Waiting for Gospel, by Ddouglas John Hall

Chapter 7 – The Identity & Meaning of the Self

1.  This essay is built upon Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s short poem, “Who Am I?”  As Hall notes, it considers three possible responses to the question it raises.  The first response is “Other-Determined Selfhood.”  Dependence on this response “leads to the dark side,” as Darth Vader would put it.  “To be dependent upon others for one’s sense of identity and purpose is surely one of the most demeaning personal forms of human oppression.”

Why is this response so prevalent today?  Where have you struggled with this response over the years? 

2.   The second response is “Self-Determined Selfhood.”  While all of us move between these first two responses, the second promotes the illusion of the “self-made man.”  Later, Hall writes, “Thus, from the third chapter of Genesis onwards, the quest for human self-sufficiency is shown to be the most pathetic of human quests: starting out to make ourselves great, we end by being smaller than ever.  Seeking, like the pair in the Garden, to be ‘like gods,’ we regularly end by being less than authentically human – and by knowing that we are…‘naked.’”  (Does it feel drafty?)

Again, why is this response so prevalent today?  Where have you struggled with this response over the years? 

3.  Our faith tradition, in an effort to hold the first two responses in check, turns to a third possibility: “Responsive Selfhood.”  Bear with me, here, as I share several choice quotes.

“Torn between the identity laid upon us by others and the self that we feel (or perhaps fear) ourselves to be, we lack both integration and direction.”  “And such a recognition ought to be regarded by us all as a matter of hope, for it affirms the importance – even the potentially redemptive significance – precisely of periods such as ours, periods of confusion and spiritual doubt.  Perhaps in these gray, twilight times real thought, as distinct from ideology and mere convention, is possible – and real faith, too, as distinct from rote religious habit and mere credulity!”

Does this ring a bell?  How so?

“The first (observation) is that this last and only satisfying response to the question of personal identity and meaning is a response…without being an answer.”  “Not an answer, then, but the presence of the Answerer: that is the response that Bonhoeffer receives, at last, to his, who am I?”  “Religion wants to have answers – preferably in very explicit, propositional form.  Faith, which is to say trust in the Eternal Other, is content to know that it is known…”

“The second observation: Because it refuses to claim finality for itself, because the Source of its confidence lies in a trust that transcends the self, faith is free to open itself to all the answers to the identity and meaning of the self that the human mind and spirit devises; it is free to discourse with reason; it is free to discourse even with doubt – perhaps even especially with doubt, including self-doubt.” 

Does this make you feel better?  How so?

“Humankind as a whole seems incapable of living with its own deepest questions, and will resolve them superficially – even knowing its answers to be superficial! – rather than living with trust in our creaturehood and in its Creator.”

“Whenever that self…finds itself once again thrust naked into the burning questions of its being, meaning, and destiny, it must again discover the only satisfying answer, the answer that is beyond all the answers: ‘Whoever I am, thou knowest, O God, I am thine.’”

Wow…that really makes me feel better!!  How about you?