2 Making Sense of the Self

Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity. What do people gain from all the toil at which they toil under the sun?A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever. The sun rises and the sun goes down, and hurries to the place where it rises. The wind blows to the south, and goes around to the north; round and round goes the wind, and on its circuits the wind returns. All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full; to the place where the streams flow, there they continue to flow. All things are wearisome; more than one can express; the eye is not satisfied with seeing, or the ear filled with hearing. What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; there is nothing new under the sun. Is there a thing of which it is said, "See, this is new"? It has already been, in the ages before us. The people of long ago are not remembered, nor will there be any remembrance of people yet to come by those who come after them.

Ecclesiastes 1:2-11

One of the key themes of this course is that "modernity" plays a huge part in the formation of our stories. Secularization has affected/infected every dimension to life in the West, and part of our goal in this course is to expose how the modern world has gotten into us, how it undermines our ability to live a congruent life, and (the harder part) how we can resist its effects and live congruent lives to our convictions.

The hidden assumption lying in modern institutions, traditions, and habits is actually theological. It is the assumption that God is largely irrelevant to the function of day to day living in the modern world. For all intents and purposes, it amounts to functional atheism.

What we are going to do today is make some sense of how we see our SELF. One of the characteristics of the world we live in is a prevailing sense of individualism.

Discuss: Where do you see individualism expresses and what does it look like?

What Individualism is NOT…

• It is not a proper belief in the dignity and sacredness of each person.

"...those who gaze at a computer screen by day and a television screen by night may well feel awkwardly obsolete in church if there is not

another screen on which to gaze."

David Wells

• It is not merely the freedom to pursue one’s own interests. We all have freedoms and responsibilities that come with this freedom. This is a good thing.

• It is not merely the desire to make a difference with my life. Again, this is a good thing.

What is Individualism?

“Individualism…is the belief that the individual is the primary reality and that our understanding of the universe and lifestyle should be centred in oneself.” Mark Sanford & Steve Wilkens, Hidden Worldviews

1. I am the Primary Reality in the Universe

2. That my uniqueness is what makes me me

Discuss: How do you see this played out in relationships, particularly on social media?

2. That I am and ought to remain “free”

3. My End Justifies My Means

4. That individuals are to be held responsible for their own actions, but only for their own actions

5. That my experience is “my” reality

Discuss how this affects the way we share the gospel? 6. I am my own moral conscience

Always remember that you are unique. Just like everyone else.

Margaret Meade

“The huge modern heresy is to alter the human soul to fit modern social conditions, instead of altering modern social conditions to fit the human soul.”

G.K. Chesterton

7. That individuals are ultimately responsible for creating themselves

The God of IndividualismThe God at the centre of this system is very clear: It is you! If another god comes onto the scene then he, she, or it does so because you have either a) created that god or b) chosen that god as an aid to your self-expression, definition, or creation. This may sound harsh or come across as an overstatement, but consider the following:

Who is the creator within individualism? You are.

Who is the ultimate authority of what is real? You are.

Who decides the purpose and ends towards which you live? You do.

To whom do you appeal as an authority? Yourself.

Discuss how you see this happen in Church and in your own life.

The Good Life of Individualism

1. I have the right to fulfillment

2. Freedom!

To quote Steve Wilkens and Mark Sanford from Hidden Worldviews:

“When freedom becomes the cardinal virtue, it radically redefines the traditional virtues… If my individual goals are primary, justice can no longer be a principle in which the obligations and rights of two parties are viewed equally. Individualism puts me at the centre of the universe and does not allow me to consider ‘the other’ as equal. Second, when individual liberty is our primary value, we identify obstacles to fulfillment as something outside of us (e.g., other people, mass culture, government restrictions) rather than internal deficiencies in our character. In other words, goodness is not obtained by internal transformation, but by rearrangement of external circumstances. Finally, and

The whole range of human miseries, from restlessness and estrangement through shame and guilt to the agonies of daytime television – all of them tell us that things in human life are not as they ought to be.

