Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Who am I?
I found this article by John Ortberg really challenging to my personal life and speaking to questions that I ask myself all the time. In this article Ortberg talks about the realization that he has three "identities." The first identity is his public self. This self has a filter and tries to make the best impression possible towards others. The second identity is the private self. This self scares the author because it is the self that shows him his weaknesses and inadequacies. The third and final identity is the real self. This is the self that author says that he knows the least. In fact he says that he has no idea who he really is. I have found myself wrestling with these questions as well. I am constantly challenging and questioning these motives. Am I doing this act or deed to enhance my public self? Am I doing it to cover up a deficiency in my private self? Or is this who I really am? And if this is who I really am is this scary? Or is it good? These are the questions I wrestle with all the time and questions that I think are vital to answer in order to lead others towards God. And if I as a leader am wrestling with these questions how much more are those who I am leading wrestling with these questions? Maybe I will never be able to answer the question, "Who am I?" But I need to at least make an attempt.
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dibs
ReplyDeleteThree selves seems easy. Sometimes I wish I only had three. But, without unloading unnecessary baggage here, I’ll work within that structure. My selves freak me out because they are all too often responsive to the environment and expectations of those around me. I know that I should X, because my boss says so, and I shouldn’t Y because my pastor says so, and so on. Where the frustration occurs for me is that they overlap in weird ways which can only be a result of sin. The expectations that I choose to buy into from others are generally good/right, so its not that I’m rejecting them intentionally, but my private self holds me back. Often my private and public self are aligned nicely, but I get anxious because my real self knows that I’m in over my head, and I feel like a poser. All of this difficult to follow babbling is an attempt to convey the utter confusion my selves have.
ReplyDeleteOne of your questions at the end of your post seems to imply that because you’re a leader you should have more things figured out, that the followers should be questioning more. I’m skeptical about that. I’d argue that the followers are far less self reflective.