Beginning a series called LIVING BEYOND SELF…about how we truly find our lives by living beyond ourselves. Today I want to explore the quest to find ourselves. Many may feel the paradox of our cultural quest… feeling lost in the mass of humanity… even while becoming more self aborbed.
Perhaps this clip from the film ANTZ will help…
“ANTZ” – LOST IN CROWD - Opening scene shows ant named “Z” (characterized by Woody Allen’s voice and manner) in psychiatrist’s office describing his sense of not being able to cope with the sense of insignificance of being a part of the colony. Captures how many feel in a more mass oriented age… yet also introduces how that very feeling has led to the extreme individualism of our age… in which personal rights have lost touch with communal connestion and responsibility.
Dreamworks, 1998
Captures something of the paradox of our modern culture… feel lost… yet obsessed… Feels lost in the crowd… tries to find a greater meaning… in himself… but never finds it apart from others.
> That journey to find ourselves is what I want to invite us to consider.
I. The pursuit of finding ourselves
The pursuit of ‘finding ourselves’ is an interesting one. In many respects it dominates our culture… from the crisis of an infant to the drama of Jr. High to the pursuit of one’s career to our whole role as consumers of identity… to the reflections that come late in life.
I want to take a few minutes to consider just how our pursuit to find our true selves has become unique as modern Americans… because culture can become like the water that surrounds fish… the air we breathe… so pervasive we never consider it’s quality.
[ Indented paragraphs below from Paul Vitz - CULT OF SELF. CORNERSTONE INTERVIEWS WITH PAUL VITZ -"Cornerstone," Vol 23, Issue 106, 1994) ]
Humanity has been lost from itself…
Began in the garden… rooted in God…. a condition that changes based upon a grand deception…that we were to be like God.
God said… we’d become oppressed in our need for each other… which we see through much of history.
The premodern psychology of the self is … defined by their relationships with their family and with the members of their community, and by their status in society. One’s status and relationships was often forced on them by the tradition of the society they were born into.
Modernism has been a revolt against that. It’s been opposed to tradition, hierarchy and relationships. Modernism has instead emphasized the autonomous individual. America has now carried that to an extreme. I suppose the ideal modern person might be James Bond--he doesn’t have any bonds with anybody.
Paul Vitz, a psychologist at New York University, provided a brilliant expose of our cultural shift towards the autonomy of the self… or what he calls ‘selfism.’ In his book entitled the Cult of Self-Worship elaborates on selfism --the modern version of the myth of Narcissus, who falls in love with his reflection in a pool of water. This narcissism is evident in everything from advertising to psychology to New Age spirituality.
It was uniquely in the 20th century during which time western civilization saw two world wars… genocides.. atomic bombs… and Friedrich Nietzsche declared God is dead… and world will plummet into darkness.
Maybe we are just product of randomness… with no higher purpose or meaning.
Vitz explains …
Philosophers like Rene Descartes, Immanuel Kant, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Friedrich Nietzsche contributed to the idea, but the concept didn’t become culturally dominant until the last 50 to 100 years, particularly in the United States. When the idea of an autonomous self was first proposed, it was in a cultural context where other ideas restricted its influence. It took time for the idea to work itself out through psychology and other disciplines. Carl Rogers, Abraham Maslow, Erich Fromm, and Rollo May helped to spread the idea of an autonomous self. Carl Jung was also concerned with self-realization. Later, pop psychologists helped spread selfism to the masses.
We are so immersed into the concept that it may be helpful to understand that it is actually an idea that was only recently developed and has been left found wanting…
Many psychologists define the self as primarily a conscious phenomenon--that we are whatever we consciously think ourselves to be. The whole idea of an autonomous self is a creation of a particular historic period in the West. The self-theorists and their devotees can’t cope with that.
(It) is a kind of secondary narcissism—(rather than primary which comes from childhood deficits.)
This sort of selfism is part of the atomization of American society, turning us all into isolated individuals. Selfism just doesn’t allow--and is even hostile to--social bonds and obligations. It’s all about rights and freedom and nothing about duties and obligations.
