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?