- Cornelius PLantinga Jr. “Not The Way It’s Supposed To Be”

“Something has stepped between our existence and God to shut off the light of heaven… that something is in fact ourselves, our own bloated selfhood.”

Martin Buber

related to the last point, traditional virtues such as courage are no longer desirable characteristics because they represent restrictions on our freedom. However, if freedom is our highest value, courage (and all the other classical virtues) becomes a hindrance if it conflicts with my idea of fulfillment.”

3. To Do what I Do Best

Discuss: Where do relationships fit into the worldview of individualism?

The Therapeutic Worldview: The Quest for Well-Being

The Therapeutic worldview is focused mostly on purpose. More specifically, the therapeutic worldview is one in which the most important thing, the ultimate goal, is to feel good. It is about a subjective sense of well-being defined in a very specific way.

The Good Life: Well BeingAs just noted, the goal, the entire focus of one’s life, is on a subjective sense of well-being. To more clearly define this we are going to break it into two parts and then explore each.

1. Feeling Good

The first thing to say about well-being is that we ought to feel good. Feeling good, however, has many different facets.

Physical – The obvious sense of bodily health.

Emotional – The goal is to be happy. Now, that is still rather fuzzy, but the general goal is to feel good about oneself, one’s life, and about what one is doing at each moment.

Psychological – This is primarily about self-esteem, feeling good about who we are.

Relational – Relationships should make me happy.

Security – a large part of all of these components is the feeling of safety.

In other words, in every area of life, we seek to feel happy and enjoy life. The way this is approached, however, is quite shallow. It is the gratification of the moment, the fleeting enjoyment of getting what we want, the quick smile, and so on that is in view.

What parts of life that we often consider good does ‘Feeling Good’ leave out?

“Religious man was born to be saved, psychological man is born to be pleased.”

- Philip Rieff

The contemporary climate is therapeutic, not religious. People today hunger not for personal salvation, let alone for the restoration of an earlier golden age, but for the feeling, the momentary illusion, of personal well-being, health, and psychic security.

- Christopher Lasch

2. Avoiding Pain

Avoiding pain is a very broad objective. In what non-physical ways do we avoid pain?

If avoiding pain is truly one of our main goals, how will this hinder us or cause us to miss things we might consider important?

The Therapeutic Self1. Though we are responsible to create ourselves, we are also being created by forces

outside of ourselves. We need to overcome and get past these influences so that we can get back to self-creation and self-definition.

2. Individuals ought to be free, but often are not.

3. Individuals are to be held responsible for their own actions, mostly.

God and the Therapeutic worldview: Irrelevant1. Not Present

2. Not Active

3. Not Redeeming

4. Not Creating

5. God created the world and watches over life on earth

There is a God who created us and he does watch over us, urging us on and helping us towards happiness.

6. God is good and nice and fair and wants people to be the same

This God is particularly notable for lining up so nicely with the social norms of 21st century western cultural expectations of ‘good people.’

7. God wants us to be happy and feel good about ourselves

8. God doesn’t need to be in our lives except to help resolve a problem

The real, tacit, de facto religion of the majority of American teenagers is not any of the many historic religious faiths one usually thinks of when one thinks of religion but is a new, de facto religion: moralistic therapeutic deism.

- Christian Smith, Patricia Snell

God is there when we need him, but we are fine to get on with life by ourselves most of the time. Then, when we enter a time of need, he is there for us to turn to.

9. God accepts good people into heaven when they die

Given this view of God what is the ‘right way’ to approach God? How does this differ from Christian teaching?

A Christian Response: God, Personhood, and the Good Life

God Almighty1. Trinity

This whole idea stands starkly in contrast to placing any idea of personhood, or God, at the centre of worldview if it leads to isolation.

It stands against finding identity by one’s self.

It stands against the idea of our ultimate freedom being found by being separated and distinct from all others.