Carl Rogers said that if it is impossible for self-actualization to be maintained in a marriage, then one should break off the marriage. That’s why he suggested that marriages might only last five years, with a contract to renew or not. Selfism results in people who are lonely and isolated.
Above all, the consumer economy has helped
The selfist psychology fits in beautifully with the consumer needs of our economy, where corporations constantly flatter us to get us to buy things. It’s all part of our commercial culture. The whole emphasis on the self is to get people to buy whatever they want..
Becomes a spiritual dynamic –
Vitz -Psychology over promised and under produced; that is, everybody thought that if they studied psychology or saw a therapist, they’d be happy ever after--but that didn’t happen. Psychological narcissism was exchanged for spiritual narcissism. That’s the principle I see at the core of the New Age spirituality. For them, the self defines everything. The god is not merely within us. We are God. New Age spirituality is the logical consequence of what was originally started in psychology.
Selfism creates what others and I have called a narcissistic mentality where everybody thinks they’re some kind of deity. It makes us a nation of 250 million supreme beings.
C.S. Lewis said that ‘the most effective false religion was self-worship--for as long as it could last.’.
It’s the cult of self - worshipping and serving the contemporary `holy trinity’ of me, myself, and I
The Scriptures even warned that in later times… people would become lovers of themselves. .
2 Timothy 3:1-2 (MSG)
“As the end approaches, people are going to be self-absorbed…”
Often we think of the other descriptions… families falling apart… wwars and rumblings of wars…. But it could be noted that it may all reflect the outworking of becoming lovers of self.
The results of our celebration of the autonomous self…
• Self esteem assessments…lower
• Depression… higher
• Self infliction – higher
• Beneath it.. a distrust and competition.. ‘do unto others before they do unto you.’
and isolation
• Narcissism - higher
When our pursuit of self… is that of the autonomous self… it leads to becoming the kings and queens of empty empires… of lonely kingdoms.
Vitz - we’re in trouble without committed relationships to one another. A child would die without her mother’s commitment. We’ve grossly overlooked committed relationships as the way we come into being as persons.
So how do we truly find ourselves…and fulfill our significance?
II. Jesus offers a different way
Matthew 22:35-40 (NIV)
One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: "Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" Jesus replied: "’Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ’Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."
“Love God and love others as yourself”
Jesus is interested in us finding ourselves… but understands the deeper paradox…
Out of this understanding… he offers a different paradox… one that grasps who we really are…
Matthew 10:39 (NIV)
“Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”
Matthew 10:39 (MSG)
If your first concern is to look after yourself, you’ll never find yourself. But if you forget about yourself and look to me, you’ll find both yourself and me.
He understands our true dilemma… our true selves were already lost long ago… in separation from God our creator and Father… so if we are going to find ourselves… we must become loosed from this autonomous self (that is lost) … this ruling false god… and join he who makes the God centered life possible.
Our truest self lies not in autonomy but in relationship with God and others.
Paul would describe his own experience this way…
Galatians 2:20 (MSG)
“Christ’s life showed me how, and enabled me to do it. I identified myself completely with him. Indeed, I have been crucified with Christ. My ego is no longer central.” …The life you see me living is not "mine," but it is lived by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”
The apostle Paul… transformed…
Didn’t become more moral in the traditional sense… as a Pharisee he lived quite upright
Didn’t pray more… or fast more
> He de-centralized himself
2 Corinthians 5:15 (NLT)
He died for everyone so that those who receive his new life will no longer live for themselves. Instead, they will live for Christ, who died and was raised for them.
What ‘losing oneself’ for Christ and those he loves is NOT…
• Not a lack of individual worth
Not only does the Bible affirm our individual worth… it stands unique in doing so.
The issue isn’t whether we have worth… but whether our worth lies in autonomous selves… or in relationship to what we are a part of.
Self absorption may be the very enemy of self worth… and significance.
• Not a lack of boundaries
Losing oneself is not a matter of becoming a boundary less being… who simply surrenders themselves to the wishes and whims of others.
