Why I Gave Up on Finding Myself

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I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but “you do you” has become the mantra of our day. I am constantly being told that being true to myself is life’s most important pursuit. As I discover that true self, it is dishonest and unhealthy for me not to align my outward reality with the true self that I uncover.

This is the “gospel” – the good news of deliverance – that secular culture offers. I am told that if I am true to myself, I can cast off the bondage of outward expectations and live my life in alignment with my deepest longings and desires.

The obvious application is gender and sexuality, but this cultural mandate to discover and be true to myself affects every aspect of our lives. In everything from marriage to career to how I respond to the cultural trends, I am being told that sincerity is the final test of truth and authenticity is the highest virtue. And the more daring my departure from traditional expectations, the more my choices will be celebrated.

There are at least two problems with this cultural mandate.
 
One is that there’s only so much self-scrutiny I can endure. Why? Because the more deeply I examine my inner self, the more disillusioned I become. When I look deep within, I find that my heart is, as Calvin put it, a “factory of idols.” Or, going even further back, the Hebrew prophet Jeremiah put it best: “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” (Jer 17:9, KJV).

But a bigger problem with this cultural mandate to be true to myself is that it is tyrannical. My true inner self can make enormous claims on my life that can have a catastrophic impact on my relationships, on my career, on the trajectory of my life. But because my inner life must hold absolute sway over my life, I have no choice but to accommodate those inner longings, regardless of the cost.

All this means that this cultural mandate to find myself is no gospel at all.
 
This call to authentic selfhood demands that I delve deep into the cesspool of my heart, and it requires that I must sacrifice everything to the demands of my wandering desires. This is not a gospel – not good news at all. It is an invitation to a particular kind of hopeless private misery, the prison of the self.

But none of this is the reason I’ve had to give up on finding myself.

I can and must disregard this cultural mandate because I am a Christian. My Master said that if I want to follow Him, I must not discover myself but deny myself (Mark 8:34). Jesus came to deliver us from bondage to the self. He invites us to take on the “yoke” of following Him, learning how to obey Him, how to suffer well for Him, how to be part of His new community.

Denying myself is heresy in our self-obsessed culture.
 
Jesus lays claim to be the lord and king over all that I am, banishing all the pretenders to the throne of my heart: not just the claims of my selfhood but also the claims of my tribe, my profession, even my family.

Jesus is telling me that it is only as I surrender all my allegiances to His lordship that I can ever discover what I was created to be. God did not design me to be a self-absorbed individualist, an angry tribalist, a workaholic professional, an anxious parent. All these identities swear allegiance to idols that will ultimately betray me.

In following Jesus, I find my deepest identity in the love He showed me by dying for me while I was still His enemy. I find my identity not in my inward desires but in the hope that the Spirit will finish His sanctifying work in my life, reshaping my priorities and reordering my loves toward a whole new version of myself that looks and thinks and acts more like my Master, Jesus.

So instead of peering into my wicked heart to find my true self, I look outward to find my identity in Christ. This means that regardless of my family status, my professional status, the state of my personal relationships, or even the state of my conscience, I find my worth as the object of God’s lavish, unfailing love.

I can acknowledge that my heart is wicked and still have joy in my identity because my joy is not based on the state of my heart or on my outward behavior but on who I am in Christ.

Anchoring my identity in Christ means knowing that on my best days, I can’t make God love me more, and on my worst days, I know He won’t love me less. This is a self-image that can carry me through the peaks and troughs of my turbulent life.

So, no, I don’t need to be a slave to the cultural mandate to find and be true to myself. Jesus has called me to give up that hopeless quest and instead follow Him.

Persevere.
Paul Pyle
Pastor of Discipleship