Some of you are, perhaps, old enough to remember the old Tootsie Roll Pop commercial asking, "Just how many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll Pop?" The little boy goes from the cow to the fox, to the turtle, and finally to the wise old owl who says, "Let's find out...one, two-hoo, three...crunch!" I'm not sure exactly what this may reveal about my personality, to say nothing of my sanity, but I've found myself asking that same question in an entirely different vein these past few weeks.
This past May our surgeon removed a good-sized portion of our daughter's right temporal lobe. It was fascinating to discover that you could remove a portion of a person’s brain, and that she could actually function better than she did before. The past week, we have witnessed two additional surgeries: one surgery completely disconnected the right hemisphere of her brain from the rest of her nervous system and the second completely removed the right frontal lobe. There is, however, every indication that she remains "Kathryn." In fact, once we are fully into recovery, there is every possibility that she may be more "herself" than she has been in a long, long time.
This begs the question, "How much of a person can you take away without erasing the person you began with?" Just how many surgeries does it take to get to the center, to the core, of a person?
While we know that this is in some sense a silly question, it may also be a profound one. It is the question, essentially, that our society is grappling with when we discuss abortion, euthanasia, and healthcare and social concerns all along life's continuum. When does life begin? When does it end? What does it mean to be alive? ...to be human? What does it mean to be me? Is there anything that is, essentially, me? What is the difference between you and me, and us and them?
Alright...before we get too far ahead of ourselves, let's have a think about what makes me "me" and you "you". Who is this "me" that "I" refer to?
One the most obvious difficulties we may run into in trying to answer this question is the problem of time. When I pull out a photo album and look at the snapshots taken of me from birth to this present time, I am fairly certain that each of them is an accurate representation of who I was at each of those given moments. I look back and see a photo labeled “2 months old” and recognize that , “yep, that’s me.” Photos taken at birthday parties, vacations, graduations, and holidays are each accurate representations of me at those given periods of time, but…while I can certainly agree that “that’s me, and me, and me again,” I know that none of those images is really “me”. I’m not the same person now that I was at any of those previous given points.
And it doesn’t take that significant an amount of time to make a significant difference in who I am…catch me some morning before I’ve had my coffee and medication! I think about the person I was before and immediately after I walked across various stages to receive various diplomas. In a moment, in a twinkling of an eye, I became a different person. I became a different me. It happened when I got married, when I became a birth parent, and when the judge signed the papers to make me the legal father of four adopted children.
We use transformational language all of the time: when we’ve gained or lost a significant amount of weight, gotten married or divorced, gone through a significant illness, or made it through a significant challenge. It’s not uncommon to make the claims that, “I was a different person back then,“ or “I’m not the same person that I used to be.” This is true; the events of our lives change us, and we become different people than we once were. Some of these experiences are so exceptional, they may make us feel almost like we’ve been “born again.”
Pretty interesting, huh?
We can complicate the situation even further by looking at other variables. You wouldn’t be “you” apart from the family you belong to. As an adoptive parent, there is no doubt in my mind that my children are different people now that they belong to me rather than to their birth parents. Our nationalities, ethnicities, socio-economic backgrounds, and morphology all serve to shape us into the people we are becoming…and, very significantly…we have no choice in these matters; they have nothing to do with the power of the will…nothing to do with choice. You really can’t choose who your family is (no matter how much you might want to). …or can you? --That is the $64,000.00 question (or whatever it ought to be adjusted to for inflation).
That is exactly the question and the challenge that Jesus was addressing during his ministry. How much does a person need to give up until he discovers his core-being? Can she give up her race? Can she walk away from her religion? Can he abandon his family and heritage? How many of these things does any given person need to give up before he or she discovers (and begins to become) who they really are?
In my ministry I’ve worked with a wide swath of humanity; I’ve pastored average citizens in local churches, ministered to American heroes and heroines in our nation’s military, and preached to and prayed with some of our most dangerous felons. Every one of the men and women I’ve ever had the privilege of speaking with has this in common: they struggle with the hurtful things they’ve done, especially in light of the good persons, deep down, that they know themselves to be.
