So who exactly am I?

I love the writings of Henri Nouwen, and in recent days I have been mulling over his statement that there are three lies that all of us at some time believe about ourselves, and through believing them damage both ourselves and others. These lies, Nouwen states, are that

I am what I do

I am what I have

I am what others think of me.

I seem to have struggled with one, two, sometimes all three of those much of my life, despite the best efforts of long-suffering family, friends, pastors, teachers, mentors and sometimes complete strangers. I too easily forget that I am a loved child of God, uniquely created by the One who loves me; that I am “body and soul . . .marvellously made!” (Psalm 139 Message) and that nothing I do, don’t do, think or don’t think, can ever separate me from God’s love.

In many ways the ageing process doesn’t help, as it brings into the equation all the unwanted additional baggage of perceived irrelevance, incompetence and general invisibility as work and family dynamics inevitably and irrevocably change. In many ways I seem to have retired from life - at least the life that formerly brought me fulfilment and purpose.

The flip side of course is that retirement from the ‘should and oughts’ of working life and full time parenting can also bring with it the glorious opportunity to begin to shed so many of those negative messages and unconscious pressures that I have accepted for so many years. I can embrace wholeheartedly Paul’s message to the Galatians where he writes “I tried keeping rules and working my head off to please God, and it didn’t work . . . I have been crucified with Christ. My ego is no longer central. It is no longer important that I appear righteous before you or have your good opinion, and I am no longer driven to impress God. Christ lives in me” (Gal.2:19-20 Message.)

Hallelujah, oh the freedom!

I am NOT what I do, I am NOT what I have, I am NOT what others think of me, I am a beloved child of God.

BUT I have been brought up to believe those lies. As a child I was afforded value by what I did, how I behaved, what I achieved. Love, acceptance, even my parents’ presence was removed if I didn’t conform and perform. As a child of the fifties I was certainly not unique in these childhood experiences, and my parents were no doubt just passing on the received ‘wisdom’ of their parents. But those early messages take a lifetime of relearning.

Henri Nouwen wrote that “Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the Beloved”. He also honestly admitted that it took him a lifetime to learn this, to be released from personal insecurity and thus able to love more freely and more fully.

The tragedy for the church is that it has failed so often to address these three lies that Nouwen identified, and has perpetuated a culture in which what the church does, what it has and what other people think of it is considered paramount, rather than how well we receive God’s love and share His love with others. Instead of following Jesus’ commission to his church, to make disciples, apprentices, followers of himself, people who are on a lifetime’s journey towards becoming more like the One we follow, we have prided and divided ourselves by what we do, criticising those who don’t behave as we do, worship as we do, abide by the same man-made rules we do. We have either dismissed those who encourage the spiritual gifts or despised those who don’t. For two thousand years we have accepted and encouraged patriarchal superiority and institutional misogyny.

We seem so spiritually insecure and unsure of God’s love that we need to compete with one another on some man-made spiritual scale - not content with being simple followers of Jesus Christ we need our ego fed by laying claim to the erroneously-called ‘superior’ spiritual gifts and we fail to challenge unloving, judgmental, ageist, sexist and divisive attitudes in our church communities. We have turned intolerance into an art form, when we are called to be followers of the one who embraced the outcasts of his society and said the greatest commandment of all is to love unconditionally. Until we fully understand how much we are loved, not for what we do or have, but because we have a Saviour who IS love, we will never be truly free to love others.

My Granddaughter Clementine would have been 18 tomorrow, just entering adulthood. Eighteen years ago, through human frailty, her brain and her body were broken during the last hours before her birth. By God’s grace the new Clemmie, unable to do anything but smile irresistibly and cry heartbreakingly, yet perfectly whole in the depth of her being, in her soul, was given back to her family for an all too brief season of 10 short years. Unable to do anything, she was dependent moment by moment on the grace of God and the unconditional love and protection of her parents. She is now safe in the loving arms of the one who formed her as His masterpiece, and who also loves her beyond measure.

We are all broken, to one degree or another by human frailty, all dependent moment by moment on God’s grace, all loved beyond measure. We are not just saved by grace, we live by grace.

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