Jesus is our profound model of one fully centered neither in an autonomous self… nor in others… but in his Father… out of which he served others
There is a self… when Jesus speaks of losing ourselves… something of a hyperbola… like ‘forgetting the past’… can’t actually erase your memory… but you no longer give it the same power.
.
• Not a lack of self care
Jesus would take time to get away by himself… showed concern when he knew that everyone was tired. The issue isn’t self care but self-centeredness.
Discovering ourselves not in autonomy but in relationship with God and others
1. We will find ourselves only within the larger circle of sufficiency… which is ultimately God.
If left unto ourselves… we must face our fundamental limitations … we face isolation without escape…we face guilt without grace… chaos without order or meaning… BUT THERE IS ALWAYS THAT WHICH SURROUNDS US.
TRANSFORMING OUR SOCIAL DIMENSION (Dallas Willard on community)
CIRCLES OF SUFFICIENCY
The natural condition of life for human beings is one of reciprocal rootedness in others. As firmness of footing is a condition of walking and secure movement, so assurance of others being for us is the condition of stable, healthy living. There are many ways this can be present in individual cases, but it must be there. If it is not, we are but walking wounded, our life more or less a shambles until we die.
When the required type of "for-ness" is adequately present, human "circles of sufficiency" emerge.
These circles of sufficiency, natural and essential to the human condition and so profoundly beautiful to behold, are always illusory; at the merely human level, and even the illusion itself is terrifyingly fragile. To assure an anxious child we may say, "Everything is okay now." But it never is. In this world it is never true that everything is okay, and perhaps it is least true in those very situations where we feel the need to say it. Every human circle presupposes for its "really being okay" a larger context or circle that supports it.
Ultimately, every human circle is doomed to dissolution if it is not caught up in the life of the only genuinely self-sufficient circle of sufficiency, that of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. For that circle is the only one that is truly and totally self-sufficient. And all the broken circles must ultimately find their healing there, if anywhere.
Only when rooted in that divine Trinitarian circle can the broken individuals from the broken circles recover from the wounds received in their circles of origin and find wholeness on their long journey from the womb to the eternal City of God. Of course it was never God’s intention that the natural human circles of sufficiency, of reciprocal rootedness, would be illusory, fragile, and eventually broken; and if they were lived within his kingdom, they would not be.
- Renovation of the Heart by Dallas Willard, pp 179-197+
Jesus is seeking to bring lives back into the only sphere of sufficiency by which we can live.
We don’t need to be relieved of self absorption… Me-Ville… we need to be delivered from it.
Jesus is inviting us to leave Me-Ville and move to a new home in the City of God
2. We will find ourselves in that which transcends our temporal attachments and distinctions
We tend to identify ourselves by all sorts of reference points that are only temporal. Jesus lived a life that kept temporal attachments in a temporal perspective.
Matthew 6:25 (NIV)
"…do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes?”
It is a whole different order of being. It is not about self-actualization. It’s about self-transcendence.
3. We will find ourselves as we engage the sacred potential in others.
I think that if we could reflect long enough on a couple questions… we discover that our own lives already testify to this.
When have you felt closest to God… most at peace?
When have you been most fulfilled… literally felt full in your soul?
> I believe that the answer to both may be when we have served others… in the most selfless way.
Thomas Merton, a Trappist monk, is one of the most-read, spiritual writers of the 20th century. … speaks of the intimate connection between love of God, love of self, and love for others. (From - New Seeds of Contemplation)
“One of the paradoxes of the mystical life is this: that a man cannot enter into the deepest center of himself and pass through that center into God, unless he is able to pass out of himself and empty himself and give himself to other people.”
Illustration of onion – The onion exists… but when explored to discover it’s essence… it’s purpose… peeling away layers ends with nothing. But if brought to bear with other organic life… foods… it brings forth it’s greatest potential.
Jesus’ life reveals this… it’s the way of life he calls us to. It’s a way we are going to consider over the next few weeks…. As we look at how Jesus revealed the nature of God… of giving one’s life for others.
Jesus knows that this isn’t our natural disposition… it’s a way we discover and develop… as disciples. But it begins by recognizing that we have no autonomous self… and seeking Christ to lead us into the God centered life that he bears.