You have that same conflict in you. I have it in me. Regardless of what I’ve done with my life, I know that I am essentially a good person…scratch that…I know that I am a great person! Underneath a few minor (and a couple of major) personality flaws and behind the occasional unfortunate decision that I may have made here and there over the course of my life, is a super-fantastic human being! You just have to dig down deep enough. At least, that’s what I choose to believe…
I choose to believe that if I can get over being a white, American, middle-class, Protestant, male, I might become the person God created me to be. If I can let go of my biases and fears, release my pride and ambition, and if I can cut out worrying and amputate my guilt and regrets, then I might just find the “me” that I believe that I am.
Jesus said, “For whoever wishes to save his life must lose it…” (Mark 8:35)
Lose it for what? …for whom?
He goes on to say, “whoever loses his life for My sake and the good news’ will save it.”
Who is this Jesus, who wants me to lose my life for him? Do we really remember him?
Jesus who died as a traitor to his nation (Mark 15:1-32)
Jesus who turned his back on his birth family (Matthew 12:46-50)
Jesus who mocked and betrayed the religious traditions of his people (Matt 23)
Jesus who was rumored to party just a little too hard (Luke 7:34)
Jesus who was “despised and rejected” (Isaiah 53:3)
Jesus the outcast (John 1:12)
In Jesus, we discover how much we have to lose in order to be found…
How well do we hold out hope for the terrorist and traitor?
What love do we offer for friends and family who’ve betrayed us?
What compassion do we have for social pariahs?
Would people say that we truly love those who are not like us?
How much of our time and talents and treasure do we invest in hopeless causes/“the least of these” (Matthew 25:45)?
Jesus says that we only get to our true selves, that we are only saved, when we lose our lives for him and for the gospel.
Is the gospel "good news" for everyone, or only for those who think and believe and look and act like we do? Is it really a cause for “great joy for all people” (Luke 2:10), or just for people like us? …or, worse yet, only for people we like?
The only way that the gospel can be good news for all people is if those of us who believe it get over ourselves long enough to deliver it. Getting over ourselves means that we’ve got to stop being self-centered, manipulative, and mean; we’ve got to cut that stuff out. We’ve got to cut out lust and greed and anger. (Galatians 5:19-21) Whatever it is that is keeping us from being who we know we “really” are (deep down inside) has to go. In the words of my mother, “you’d better cut it out, and get with the program.”
But can we cut that deep? How much of ourselves has to go? How much of our own agendas can we give up to follow the program of God? What if we ourselves were living as neighbors to politically active homosexuals on one side and to members of Westboro Baptist Church on the other? (…I know several of us are thinking that we’d move! …but what would Jesus do?) Is it possible for us to amputate enough of our own prejudice to discover and practice the radical love of God?
These are painful questions, if we are honest about them. They hurt because we know that we have an obligation to change our lives in the direction of whatever answer we give. They hurt because we know that God expects us to “work out your salvation” (Philippians 2:12). They hurt because they cut, not only into how we think and what we believe, but into how we spend our time and live our lives.
One of the most intriguing verses in the Bible is 1 John 4:2. “By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God…”
I like this verse because it reminds me that the greatest danger of faith is not religion, but “spirituality.” Now I know that this runs counter to our culture’s infatuation with being “spiritual, but not religious”, but it is true, nevertheless. Religion is a physical manifestation of belief; it is faith given form (however flawed it may be). Spirituality, however, is that murky mess that refuses to be nailed down; it claims all of the glory, but requires none of the commitment. Religion, on the other hand, is ugly but tangible; it is known and, therefore, lends itself to both challenge and critique. Religion requires faith to show itself in the flesh, and, therefore, reveals where the scalpel most urgently needs to be applied.
The Christian faith insists that the Spirit becomes flesh. Spirituality, in the Christian sense, is not about some anomalous, ephemeral, metaphysical feeling. Christian spirituality requires us to cut off our hands and feet if they keep us from loving the most vulnerable in our society. Christian spirituality requires us to pull out our eyes if we fail to see the hope and potential in even the least among us. (Matthew 18) Christianity is a faith that requires us to cut deeply into who we are and what we think: to cut and cut and cut until the Love (1 John 4:8) that is within us begins to spill out towards others in acts of “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” (Galatians 5:22-23). Our faith believes that it is possible to both discover and become the “good (or super-fantastic) person” that we believe is deep down at the center of all of us.
How much does one have to give up in order to find his or her center? In the words of the wise old owl, "Let’s find out…"
It just may turn out that the more we cut away the more we discover ourselves becoming who we really are.
