In Search of Me

I sometimes wonder if I know the real me, buried under the rubble of self-help - so much so that we forget our true selves, and we lose our real selves (cf Mk 8:34-37, The Message).

Who am I really?

An influential representative of the life of Christ? Or the product of a self-made Christianity?

We may all pack the same bags for the same journey, but we all know that the experience of two people walking down the same bit of road may hardly be the same: The seasoned climber and the amateur hiker, the Follower of Christ and the Self-Made Christian, a fine line, and a clear distinction.

For just as faith without works is dead, and that we can no more show our works apart from our faith than we can show our faith apart from our works (James 2:18), so it is that both the Follower of Christ and the Self-Made Christian must do all he can to present himself approved to God (2 Tim 2:15).

What then, between the Follower of Christ and the Self-Made Christian?

Who am I really?

As it turns out, we are not what we eat. It is what comes out of us that pollutes, said Jesus: obscenities, lusts, thefts, murders, adulteries, greed, depravity, deceptive dealings, carousing, mean looks, slander, arrogance, foolishness. It is these that are vomit from the heart, said He. (Mk 7:20-23) "The Pharisees make a big show of saying the right thing, but their heart isn't in it. They act like they are worshipping me, but they don't mean it. They just use me as a cover for teaching whatever suits their fancy, ditching God's command and taking up the latest fad." (Mk 7:6-8)

Who would have thought that while we battle the giants in our world of materialism, individualism, humanism and superficialism, there is still another sinister evil in whch we must fight - a contamination from within that threatens to make us lose heart, to harden our hearts - that numbs us from the sense of eternity that had long been chiselled in our hearts since the Beginning (Ecc 3:11).

To be a Follower of Christ is to embark on a journey of the heart. To seek first His Kingdom and His righteousness, is to embark on a mission in search of our true selves, our real selves.

"If your hand or your foot gets in God's way, chop it off and throw it away. You are better off maimed or lame and alive than the proud owner of two hands and feet, godless in a furnace of eternal fire. And if your eye distracts you from God, pull it out and throw it away. You are better off one-eyed and alive than exercising your twenty-twenty vision from inside the fire of hell."

- Mk 9:43-48

It might cost you an arm and a leg, but I think it's worth it.