Connecting the Dots - True-self

My blog has moved to http://www.lrtministry.org/scotts-ponderings/.  This blog will become inactive at the end of October.

One of Henri Nouwen’s spir­i­tual polar­i­ties and a com­po­nent of authen­tic pres­ences is the inward reflec­tion and our strug­gle with self — true-self vs. false-self. That is is the per­son who we are one the inside accu­rately reflected by who we project our­self to be to oth­ers? As I speak of self I am look­ing at it at a very basic level. The ques­tions I ask when I speak of self are: 1) Are the things we say we believe and value reflected in the way we live our life?, 2) Do you lever­age the way you are wired, your nat­ural skills and your spir­i­tual gift­ing so as to ben­e­fit oth­ers around you?, or as described in James 2 3) Does your faith lead to action?

The prob­lem that many of us face when look­ing at these ques­tions is that we don’t always know what we fully believe and value, we don’t know the extent of our wiring and gift­ed­ness, we don’t know how to put our faith into action. It’s not that we don’t have any beliefs, val­ues, gifts or faith, it’s that we have never taken the time to eval­u­ate, orga­nize and act on them.

Foun­da­tional Beliefs
We all have a set of foun­da­tional belief, we may not be able to artic­u­late them but they are part of our life. The ques­tion to ask here is “What or who is it that is inform­ing my foun­da­tional beliefs?” Is it cul­ture and soci­ety? Is it God? Is it the peo­ple we asso­ciate with? Is it the things we watch and read? To be hon­est it is prob­a­bly a com­bi­na­tion of some or all of these. The trou­ble with hav­ing mul­ti­ple sources is that there will be times when two or more will con­tra­dict each other. The ques­tion then “Which one trumps?”

For me it is God who I have cho­sen as the “trump card.” My foun­da­tional beliefs are drawn from the sto­ries God has given us in the Bible. I actu­ally talk of my foun­da­tional beliefs in the from of three meta-narratives that I find as I read the Bible — the cre­ation nar­ra­tive, the restora­tion nar­ra­tive, and the eter­nal nar­ra­tive. I don’t have the space to dive deeply into each of these right now but my beliefs on cre­ation, rela­tion­ship, mean­ing, restora­tion, and pur­pose all fol­low out of these narratives.

Oper­a­tional Beliefs and Val­ues
Flow­ing out of my foun­da­tional beliefs are my oper­a­tional beliefs and val­ues. I am cur­rently work­ing on liv­ing out eight oper­a­tional beliefs. Each belief is grounded in scrip­ture, has an asso­ci­ated value, and an action plan for putting the belief into action.

The ques­tion I have been pon­der­ing for the last year or so is “Who am I and how best can I lever­age my answer?” The short answer that I have come up with is I am called to come along side other and help them to… How I fin­ish this ques­tion depends upon the con­text in which it is asked — at work, at home, at church, and doing min­istry will all have their own par­tic­u­lar responses.

I did not arrive at this point in my pon­der­ings overnight. I have been actively reflect­ing on dif­fer­ent aspects of these ques­tion for the last 10–12 years. I have put a lot of effort in to fig­ur­ing out who my true-self is and make sure that I am not pre­sent­ing a false self to oth­ers. I know that I suc­ceed more than I fail, but there is still work to be done. The dis­cov­ery of true-self is not a one and done things. Doc­u­ments that I cre­ate are organic in nature — I have three doc­u­ments that I pull out 3–4 times a year that allow me to assess where I am in the true-self vs false-self bat­tle. These doc­u­ments con­tinue to evolve as God con­tin­ues to trans­form me into the man he knows I am.

It is through this process of get­ting to know myself bet­ter that I am bet­ter able to be authen­ti­cally present with oth­ers as I inter­act with them in life.