Who Am I? By Rev. Harrison Goodman
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t seems like a simple question. It should have a simple answer. It doesn’t. I can tell you who I’m expected to be. I can imagine who I want to be. The problem is that I’m neither of those things. Reality doesn’t seem to match up with expectation. That makes a simple little question a lot tougher. Who am I? Where do I fit? How can I be loved?
H I G H E R T H I N G S __ 10
The answer I always hear in movies and after-school specials is “Just be yourself.” Have you ever noticed that the people telling you to “just be yourself” don’t seem to have your problems? It’s great for Taylor Swift to be herself. She’s rich, famous, attractive, and popular. I’m honestly happy for those people, but I have tried to be myself. That was the whole problem. As a Christian, my understanding of who I am makes that advice even more problematic. Just be yourself. Jesus said “What comes out of a person is what defiles him…evil things come from within. (Mark 7)” If you’re asking me to be myself, you’re really just asking me to sin. I’ll enjoy it, but I’m not sure it will be helpful. Even the secular crowd gets that, though. That’s why there’s a second unspoken part of “Be yourself.” Be yourself, but better. And if you can’t be better, at least tell yourself you are. The name for it is self-esteem. The problem is, most of us struggle with it. The reason we struggle with selfesteem is because it’s all law. The burden is entirely on us. That burden gets really heavy when every failure and insult are heaped on an already confusing struggle with identity. The problem with self-esteem is that the law can’t save us. Only the gospel can do that. All law and no gospel can only leave us in one of two places. Arrogance or despair. Jesus told a parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and treated others with contempt.
“Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.’ But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven.” (Luke 18:9-13) We all know someone like the Pharisee. He thinks way too much of himself. He definitely has self-esteem— he just has too much. It’s called arrogance. It happens when we believe we’re better than we actually are. It usually happens when we lower our standards until the law isn’t so heavy anymore. If there’s no gospel to forgive sins, we need a law that won’t actually convict us. Instead of looking at the fullness of God’s Word, the Pharisee just looks to himself and sets the standard to something achievable. The problem with a sliding morality that never convicts us is that it’s only really good for looking down on someone else. Arrogance is easy to hate. The tax collector sees every bit of the law. He’s honest about it. It has crushed him. He can’t even lift his eyes up to heaven. He has bad self-esteem. We all know someone with too much self-esteem, and chances are we know someone with next to none, too. As different as they seem from each other, they actually have something in common. They’re both only looking at themselves.
