freed from our old selves so that means our new lives should be different. We should be bearing good fruit, having moral excellence, and live for something. Are we going to mess up... yep, you bet! But we are no longer living in the darkness like we had been. We are walking in the light and living for Christ. When we live for him, everything we do is for him, not for ourselves. So stop worrying about what others think about you or what you think about yourself because you will turn your eyes from the Lord to yourself. You begin to self obsess about yourself and it becomes selfish. Stop trying to set standards because you will always fail.
Basically what it all boils down to is this: Every human has an ego/identity. We try to build it around things that are not God-centered. We hurt others and compare ourselves to others. We change how we see ourselves based on our daily walk. We connect our sins to our identity and think that God's love changes based on how our daily walk is. But that is not how it is: Christ died for us so that we could be saved and so our hearts could be changed. Our identity is then secured by that he thinks we are worthy and that is the only thing that should matter. If our hearts are truly changed, we would want to think about ourselves less and think more of what God would want us to and how to serve others for him. So knowing that, we should have nothing to worry about except that we should love the Lord so much more everyday! The one thing you can do that will bring you joy and will make the Lord happy is to think about yourself less... Not think less of yourself. Keller says that gospel-based humility is not to think more of ourselves of less of ourselves, it is to think about ourselves less. We know our identity now and it doesn't matter what others think. Now all we have to do is stop thinking about ourselves less and turn it towards think about others more. When we do, we will start to have genuine love for others. We will care more and help others. We will have so much joy and happiness in our hearts if we constantly remind ourselves that our identity is secure and that we are so loved so in return we should love others.
So go out and care for others. Go out and love others. Ask to help others more. Pray and think about others more and you will stop thinking about yourself less. In the end, you will be so much happier. Remind yourself who you are in Christ overall. Because what we do now as Christians is not for ourselves, it is for the Lord overall.
God Bless!
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