7. Who are you? – Part 1 Revd Dr. Valson Thampu Page

Revd Dr. Valson Thampu

I used to hear a question brawled in the course of street fracas in the days that I was a boy in Kerala. That question was – ‘Do you know who I am?’ I used to wonder what that question had to do with the abuses hurled or, less frequently, the blows exchanged between the thugs. In due course, I realised that this is also a key spiritual question, though with a significant twist. The crucial thing is not if others know who we are, but if we know who we are, or ought to be. As it happens, it is doubtful if we do.

If others knowing who we are, is helpful in a quarrel, our knowing who we are is very helpful in making sense of life. It is a teasing thought that the answers to both questions hit the dead end, if pursued to any extent.

From the Cross Jesus said that human beings do what they do because they ‘know not’. It is primarily who they are that they know not. If we do not know ourselves how can we act meaningfully, or have any sensible control over what we do?

The funny thing is that we have little to do with who we are. We are, mostly, what others think or say we are. As Jean-Paul Sartre wrote about the Jews, Jews are what others say, especially the anti-Semites say they are. The need to derive some understanding of ourselves from others arises, and becomes reasonable, given that we do not care to know ourselves. Yet, from the very dawn of human consciousness the primary duty in being human has been to ‘know oneself’. Apollo, the Greek god of light, had only one primary exhortation, ‘Know thyself!’ But, we know everything else, except ourselves.

What is worse, we are afraid of knowing who we are?

This began a long time ago. After disobeying God, as per the Genesis narrative, Adam and Eve hid themselves, apparently, from God. But ‘hiding from God’ is only a metaphor for hiding from oneself. In relation to ourselves we are in a state of hiding. Almost everything that human beings create is a means for hiding oneself. That includes religion as well.

‘Hiding’ and ‘knowing’ are contrary activities. Or, knowing begins when hiding ends. When Jesus said, ‘deny yourself’, he referred, primarily, to the self-in-hiding. Hiding excludes light. It is from light that we hide. Jesus is the light of the world. It is strange indeed if we assume that we can relate to light by hiding. That was the curious thing that Nicodemus tried to achieve. He wanted to relate to Jesus the light at night. We should think twice before we condemn him. He is not unlike us. If anything, he's a shade better. We can't hide in a vacuum. We need something to hide in or hide under. Whatever God has created is unsuitable for hiding; for creation is a sphere of work. In work, if indeed it is work, we don’t hide, but exist in partnerships. Hiding is like burying, as in the parable of the talents. It implies the choice to be in a state of futility.

We have to create the means for hiding; for God is not of much use in this regard. God ‘sends us out’. We prefer to hide. So, it is up to us to spin or weave the means for it. It is in this respect that the God-given talent of creativity is vastly and universally abused. We are very resourceful and inventive in improvising the means to hide ourselves in. Here we need to examine only the broad means and patterns of this perverse creativity.

Let us be concrete in our thinking in this regard. Consider the interface between Jesus and the woman of Samaria. Jesus asks her for a drink. Thirst, in this context, is a metaphor of connectivity. Connectivity implies emergence. One has to emerge from oneself-in-hiding in order to connect to a fellow human being. In the symbolic network of Jesus’ life and teachings, thirst connects the self, at the very least, to three core aspects of the human condition: (a) fellow human beings (b) natural resources (c) and God. Fundamental to all the three is the thirst, most universally un-acknowledged, to relate oneself; selfalienation being the perennial and most universal human disability.

The early intuitions in the book of Genesis alert us to the fact that aggressive otherness –enmity- is the fundamental pattern of un-relatedness. The ‘nakedness’ that Adam and Eve experienced was its earliest form. It didn’t take long for it to erupt in full-blown menace. Cain killed Abel. Killing is the most violent and irrevocable form of hiding from someone. The ultimate way to hide from a brother is, for Cain, to kill him and to put him away. The need to hide underlies every act of violence. When we dislike someone

intensely, don’t we say, ‘I don’t want to see your face ever again’? It is quite the same as saying, ‘I want to hide from you forever’.

In light of the sketchy discussion above, we can recognize two fundamentally contrary modes for knowing the self: (a) the self in opposition to all else and (b) the self in integration with all else. Jesus undertook the ministry of ‘reconciliation’. In him, God was trying to reconcile the whole of creation –not just Christians- to himself. But, in the most biting of tragic ironies, Christians busy themselves in fragmenting the world according to the ‘pattern’ of the world. ‘Otherness’ is the pattern of the world. The world divides humanity into ‘us’ and ‘them’. The moment this distinction is endorsed and imbibed it gives birth to enmity and insecurity.

‘Security’ becomes the foremost priority in the matrix of insecurity. Once we move into the matrix of insecurity, we rationalise everything, with apparent plausibility and persuasiveness, in terms of security. Don’t we need to be secure? Is there anything wrong in wanting to be secure? The answer can only be an instinctual ‘NO’, till we begin to ask, ‘Who are we?’ How can we decide what we are to secure ourselves against unless we know who we are?

This brings us to the absurdity that we crave to save ourselves primarily because we do not want to know ourselves. In such an absurd state, whatever means and strategies we adopt to ‘save ourselves’ are sure to go against us. That is why Jesus says, ‘He who seeks to save his life will lose it’. At this point we need to face the widespread misconception that we believe Jesus to be our Saviour. No, far from it! We only use Jesus as our means, or strategy, for our salvation. Jesus, as Jesus, is a matter of indifference to us. We will admit that to be the case, if ‘the truth is in us’. The fact that we ‘witness’ or ‘confess’ that Jesus is our Savior doesn’t mean that we understand what it means to abide in Jesus as our saviour. The plain truth is as follows. We want to save ourselves. We look around for the means for it. We are told that Jesus is the Saviour. So, we adopt Jesus-the-Saviour as the means for our salvation. We are our own saviours; Jesus is the means we use for the purpose. It is not Jesus who saves; it is we ourselves, using Jesus as the tool. We simply believe that we believe in Jesus, as the church in Laodicea also did.

Don’t believe this? Well, consider what is happening right now in our midst. The Orthodox-Jacobite factions did not heed Jesus to save themselves from the deadly malignancy of their mutual hate. They were readier to turn to Modi or to the functionaries he designated for the purpose. They beat a retreat when they found this avenue not particularly palatable. Even so, they haven’t still turned to Jesus!

There is a fundamental problem when it comes to dealing with Jesus. He is not a hiding place. He is, alas, the truth. Truth must come out, as we say. It is painful when that happens. It is far more comfortable to hide. Enmity is the thickest and most impenetrable forest for the purpose.

The Crucifixion of Jesus illustrates this. The custodians of the religious heritage of the times wanted to put Jesus out of their way, which is the pragmatic way to hide from the light that he was. It is not for nothing that we associate death with darkness.

So, then, who are we?

Well, we understand ourselves in terms of who others are not. He or she is a non-Christian. I am not like him or her. So, I’m a Christian. This is the crass reality. But it is a little jagged as it stands. So, it has to be draped in something less earthy and direct. So, we say, we are Christians because we believe in Jesus Christ. Do we? Really? If we really do, won’t we, at least, wonder what it means to believe in Jesus Christ? Do we? If we have so wondered, what are the conclusions at which we have arrived?

All right, ask: What did Jesus say we are? Well, he said, we are the salt of the earth and the light of the world? So, we are to stay connected effectively and transformatively to the world at large. Our identity cannot be separated from this. That is to say, no identity forged on the basis of what is partial, parochial, exclusive and divisive can be in sync with the vision of Jesus Christ. At least this much should be clear as noonday to those who have a nodding acquaintance with the gospels.