I began writing this as a diary entry. I try to write a few hours a day, just to "keep my hand in" as they say. Sometimes, a paragraph or a phrase written at such a time will find its way into an entirely different context and emerge as part of an essay, story or novel. What I'm wondering now is, if my "true" self never died on Jesus' cross, was I ever really "born from above"? Am I a real Christian or a poser pretending to be one? God warned me that this would happen...if I didn't commit to absolute honesty, I'd lose the ability to distinguish between bullshit and reality!
I haven’t written for weeks—maybe months. I feel sort of like I’m coming off of a bender...that is, I feel sort of like how I’ve heard that coming off of a bender feels like. I’ll confess to you that I’ve never actually gotten drunk more than a handful of times in my life. When I did, it was only for a single night. Then I slept it off and was sober the following morning. No hangover or anything. Honestly, I can’t write about such things as lost weekends or hung-over holidays. I’ve never experienced them, except vicariously...through books.
Truth. I’ve spent the last several years talking and writing about it. It’s about high time that I started living it. One truth is that I’ve only been in about four bicycle races—not including time trials—in my life. Another is that I’ve only sung in front of people with a band about twenty times in my life. Yet another is that I’ve never been to
The reason my real self needs to “come out” is that he has a destiny to fulfill. That destiny, which neither of us can know until we stumble upon it together, is the purpose for which God made us in the first place. Us! There I go again! There is no us! There is only me! God created me to fulfill my destiny! The point is that I can never know that destiny until I find it and I can never find it until I step out and face the world as myself.
Today in our discipleship class we discussed Abraham Maslow’s Needs Pyramid. At the pinnacle of the Pyramid is a need called “Self Actualization”. The pastor said that “Self Actualization is not our goal as Christians; Christ Actualization is.” Of course, in the final analysis, he’s right. Our ultimate goal as Christians is to actualize Christ in the world. However, actualizing our selves is an intermediate objective. That is because we cannot die to ourselves—and so be raised to Christ—until we have actually lived to ourselves. If we live lies instead of our own lives, never telling ourselves or anyone else the truth about who we are, we can only crucify the lies—which are already dead anyway—and so never actually die. Only when we own up to our true selves, living in the light as God is in the Light, can we die to our selves and be raised again as the True Selves we have been promised in Christ.
I desperately want to come out. I suppose I understand Negroes passing for white and Queers passing for straight in a straight/white-slanted world. I’m a real person passing for a fake person in a fake-slanted world. I guess I understand fat girls who try to fake out the body-conscious world by starving themselves into thinness, too. The beautiful truth is that Our Creator, Who designed each and all of us for His purpose, loves and accepts us as we truly are. As well, it is that we will find true happiness only if we shed our (behavioral) fig leaves and stand (spiritually) naked before Him and one another. For only then can each of us find the destiny that s/he was created to fulfill.
Only when I live life as my true self can I hope to discover my true passions in life. For the longest time, I’ve assumed that I want to be a vocalist. I want to sing in public. I want to write songs that “make the whole world sing”. But do I really want that? I think I do. I think I enjoy singing and racing my bike. I think I enjoy surfing on the ocean and hiking in the woods. But I can’t really be sure. For all I know, only my alter ego enjoys these things. The real me, if I ever live as him, may not enjoy them at all. Maybe, the Prophet, Teacher and Servant that surfaced during the Gifting Survey are my alter ego’s motivational gifts and not mine. Maybe, once I’ve connected with my true self, I will retake the survey and discover what my true gifts are.
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