Why Most People Never ‘Find Themselves’

In the Christian worldview, we cannot make progress in truth unless we understand ourselves and can answer the question, who am I? Yet while the rest of the world believes this emerges spontaneously from pure inner self-reflection, or maybe some theoretical scientific knowledge, we understand that this always begins as a response to somebody who relates to us as a person – first our Creator, then our parents, wider family, and friends.

The existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre realised that human beings “are a choice and for us, to be is to choose ourselves.”¹ But Sartre also recognized that human consciousness is a rebellious attempt to become God – to be totally original and create ourselves from nothing. Eventually admitting this was impossible, he despaired, saying, “man is a useless passion.”²  The Bible teaches that whenever human beings try to build their identity apart from Jesus Christ, instead doing so with some substitute god, it leads only to frustration and despair.  Scripture calls the attempt to define ourselves and our lives in this way as sin – a choice to live in untruth.

We hear a great deal in our present culture about ‘authenticity’ and are constantly being told to ‘be yourself,’ to ‘express yourself’ and so on. And in one sense we must be ourselves. Indeed, God calls us to become our unique selves in terms of His purposes. Even though we belong to the human family, we are not summed up by the abstract term humanity as though we are each simply one example of a species like an earthworm or ant. As God says to the prophet Jeremiah:

I chose you before I formed you in the womb;
I set you apart before you were born.
I appointed you a prophet to the nations. (Jer. 1:4-5)

We are uniquely made with a purpose and plan in mind. Scripture says God the Father is the source, “from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named” (Eph. 3:15). We might say that we each have a divine name; God has defined our being. This is the givenness of the self; the part of our identity which we do not select for ourselves, but which God gives to us. We were all intended, called forth, wanted, loved, with a specific calling to become and do that for which we were made. Yet the prophet Jeremiah still had to choose to become who he would be – he did not arrive in the world fully formed as a prophet.

As creatures, the self (the ‘I’) is, therefore, partly a given but is not fully formed. This means we must grow and develop, and be accountable for our choices and possibilities. 

It is here in the realm of both possibility and necessity that we tend to flounder. We might rightly recognize that becoming yourself is a task, a calling, and we may want to ‘become ourselves,’ but that may not be the one we are created to be. Instead, we demand to decide for ourselves who we are and who we are to become. But if we lose sight of our creatureliness and the givenness of our personhood, our God-given imagination can become the goal, and life starts to be lived through a kind of inner fantasy, actually leading us away from true selves – the reality of possibility runs wild and unrestrained.

The tragedy is that all such fleeting choices become arbitrary because, without recognising who God has made you to be, they are completely unstable. They can fall apart one way or another, and you have to reinvent yourself again. The illusion of absolute freedom makes for an empty self and empty life.

Jesus Christ astonishingly claimed to be the absolute Person – the appearance of the living and eternal God, the Creator and Sustainer of all things, in time – that the Truth about life and the liberating Truth for the lost and tormented self is found in Him as a person:

I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me (John 14:6).

If you continue in My word, you really are my disciples. You will know the truth and the truth will set you free (John 8:31).

This changes the origins of our identity. We don’t judge the Truth, but the Truth judges us, helping us to see that we have lived in untruth until now. Rather than being free from Truth, we are set free by it, and when Jesus sets us free in this way, we discover the joy that we are not the ultimate standard or measure of all things.  Ironically, in letting go of the illusion of autonomy, the Truth really is now ‘your truth’ because you belong to the Truth and the Truth belongs to you.

When God reveals Himself in Christ to a person, He offers true rest for the embattled and confused by ending the struggle for true self-identity. The Saviour’s gentle yoke of necessity makes sense of our human possibility. Jesus said:

Come to Me, all of you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. All of you, take up My yoke and learn from Me, because I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your-selves. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light (Matt. 11:28-30)

It is in the Son of God, Son of man, our Creator and brother, that we discover who we truly are and through whom we are finally liberated to be ourselves. In the words of C. S Lewis, “…it will never be lawful simply to ‘be ourselves’ until ‘ourselves have become sons of God….”³

¹https://www.ezrainstitute.com/being-and-finding-yourself/#_edn1

²https://www.ezrainstitute.com/being-and-finding-yourself/#_edn2

³https://www.ezrainstitute.com/being-and-finding-yourself/#_edn3