Identity and the Search for Significance

Self-realization is a frightening prospect. More often than not, our real motives for doing x instead of y are much less noble and virtuous than we typically give ourselves credit for. Throughout the past year, largely due to the influence of one of my classes, I have been doing a great deal of soul-searching and have begun the process of understanding myself for the first time. Not surprisingly, this has been a humbling task because it turns out that I am not nearly as good as I thought.

One of the fundamental components to self-realization is understanding this truth: We all wear masks. We wear different ones at different times, and each person wears theirs for a different reason. Self-realization involves identifying what masks you wear, to what extent you allow those masks to form your identity and what, beneath those masks, is the real you. This is the difference between image and identity. Image is how we wish to appear to others. Identity is what we are underneath.

There are a few points I want to make on this subject:

First, we choose the masks we wear. We all have an idea of how we want to appear to others, and that image forms the mask we wear. Usually, we have different masks for different situations. For instance, I have my school mask, my Army mask, my friend mask and my work mask, to name a few. In each of those situations, there is a perception that I want to convey which is never the truth about myself. Oh, sure, there are parts of those images that are true, but they are never really the whole me, and some aspects of them are not really me at all.

Second, wearing masks is not necessarily a bad thing. Thanks to human depravity, it can be a dangerous thing to let those around us see our true selves. Judgment and rejection from those whose approval we seek can be highly damaging to our ego and cause us retreat from social contact. Masks are our defense mechanism. They let us convey as much or as little about ourselves as we feel comfortable with in a particular situation, while . My friendship mask is a lot more true-to-self than my Army mask. The problem with them comes when we start to believe the images that we convey to others. This is known as self-deception, and can quickly divorce us from reality and a healthy view of who we are. As a long term victim, I can assure you full well the dangers of allowing this to happen.

Third, there will usually be one mask we use primarily, and it will augment the other masks we wear. This is the mask that most reveals our character, as it reveals our strongest underlying desires. For myself, it is the view that "I am significant." I have been told many different times by many different people that I am exceptional. Exceptionally intelligent. Exceptionally well-read. Exceptionally athletic. Exceptionally good looking (only my wife has said this, but it has been said!). But, the truth is, I do not believe it for a second when someone tells me that I am exceptional. I know for true because the search for significance plays a primary part in every mask that I wear. In my theology mask, I want to say something profound. In my Army mask, I want to be a super soldier. In my husband mask, I want to be the best husband and lover that my wife could ever have. Make sure you don't mistake me: When I say "I want to be" I mean "I want others to see me as." But, really, I do not see myself as any of those things. Really, I see myself as very plain and ordinary, but with a fierce longing to be something more than I am.

Finally, we are not fooling anyone. When I was younger, my search for significance led me to tell some extravagant lies about myself. In retrospect, I'm sure no one believed any of them, but I wanted them to think that I was special, and that I needed a certain story for that to happen. People know that they are not seeing the real you, because they are not showing you the real them. The key to developing relational intimacy is to be guarded while at the same time being honest. People would have been more accepting of me if I had been less forthcoming about who I was, but more honest about it. The lies told them that I was someone who could not be trusted, and so someone they could not let their own guard down around. When we are honest with each other, we begin to develop trust, which allows us to lower our guards somewhat and be even more honest with each other. As this cycle continues, intimacy develops, and we find people with whom we can truly be ourselves without fear of censure and rejection.

The Easy Way Out

So, one of the classes that I am currently taking is Introduction to Spiritual Formation, and in this class, our most recent topic of discussion was The Temptation to Moral Formation. Briefly put, the idea is that Christians often substitute adherence to systems of morality for real spiritual growth. We take instruction from Scripture, and instead of using it to lead us to Christ, we make it a hard and fast rule which we then use as a litmus test of our spirituality. So you get rules like: don't drink; don't smoke; don't dance; don't have sex outside of marriage; dress up on Sundays (in fact, only have church on Sundays). Break any of these rules, and your status as a Christian becomes suspect. That is the Temptation to Moral Formation, and it is something to which far too many Christians fall prey.

Now, I am not saying that moral rules are bad, but when those rules become the end all be all of the Christian life, it leads to anger, bitterness, despair and loss of intimacy. I grew up in a church culture like that, and no one in any church that I attended growing up ever felt like they could admit to anyone that they were anything less than perfect, because to do so would be to open themselves up to rejection. Because, believe me, they would have been rejected. I remember vividly when a girl in my youth group got pregnant when she was 15. Instead of responding to her situation with grace and love, she was held up as an object lesson to the rest of us. She was scorned by her peers, rejected by her elders, and eventually left the church. From what I can tell, her life has gone seriously downhill since then, and I wonder how she might have turned out if her church had treated her with love, instead of judgment.

So, why do we do it? Simply put, it's a lot easier than the alternative. Developing a real relationship with Christ, and growing in to his image is a long, difficult, and often painful process that requires us to recognize our own vulnerability and come humbly before the God to whom we can give nothing. But checking a set of rules off of a list is easier, and gives us something that we can be proud of, since it is something we can accomplish on our own. If we can keep the rules better than someone else, then we must be better, more spiritual than them. Ultimately, it becomes a system where works replace grace as the foundation for our sanctification. I think it is a tragedy that this is where so much of Christianity has come. This is one of the major reasons that non-Christians see us as angry and judgmental, and it needs to stop.

But how do we change? How do we move from making rules and regulations the center of our faith, to making movement towards Christ the center? Unfortunately, this is one I don't yet have the answer for. See, I am writing this largely about myself. I am exceptionally guilty of giving in to this temptation, and am just now recognizing how it has shaped my life and my relationships. But I am hopeful that there is a solution. After all, they say the first step is admitting you have a problem.