Tag Archives: identity

Chapter 57: artisans and craftsmen

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… if anyone becomes proud of his skill and the profit he brings the community, he should be taken from his craft and work at ordinary labor.

Who am I?

As June 2015 approaches and I come to the end of my official curacy, marked by a final assessment panel and an interview with my bishop, I am finding it hard not to think about the reports that will be gathered about me and my suitability to minister. On the bishops desk will be a minimum of 9 reports assessing my progress over the last three years, my competences, my character and every aspect of who I am. It is a pretty daunting thing if you think about it too much!

I have also been undertaking some intense ‘soul searching’ and reflection for the last few months guided by a counsellor. This has helped me to understand a little more as to what makes me behave and think like I do. I am acutely aware of the complexity by which God works through my own free will and psychological and genetic tendencies to reform me. When is something to be named as ‘God-given’ and when is it not?

I find it hard to accept that all talents and skills are to be ascribed to the spiritual realm. There are things that I’m good at which are there because I have worked very hard at learning and perfecting them. When I was an atheist I would get frustrated with religious people saying God gave them that ‘gift’ when it could be taught without involving God at all. I’m not saying that God can’t use those skills that one learns and does courses in but that we shouldn’t ascribe all skills to God for there are some skills which do not honour him nor would he want us to use. Take learning how to torture someone. It may seem facetious to say this but there are some people who are very good at taking other human beings to the edge of their life but holding them on the brink to force them to speak on the desired issue. This is a skill which not everyone can do. We wouldn’t dream of saying,

They’re really good at that it must be a god-given gift.

What is the distinction? Is it in the purpose of the activity? If someone learns a skill without knowing God and uses it to actively deny God is that still God-given? Is everything we are and do because of God? If this is true then why does he change us? In saying that all skills and talents are God-given, to me, denies the wonder and power of God’s redemption.

There are things that I have picked up through my experiences that are not healthy. I respond badly in certain situations which are not edifying and I am not proud of and I wouldn’t dream of turning round to the people I hurt and say,

This is the way God made me so you can’t complain.

It would be nice to say that because it takes all the pressure for me to change off and to blame God for making me ‘this way’. The truth is God didn’t make us ‘this way’. We were made by flesh and blood and we’ve been shaped by an imperfect world filled with imperfect people. Some parts of me are messed up and need reforming and that’s also true of you.

When St. Paul talks about spiritual gifts he is both vague and specific. The lists of gifts are not, in my mind, exhaustive, nor are we meant to be focussing on the list of gifts but rather the point of these passages (1 Corinthians 12, Romans 12 and, some would argue, Ephesians 4 but I have my questions on that!) is to highlight God the giver of grace through his Holy Spirit. God equips us for the tasks he calls us to. In my view and my experience, God never equips us for no reason. God calls first and equips after. This order makes more sense for God wants us to serve and behave dependent on him not on ourselves. Naming and blessing all our capabilities on behalf of God is not the same as truly experiencing the transformation of God via his Spirit.

That’s why, in The Rule of St. Benedict, I think it is clear that the ‘artisan’ is described as having a ‘skill’ and not a ‘gift’. But, you may protest, what about Bezalel!

The Lord spoke to Moses: “See, I have called by name Bezalel son of Uri son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah: and I have filled him with divine spirit, with ability, intelligence, and knowledge in every kind of craft, to devise artistic designs, to work in gold, silver, and bronze, in cutting stones for setting, and in carving wood, in every kind of craft.” (Exodus 31:1-5)

My reading of Exodus 31 is that Bezalel is given ‘skill’ for a specific task. The call comes first the skill second. God helps Bezalel to learn the necessary skills with the other aspects of the gift, ‘wisdom, understanding and knowledge/intelligence’ (from the original Hebrew).

Now, I’m not saying that these skills are not important and can’t be used by God; quite the opposite! It is a testament and a witness to the redemption of God and how God works that he does use those things we learnt before we received his gift of grace. The distinction I am wanting to make is between that which God has given to us and how God uses us. The former is perfect for it comes from God and the latter is imperfect but redeemable if we choose to obey God’s will. Does this distinction need to be made? I would argue it does for we can easily slide into blessing everything we do as ‘God-given’ and controlled by God without considering the important aspect of our own fallenness and brokenness.

