I am me, a son of the living God who created me from Himself for Himself, for me. I am who I am through Him and am once again nothing and cease to exist, apart from sharing His identity. I am me in Him.
Todd Beal
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If truth is the source of everything, including me, then I necessarily cease to exist apart from it. Truth is, and all it is not within, isn’t, and soon will have never been. Isaiah 65:17: “For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth, and the former things shall not be remembered or come into mind.” All is dead apart from truth, but comes alive when truth resides within. I don’t want to cease existence; I don’t want God and others to forget me. I want to be richly significant and personally known forever; I choose truth, the living truth, Jesus.
Truth Behind Reality 
And as offspring of God we come forth pure and undefiled, filled with truth (which often comes spontaneously from the mouths of children). Eventually we are all corrupted, but the Good News is that Jesus came to uncorrupt us, as many times as we need it and accept it. He renders us again worthy of return to God’s presence, wherein no unclean thing can enter, and makes us compatible with truth.
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Michael,
I appreciate your unwavering faith in God’s power to redeem us. He is certainly an awesome God.
I struggled for years to define my identity. I asked myself repeatedly, “How do I say, ‘This is who I am’?” One day while reading my Bible, I finally realized that this question is impossible to answer solely in terms of myself. ‘Who I am’ is so all-pervasive that it prohibits me from stepping away from myself in order to encapsulate a definitive conceptualization. This left me with one solution; understand my identity in terms of the source of my identity, God my creator. This post is the resultant outcome of that understanding.
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“If truth is the source of everything, including me, then I necessarily cease to exist apart from it.”
Wow. That’s a great sentence and a great paragraph. I’m glad you keep stuff like this short. Too long and I’d lose the thread and in so doing lose the impact. But this was right between the eyes. I did a reenactment last night having to do with a court ruling on a slave case in 1820 Indiana. I was struck by some deep thoughts and this post of yours today resonates well with the thoughts and feelings dredged up by that play. As a society we buy so many lies, so many are so subtle we have no idea – until we take the red pill and it has time to take effect. No wonder many Christians don’t like to open their eyes – it hurts because we’ve never used our eyes before. **goose bumps** Thanks for another very thoughtful post.
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Lance,
Thanks for your appreciation of this post. As always, I take your confirmations, or lack thereof, seriously.
| No wonder many Christians don’t like to open their eyes – it hurts because we’ve never used our eyes before. **goose bumps** |
That is exactly what happened to me in the fall of 1997 (My Story); my internal eyes began to open. Of course, the tradeoff was losing my ability to see with normal physical vision. That is also what I was referring to in my previous post, Staying Naïve.
I would ask the following question. In which case am I held more accountable: willful self-ignorance from fear of guilt, or turning a blind eye to my self-knowledge of wrongdoing?
I will confess, going through the process of self-knowledge often manifests as a personal hell on earth, but the inevitable result is the overwhelming joy that Truth gives in return. Truth itself doesn’t hurt, but it feels like it when we experience the deep temporary wound from Truth uprooting those things that do hurt us, including those cherished personal taproots that kill us eternally.
Lance, there is something different in this comment of yours: something of a very authentic and personal nature. It feels like you are speaking from your spiritual self. Thank you, it means a lot to me.
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Well, I mixed a lot of metaphors in that comment, but sometimes I am on sensory overload and it comes out like that. I am deeply affected by a few things more deeply than others, and the chord I mentioned is one of those deep things. I’m as yet unable to clearly articulate it, but in due time I will try. For now, suffice it to say I see images of history, allegory, fiction, and theology crossing and mixing in a strange symphony. I’m not sure I like the sound. Even Satan appears as an angel of light. I am still seeking discernment, so bare with me as I step back from the precipice of this line of thought. Blessings.
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Lance, it sounds like this is how you most understand truth in its essence. My equivalent of this is understanding truth in terms of personality and universal concepts.
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“I am me”
As you know, for many years I was nothing. I didn’t deserve to live. No one loved me: no one cared. I yearned for love but didn’t want love, because only people you like are able to hurt you. I was me but didn’t want to be me.
“I am me”
My life changed completely. I changed from being nothing to being something – and what a something!!!
I became the much-loved child of the perfect Father, the King of kings. My Father loved me so much that He gave His dearest, His only, His beloved Son for ME! He gave His Son not only to suffer horrendously, but to become SIN – the one thing totally abhorrent to God – the thing that separated them for the only time in all eternity. He loved me so much that He poured out His wrath on my sin borne by His Son. Jesus loved me so much that He willingly bore it for me.
“I am me”
For 52 years I have enjoyed the enormous privileges of being a child of the King of kings. I have immediate access to His throne. I have His abiding presence in my life. He is my constant Companion, my Guide and Counsellor, my Challenger and Encourager, my Teacher, my Strength and Motivator, my Enabler and Provider . . . He is my Everything. I lack for nothing. I know that my loving Father desires only the very best for me and that He wants to bless me even more than I want to be blessed.
