Letting Go of Self

I've been thinking a lot about self and identity the last few days, spurred by Daily Devotions from Richard Rohr, comments on my blogs, and re-reading Graham Standish's Humble Leadership. I supposes this all started when a church member commented that my predecessor here once said there were only two Republicans who belonged to this church.  I must confess, I was stunned by that.

"All of you are one in Christ Jesus" is a fundamental Christian affirmation. The divisions of the world are obliterated when we our identity is reformed in the image of Jesus.  As Paul says in today's reading, "We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's."

In the teachings of Jesus and the writings of Paul, new life emerges as the self is denied or dies.  But our culture worships the individual self.  It says that happiness comes from satisfying all the desires of the self rather than subjugating the self to some larger good.  Western individualism has always had tendencies in this direction, but they seem to have grown more pronounced in recent decades. There have always been conservative and liberal congregations, wealthy and working class congregations, but I think there was some recognition that this was a regrettable result of human frailty. It was certainly nothing to be proud about.

As one who is fairly liberal, I confess that there is a certain comfort in moving to a congregation that is closer to my liberal leanings than my previous one.  But at the same time, the idea that our liberalism could form a sufficiently large part of our identity that a Republican would not want to join is disconcerting.  We are all one in Christ Jesus, as long as you are a Democrat?

(Let me quickly add that I'm responding to a statement and not necessarily to reality. I hope my predecessor's observation some years ago was an exaggeration, a misread, or is no longer true.  And I've not experienced any in-your-face, strident politicizing that one might expect if we were managing to run off all non-liberals.)

If required to label myself, I will say I am a liberal or progressive Christian. But I hope it is the Christian part of that label that is primary, not the liberal or progressive. In Paul's letter to the Romans, he mentions some issues that divided Christians in his time: refusing to eat meat because almost all the items at the butcher shop had started out as sacrifices at some temple or worshiping on the Sabbath (Saturday) versus worshiping on the Lord's Day (Sunday). In different letters he mentions other dividing lines: Jew or Gentile, male or female, slave or free.  In our day perhaps he would have added liberal or conservative, Republican or Democrat, black or white, etc.  But he certainly would have said that none of these divisions matter because all are made one in Christ Jesus.  But such a notion seems difficult, even impossible, unless the self recedes and "in Christ" comes to the fore. 

Who am I?  That is a basic human question.  Many of us spend a great deal of energy trying to hone and stake a claim to a particular identity.  And the idea that our true identity requires letting go of self goes against the cultural grain.  Not me, but Christ; not my will but God's will; not what I want but what God wants; saying such things are difficult for many of us.  But Jesus, Paul, and the lives of countless Christians over the centuries all insist that we discover who we truly are, find a joyful new life and sense of being reborn, when we let go of self and become a new self in Christ.

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