When it comes to questions of my identity I struggle to communicate such a concept because of the confusing assumptions of both myself and the hearer. When I sit before the panel assessing my vocation and competences and I talk with my bishop, I will struggle to communicate seemingly simple questions about discernment. This is not about what God is calling me to specifically but about how he has equipped me. What of my personality is God-given? What part of who I am is from God?

What it comes down to is I can only be sure of this: I am in Christ being renewed for his glory all the rest is debatable.

Reflection

The most significant challenge in this chapter of the Rule is the guidance,

…if anyone becomes proud of his skill and the profit he brings the community, he should be taken from his craft and work at ordinary labor.

As I face the panel I will be sensitive to my own pride and, as with most days of my life, pray that God will humble me, that he will remind me of my identity in him and to speak only of that.

We are so keen to establish our self esteem because we all are confused about who we are at the deepest level. We feel we should know ourselves but the truth is we don’t and that’s scary. Thomas Merton suggests,

The reason we hate one another and fear one another is that we secretly or openly hate and fear our own selves. And we hate ourselves because the depths of our being are a chaos of frustration and spiritual misery. Lonely and helpless, we cannot be at peace with others because we are not at peace with ourselves, and we cannot be at peace with ourselves because we are not at peace with God. (Thomas Merton, The Living Bread (London: Burns and Oates, 1976) p.9)

In his extended commentary on identity in ‘New Seeds of Contemplation’ he says,

In great saints you find that perfect humility and perfect integrity coincide. (Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation (New York: New Directions, 1972) p.99)

Humility, Merton asserts,

…consists in being precisely the person you actually are before God, and since no two people are alike, if you have the humility to be yourself you will not be like anyone else in the whole universe. (ibid.)

For Merton the practical things of everyday life should not be items of conflict,

The saints do not get excited about the things that people eat and drink, wear on their bodies, or hang on the walls of their houses. To make conformity or non conformity with others in these accidents a matter of life and death is to fill your interior life with confusion and noise. (ibid.) (my emphasis)

My personality and my preferences are ‘accidents’ not to be seen as static like some perfect idol but rather to be sacrificed before God to used and changed as he wills. My skills and competences, likewise.

Genes, parenting, and spiritual forces do condition who we are. But for believers whose spirits have been regenerated by the Holy Spirit these conditioning factors cannot determine who we are unless we choose to allow them to do so. (Gregory Boyd, God of the Possible: a biblical introduction to the open view of God (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2000) p.147)

In order to know who we are we must know who God is and discover who we are before him.

But under the steady bombardment of meaningless propaganda that is always directed against us, we surrender our privilege to think and hope and make decisions for ourselves… And we will never find God if we are not ourselves mature persons. To find God one must first be free.(Thomas Merton, The Living Bread (London: Burns and Oates, 1976) p.11)

Freedom comes when we follow Christ into his death and live in his resurrection and new creation. Death of our ego, death of our personality, death of everything we think defines us which is not Christ. In uniformly being in Christ we find we are uniquely ourselves.
Abba Father, you call us to life in you through participating in the death and new life of your son Jesus Christ. We humbly approach you and ask that you take every aspect of our life and use it for your glory. We ask you keep our eyes fixed on you and to continue the work of discipleship.

Come, Lord Jesus.

Crucify-ID

It’s cold outside and the wind is fierce,
Even the sun burns our skin.
We gather up the scraps and the clothing
That generations past have walked in.
We protect ourselves with well worn characters.
We wear them like fashion well out of date
We fight back the feeling of desperate isolation
of being outside the bourgeoisie which we hate.
We grasp onto survival by waiting,
Holding out for the affirmation of ‘retro’
Worse still we cling to these dying idols
Straining to point out their elusive echoes.

We are so thirsty for self,
So parched for identity,
So mind numbingly, blind hungry for static,
Certain understanding of what the fuck is going on
That we sell ourselves to the highest bidder.

Humility, it has been said,
Is not thinking less of yourself,
But thinking of yourself less.
This is neat and catchy, sure,
But one man tried it and found that he was dead.
But this man is remembered because he also said,
He was the revealed character of God, that’s why he bled.