“I am me” but I am me only because of Christ in me. I was crucified with Christ and the life I live now I live because of His life in me.
“I am me”
I am not all I should be, because despite all He has done and is doing in me and for me, I sometimes allow “me” to get in the way. However, I know that He is still working in me and that He will continue His work, and that one day I will be like Him.
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Angela,
| I was me but didn’t want to be me. |
I too felt this way as a child. I am naturally very perfection-oriented, and as a child I went through a period where it seemed that no matter what I did, it was never good enough. I felt as if I was hopelessly flawed. I remember wishing I could be my brother instead of being me because he appeared to never make mistakes. I eventually grew so sick of being driven to perfectly obey every sliver of church and family law I decided to chuck the whole thing. I wanted to be free of the constant dread I felt in my gut from failing to measure up. I determined that doing things my way was a whole lot better than being a slave to laws I could not possibly perfectly obey.
I grew up in a church/school closed social structure where rules, rules, rules were stressed above all else. I did not feel the love of Christ as it was spoken of from the pulpit. All I saw was law, law, law and physical punishment for not perfectly adhering to that law. In my childhood social circle (church, school, home, and my friends’ parents) rules always trumped Christ’s love. Physical punishment was the first resort, always! To top it all off, the common sermon theme by visiting evangelists to our church was “Hell, hell, hell, hell, hell, hell; If you mess up one little bit, you are backslidden, no longer a Christian, and you are going to Hell! You will burn forever in the Lake of Fire with no water!” I went through a period where I would lay in my bed dreading falling to sleep because I did not want to go to hell. I remember hoping that Jesus would not return because I had not obeyed every detail of every rule, meaning I would not go to heaven.
No child should ever have to carry this kind of life-sucking weight. At twelve years old, I said no more! From that point forward until my middle adult years, I dove headfirst into any personally destructive thing I desired to experience: lots of sex, lots of drugs, and lots of alcohol. I so desired to free myself of those awful indoctrinated restrictions from childhood and teenage years. I submitted my life back to God in 2004, but only after years of wreaking havoc on myself and others. For the first time in my life, I started over in my search for God. I put every religious rule, principle, and doctrine that I had ever heard, or was ever taught, up on the shelf. I determined that God and his scripture was all I needed to develop my Christian life, to work out my own salvation as he wills it. I adhere to this principle and belief to this very day.
In these last seven years, I have made it my personal life mission to understand the scriptures and to know God personally. I understand now that the rules-based religion from my childhood is a Phariseeism that drives people to be very self-centered in a bad way. It drives them to become their own false savior by trying to earn their way into heaven through obedience to external rules and religious law. They try to adhere to the structure of law as their savior, not Jesus Christ, the fulfillment of all law. I understand now that one does not earn a free pass into heaven – and thus not go to hell – by adhering to some rule, biblical or otherwise. Christ is law. He is love, and only accepting him into our heart fulfills our requirement to perfectly live up to his perfect law. When Jesus died on the cross, his all consuming sacrificial love literally became law fulfilled. I now know that only accepting his love (him) into our heart, once and for all releases us from the awful burden of trying to live up to the law. Jesus Christ is both the Law and our power to live up to that law because he is our obligation to the law, fulfilled.
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Each morning I wake up with just one question- who am I? People talk about the dream that they had while sleeping but me….What dream should I talk about? Perhaps I don’t dream!
Each day I ‘m looking at things motivelessly , relentlessly. Then all of sudden I find my self surrounded by a big crowed existed from no where and I try to dig in for my identity in the crowed to find- who I am?
This is how my days get started chasing my own identity. But unfortunately my all attempts turn futile I can’t find myself but mere echo of myself.
I want to speak with this gentle breeze –feels like it’s blowing to bring me some message and I feel like humming a duet song with that sea ahead.
I look at the mug coffee that I’m drinking and smile then tell my self that I have the most intimate relationship with this mug because each morning I feel the mug my hand and kiss it with my parched lips.
When alone in the room I want to have conversation with that chair next to me because I feel it has something to tell me. I look at the walls around and those non living things, feels they would talk to me and only they know – who am I?
The city has its own flow, people have their own drift and I’m seeking my identity in it. Everyone here are moving in their own pace but me…uhh why am I at a standstill? Why? Why? There is no motion in me?
Some are elated with their own beautiful thoughts and others are with things. But me why cannot I think anything? Amidst human crowd here and there. Why do I feel lonesome? Why Can I assimilate in this crowd?
A friend talk to me perhaps something important but my engrossment is not with the voice but with those tiny creatures playing in the water, in-fact how beautiful is the nature and its species. The friend always gets upset in the same way, I’m sorry I didn’t mean to hurt you I do not know why I’m like this.
Everyone says this is your name-this is who you are……… But if name what determines one’s identity, my name was given to me by somebody. I didn’t earn it. Then what’s my real identity? Really who am I? This question draped me with it’s robes I ask you o’ people! Is there anyone among you who can answer me? Who am I? To whom should I question? What flesh can answere me? I don’t want to be an undefined caly forever….!
-Nooru
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