2. Self-Giving Creator

Stephen D. Boyer and Christopher Hall put it this way:

“God is not just tri-personal; he is expansively, creatively tri-personal. The triunity of God is something that unfolds and opens out, not something that curves in and closes down on itself. God’s intrinsic relational completeness, the unimaginable eternal intimacy between the Father and the Son in the Spirit, does not exclude other relations; it is instead the ground of other relations. The unquenchable divine joy that makes creation unnecessary also makes creation possible in the first place, for the love of Father, Son, and Spirit is in no way threatened or imperiled by flowing out beyond itself into a created world. As we saw in the previous chapter, God is love, and creation itself is the wholly free outpouring of that love, in generous, gratuitous, open-handed bounty, a bounty that is infinitely hospitable not because it needs us but simply because it is itself.”

3. Self-Giving Redeemer

4. Holy

Lacking holiness is lacking God, it is lacking good, it is lacking life.

God is Holy; he is light, and love, and life. And this connects to what was said above about him being self-giving and abundant.

The God of salvation lives eternally in relationship.

- Paul S. Fiddes

How little people know who think that holiness is dull. When one meets the real thing...it is irresistible. If even 10 percent of the world’s population had it, would not the whole world be converted and happy before the year’s end?

- C.S. Lewis

5. Perfect

A Christian Vision of Being Human (not Individual)In writing about being human from a Christian perspective something odd happens. On the one hand, we must talk and think about the glory of the human being. Consider, for example, Psalm 8:

“O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens. From the lips of children and infants you have ordained praise because of your enemies, to silence the foe and the avenger. When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him? You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You made him ruler over the works of your hands; you put everything under his feet: all flocks and herds, and the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas. O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!

On the other hand, we cannot leave aside that sin is so deeply placed in us that it too is part of our nature. Such passages as Jeremiah 17:9 reflect this: "The heart is more deceitful than all else And is desperately sick; Who can understand it?

Human nature, human identity, human beings as we see them, all of the examples around us, are distorted. This creates the first difficulty: First, how can we know anything about true, undistorted and unbroken, humanity?

The answer is found in the Word of God; literally, the revelation of God in His Word, primarily the revelation of Jesus Christ, who is fully human.

Human Being: The Good, the Bad, and the Godly1. Made

2. Made In the Image of God

3. Born in the Image of Adam

While we are made in the image of God we also bear the image of Adam. That is another way of saying that we are born separated from God into a world that is not the way it is supposed to be.

“You come of the Lord Adam and the Lady Eve," said Aslan. "And that is both honour enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar, and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the greatest emperor on earth. Be content.” 

- C.S. Lewis, Prince Caspian

Four things stand out here:

We are sinful. Another way of saying this is to say that we are turned away from God.

We are broken. That is, we do not function properly, we do not pursue our purposes as we ought, we do not relate rightly. We are unrighteous.

We are exiled. The world is not our home, we come into a place where we do not, strictly speaking, belong, for though God is always with us we have been kicked out of the garden.

We are ill. We are sick. This is another aspect of being sinful. However, whereas sin expresses the wrongness present in our will, desire, and heart, illness expresses the wrongness present in the rest of our being.

4. Beloved by God

Read Romans 8:28-39 and discuss how these truths, if taken to heart, affect the way we look at ourselves, feel about ourselves, and live out of ourselves.

5. Lovers of Self

Theologically, this truth about us has been labeled “Homo Curvatus in se” which is latin for “man turned in to himself.”

6. Called to God

What part does Uniqueness play in any of this? Where does being unique come into being human in a Christian worldview?

The Good Life1. Walking with God

2. Becoming like Jesus

3. Sharing the Joy and Fellowship of the Spirit

4. Living the Life God gives you

Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole [duty] of man.

Ecclesiastes 12:13

“"But all meeting with God has two aspects. First, I accept as from the hands of God the realm in which I am bound (my place in history, my sex, my talents and abilities, etc.) and here the question is whence I came. And second, I accept from him the realm of my freedom in order that I may be assigned my task, my destiny in life, and here the question is whither, to what end am I here."

- Helmut Thielicke