Now if this is true,
And it may not be,
And God strips his masks
Then so should we.
If this is the character
Written in our DNA,
Before the world began.
Then this is the way
For a character to never go out of fashion
Because it’s not even about fashion
But about freedom and compassion
To enjoy others with love and with passion
Free from the identities given in rations.

Crucify them,
I cry.
Crucify them.
Hang them to die.
Crucify them.
Follow the character who defied.
Crucify them.
Release them and sigh.
Crucify them.

Crucify them.

Crucify them…

Written for a Burning Fences on Wednesday 12th March 2014 as an introduction to a discussion on Peter Rollins ideas (Crucified Identities)

Our Basic Needs (part II)

I think of myself as self aware. I have spent the last two years in an institution that forces you to reflect almost constantly on how you respond to different stimuli, who you are and how you are developing. Increasingly I want to find the strength to cast off all that separates me from others. Personality tests, Psychological profiling, all of them helpful but each one I am forced to ask the question ‘What was Jesus like?” If our Myers Briggs type can change then I want it to change to Christ. There are so many ways people can pretend like they get to know themselves but all is fruitless if our aim is to die to our self and be raised in Christ.

I have used this quote before but I find it helpful in this discussion,

If your life is centered on yourself, on your own desires and ambitions, then asserting those desires and ambitions is the way you try to be true to yourself. So self-assertion becomes the only way of self expression. If you simply assert your own desires, you may have the illusion of being true to yourself. But in fact all your efforts to make yourself more real and more yourself have the opposite effect: they create a more and more false self… people cannot simply assert their true self; they need to pray for the strength to find that self beyond their desires. (Finding Sanctuary – Abbot Christopher Jamison)

And this one too,

Many poets are not poets for the same reason many religious men are not saints: they never succeed in being themselves. They never get round to being the particular poet or the particular monk that they are intended to be by God.There can be an intense egoism in following everybody else. People are in a hurry to magnify themselves by imitating what is popular – and too lazy to think of anything better.Hurry ruins saints as well as artists. They want quick success and they are in such haste to get it that they cannot take time to be true to themselves. And when the madness is upon them they argue that their very haste is a species of integrity. In order to become myself I must cease to be what I always thought I wanted to be. (Seeds of Contemplation – Thomas Merton)

If my aim is to be more like Christ and Christ died to self, then I too must stop focussing on trying to be true to myself (if such a thing were possible). I want, rather, to be true to Christ.

I want to explore briefly the view that life is a performance. I’ve been re-reading ‘Faithful Performances: Enacting Christian Tradition’ and Ivan Khovaks’ cites Shannon Craigo-Snell work on interpretation of Biblical text. It’s an interesting exchange of ideas. What struck me was the move to acknowledge that by seeing life as a performance we are putting on pressure to achieve absolute and static truths all the time. If, however, we view life as a rehearsal we do not deny the possibility of achieving a connection with the character (of Christ) but we are aware that we continue to seek it until the final performance. Craigo-Snell places the Biblical text side by side to a playscript

…to show that although both are complete works, they nevertheless call for an in-the-flesh realization… she conceives of this enfleshed realization as taking place not only at the moment of performance but largely through personal commitment to the rehearsal process.

Khovaks goes on,

For the pilgrim, however, the journey is as important as the destination. Equally, one’s role in Christ, as much as it is given, nonetheless requires apprenticeship for learning to ‘put on Christ’, a life time’s rehearsal that will determine the quality of the end of performance.

Our society is so keen for us to reach the destination of self actualization that we belittle the journey of life. I believe, as a Christian pilgrim, that our destination is the eschatological performance in the resurrection where we will all take on the role of Christ. We will perform the character differently but in order to be faithful to that role we must be prepared to fully deny our own self. We will not achieve this fully until then. Until that point we can rehearse, trying to limit the times we slip out of character or exploring dead ends as we wrestle with what the character is or does.

