“When he talks of losing their selves, He means only abandoning the clamour of self-will; once they have done that, He really gives them back their personality, and boasts that when they are wholly His they will be more themselves than ever.” – CS Lewis
(as a side note, forgive me if this isn’t organized very well. I’m mostly just trying to get some thoughts out and am not wanting to take the time to reformat, honestly.)
“The Shack”, by William P. Young, is a fictional book; however, just like many other fictional books, there are many thought-provoking ideas, conversations, and situations throughout. One idea was that as a child, your personality is not yet developed, so you’ve basically got this white slate that can be momentarily colored by other people or experiences, but nothing will stick for a while. As you grow older, the colors begin to stay, to develop, your personality begins to show, all of its different facets being different colors. And no two peoples’ personalities, or colors, are the same. I thought that was a good analogy.
Here’s the part I wonder about though, if we’re actually more ourselves the younger we are and less we “grow up”. Or maybe the issue I see is that the older we get, the more we hide our personality, the more we try to conform ourselves to what we think will be better liked by those around us, a personality that is more likely to be accepted.
Yet, what if the youngest of us really do grasp this “be yourselves” thing better than anyone else? I still have a feeling that this is the case. Think about it, as children, in responding to people or situations usually just go with their first reaction, we didn’t stop to think about it beforehand, about how other people are going to like or understand our reaction, like so many “adults” do. We just reacted, and in doing so our personality gloriously shone through. Also, as a child, we didn’t have handfuls of experiences that helped to “shape and define” us. In other words, we were free of life telling us who we should be, how we should act, what we should think. We just were.
Personally, I feel that I was more myself at age 5 than I am now. Once I hit 10 or 12, I figured out that who I was wasn’t “good”, so I learned to let go of it and have been relearning who I am ever since. Only very recently have I felt that I’ve actually really learned anything, but that has only come as I’ve become more comfortable just “letting it fly” and not worrying about others around. By no means am I saying that I’ve got this thing mastered. I’m only saying that it’s actually making sense to me for once, that I’m beginning to grasp this concept and put it into action every so often.
Ultimately, it comes to letting go of yourself and giving it to God. He’s the only one who can really give us our real selves. The more we spend time with him, seek him, get to know him, the more ourselves we become, as our true personality is found only in him. Not in our experiences, good or bad, in other people, in our circumstances, our thoughts, beliefs, or actions. It’s in Him. We’re in Him.
Getting back to where I began…this is what C.S. Lewis is talking about. In order to get to know God intimately, we must give up our own agendas, give up trying to make it, trying to figure it out. We must let go of our planning, scheming, worrying, wondering, pleading…the list goes on forever. We must lose ourselves, letting go of whatever semblance of control we’d previously convinced ourselves we possessed. The key isn’t coming to God with every put together, all pieces in place, everything figured out. No, it’s about coming to God in full realization of our depravity – our brokenness, loss, need, pain, joy, and suffering. God desires openness from us; he wants honesty, brutal honesty. That covers the entire spectrum of emotions, elation to hatred to depression. All of it. I believe that the more we come to Him in our depravity, devoid of ourselves, the more ourselves we will become. We’re made in his image, so doesn’t it make sense to you that the more we learn about him, the more we learn about and become our true selves?
