Woe is me! Who is me? The riddle of discovering my – self.

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Helen asks about the dilemma of knowing who we are, our true self. "To what extent is 'myself' the 'me' made in the image of God and to what extent is it the human, fallen, sinful 'me' ?

Perhaps the beginnings of the answer are in the recognition that as human beings we are self-contradictory, our place in the world ambiguous, our moral capacities ambivalent, our lives lived under shadow of judgement yet looking hopefully for light. There is a Romans 7 dilemma we all recognise whether that tortured passage of Romans 7.14-25 refers to Paul's experience, or ours, before or after conversion. Who is this radically uncertain "I" who does what I don't want to do, and who is helpless to do the good I both must and want to do? Why can't I do what I must, be what I am called to be?

Three brief quotations sharpen our dilemma because they each say something true about that mysterious mixture of feeling and knowing, wanting and longing, of conscience and wilfulness, of flesh and soul, mind and spirit, that is this person called me. And the truths don't seem to fit – except in a theology of creation and redemption, of justification and sanctification, of judgement and mercy, and of life through death as the self-giving love of God whose creative purposes persist in pursuing at infinite personal cost, the goal of a redeemed, renewed and reconciled creation.

For you created my inmost being,
you knit me together in my
mother's womb.
I praise you
for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

Psalm 139.13,14.

Surely I was sinful at birth,
sinful from the time my mother
conceived me.

Psalm 51.5

“This is my dilemma: I am dust and ashes; frail, wayward, a
set of predetermined behavioral responses, riddled with fears, beset with
needs, the quintessence of dust, and unto dust I shall return. But there is
something else in me. Dust I may be, but troubled dust. Dust that dreams. Dust
that has strange premonitions of transfiguration, of a glory in store, a
destiny prepared, an inheritance that will one day be my own…So my life is
stretched out in a painful dialectic between ashes and glory, between weakness
and transfiguration. I am a riddle to myself, an exasperation enigma…this
strange duality of dust and glory.”

(Richard Holloway – but I can't find the reference – anybody help to pin this down?)

Comments

10 responses to “Woe is me! Who is me? The riddle of discovering my – self.”

28 July 2009

helen

The concept of self links with kenosis (using this to refer to us not Jesus!). If you think your true self is corrupt, then kenosis has to be an emptying and replacing of that. If you think your true self, your core, is made in the image of God, then kenosis is stripping of all the externals that attach themselves to that.

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28 July 2009

helen

The concept of self links with kenosis (using this to refer to us not Jesus!). If you think your true self is corrupt, then kenosis has to be an emptying and replacing of that. If you think your true self, your core, is made in the image of God, then kenosis is stripping of all the externals that attach themselves to that.

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28 July 2009

Jim Gordon

Well, yes helen. But the whole debate within and beyond Reformed theology is whether my true self and core is also corrupt.Sin is invasive and pervasive, radically disfiguring, so that all aspects of personality, character and identity are affected. Also, kenosis is not a spiritual discipline we practice, but the transformative process that takes place as we are “in Christ” “who emptied himself…and became obedient to death…on the cross”. If anyone is in Christ…new creation. More thinking to be done about all this I see.

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28 July 2009

Jim Gordon

Well, yes helen. But the whole debate within and beyond Reformed theology is whether my true self and core is also corrupt.Sin is invasive and pervasive, radically disfiguring, so that all aspects of personality, character and identity are affected. Also, kenosis is not a spiritual discipline we practice, but the transformative process that takes place as we are “in Christ” “who emptied himself…and became obedient to death…on the cross”. If anyone is in Christ…new creation. More thinking to be done about all this I see.

Reply
28 July 2009

Rosemary Hannah

For many years, I have felt the true answer lies in turning our gaze from ourselves, outward. Trying, as far as possible, to be present to the person before us, and hearing them. Seeking to serve them, or to find the person who will better serve them.
This leaves open of course the question of vocation- that calling unique to us, which we must do ourselves. For me that has always been hard to locate, though I think I am finding it now very late in life. We often need the help of others to locate it though, I think.
The real goal is the opposite of over concern with our motivations and our core, I think. The real goal is simply service. In that sense, kenosis is a discipline.

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28 July 2009

Rosemary Hannah

For many years, I have felt the true answer lies in turning our gaze from ourselves, outward. Trying, as far as possible, to be present to the person before us, and hearing them. Seeking to serve them, or to find the person who will better serve them.
This leaves open of course the question of vocation- that calling unique to us, which we must do ourselves. For me that has always been hard to locate, though I think I am finding it now very late in life. We often need the help of others to locate it though, I think.
The real goal is the opposite of over concern with our motivations and our core, I think. The real goal is simply service. In that sense, kenosis is a discipline.

Reply
29 July 2009

Gordon Jones

The Holloway quotation is reproduced in “Why I Am A Christian” by John Stott. The source is given as “Extract from the speech Richard Holloway gave at the Catholic Renewal Conference at Loughborough in April 1978.”

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29 July 2009

Gordon Jones

The Holloway quotation is reproduced in “Why I Am A Christian” by John Stott. The source is given as “Extract from the speech Richard Holloway gave at the Catholic Renewal Conference at Loughborough in April 1978.”

Reply
29 July 2009

Jim Gordon

Thanks for tracing the Holloway piece Gordon. I’ve a feeling that paper was later published, and I heard Holloway some years later use it in another paper – on a course on Christian Spirituality at Scottish Churches House. But thank you for providing a clear reference.

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29 July 2009

Jim Gordon

Thanks for tracing the Holloway piece Gordon. I’ve a feeling that paper was later published, and I heard Holloway some years later use it in another paper – on a course on Christian Spirituality at Scottish Churches House. But thank you for providing a clear reference.

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