What the riots have shown is that we are a society who have a fascination with pretending to be something we’re not. We are a society hiding from true reality. Many would say that being a Christian is to be blind to the truth/reality. The very nature of Christianity, for me, is the painful acknowledgement of reality and the hopeful path to living in reality. We have built a false reality and it is so complex and deeply set that we’re lost in it. Our basic need should not be to layer more stuff on us but the opposite of stripping back, allowing all that separates us and segregates us is to die.

The image of baptism is so important here; we are to be wrenched from this dream that we have constructed and look again at the reality outside. Outside our ‘self’ is seen as the statue of sand blown away in the wind of truth. The way to prosper and grow and live in true happiness is to clothe ourselves in Christ and allow that character to embed itself within us.

Believe me, there are several metaphorical cans of worms lined up in front of me but I will resist. Need to find a way to control the worms and structure them into my book… God, help me!

Our Basic Needs (part I)

Having stayed up watching the riots and the consequent responses to the three day looting by young people and ‘opportunists’ it struck me that one of the factors behind this outburst is the concept of identity.

I watched an interview with four of the looters and when asked “Why did you do it?” they all spoke about getting the things they need which they cannot afford. This did not surprise me; of course they think they need trainers, clothes, plasma TVs, because that is what they perceive their culture’s demanding of them to have. Many commentators have talked about the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’ and it’s sad that there is so much truth in that. Zygmunt Bauman wrote,

These are not hunger or bread riots. These are riots of defective and disqualified consumers.

I would disagree with Bauman. These are our culture’s hunger riot because these consumable products have become our basic needs. Maslow’s hierarchy is collapsing and the second level of his pyramid, which states security of body, employment, resources, morality, family, health and property are all secondary needs to breathing, food, water, etc., is now perceived as the first.

The saddest part of watching the riots and the thing that is making most of us feel upset is the fact we have been forced to stare into a mirror. Our society does place material possession as equally necessary to the basic need of food. We can all pretend that this is mindless violence and greed but in actual fact this is predictable and is as valid as bread rioting.

Before I get misquoted I want to state I don’t think looting a plasma TV is acceptable but what I am suggesting is that for the looters society is communicating that material possession is our basic need; if you do not have these things then you are ill. (It is interesting that David Cameron said he thought parts of our society is ‘ill’) It follows that our society has bred a generation of people who believe that the ability to possess a certain commodity is on the same level as food and water; if they cannot consume then they are starving. In short, if they don’t have these things then they will die.

The riots are not about individual criminals, they are about consequence of a system. The riots are predictable because society has led my generation to believe that in order to discover who you are you must consume, if you cannot then you will die. Think of advertisements stating no less; ‘You need.’ ‘You deserve.’

The destination of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is ‘self actualization’. Here is the issue; we are all seeking identity, to know who we are, what we are for, our purpose. The riots and looting were about grasping for the perceived building blocks of self identity. We have successfully built a social system which believes that our identity and purpose revolves around consuming certain products. Add to this implicit message the belief, that one can know ones self, with the statement, ‘To thine own self be true’ and we begin to see the twisted path we’re on.

The very fact that the purpose for which we need food, love, etc. is to find out about ourselves is dubious to say the least. Is self actualization and self identity really the benchmark for mental health? is this really the purpose of our lives? What I read in Scripture is very different.

He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves…” (Mk 8:34, Lk 14:27)

You were taught to put away your former way of life, your old self… and to clothe yourselves with the new self, created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. (Eph 4:22-24)

Do not lie to to one another, seeing that you have stripped off the old self with its practices and have clothed yourselves with the new self…according to the image of its creator. (Col 3:9-10)

Without heading into a whole chapter of my book (you’ll have to continue to wait for that!) I believe to be ‘Christian’ is to allow all our self to perish in order that we can be more like Christ. My view of Christ is informed very much by Paul’s letter to the Philippians,

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death- even death on a cross. (Phil 2:5-8)

What Christ modeled in his death was the total emptying of ‘self’, selfish ambition, desires, basic needs, ‘self’. As a follower of Christ we must become like Christ, emptying ourselves and putting on Christ.

That’ll do for now…

Come back for (part II) for further exploration. Until then find some time to listen to some of the political rhetoric flying around and reflect on what people are trying to achieve. Pray for our society lost in a matrix of problems revolving around self identity and purpose.