On How Easy it is to Betray Ourselves

That time a 3-year-old gave a fire sermon in 5 words

Photo by Дмитрий Хрусталев-Григорьев on Unsplash

Our pastor asked the kids what they wanted to be when they grow up during the children’s time in church the other Sunday. One kid said “astronaut,” another, “a doctor.” And then she asked Howard, her son, who said matter-of-factly that he wanted to be Howard. I laughed with the rest of the congregation and thought, “Yes!” We have such strong senses of self when we are young. Unrepressed. And then, as we grow, we begin to put on other faces. It can take a lifetime to recover our own selves and see them as gift.

The sermon was on Mark 1:15-20, Jesus calling his disciples. Which is what Katie was getting at in her question to the children. She shared with them something we are all called to, discipleship. But what does that mean? Follower of Christ, yes. But don’t we stumble over what that looks like? Does it look like a life of virtue, as I wrote about last week? Does it look like finding our calling as a doctor or astronaut or fisherman or tax collector or whatever formal title we serve as and turn them into Christian versions? Does it look like living an insulated life with other believers? All this skips over the distinction Christ calls us to, as persons. Jesus calls out the Peter, the Andrew, the James, and the John. And through the gospels, we see them face and deal with themselves before Christ and his kingdom.

Before Jesus calls them, we see him proclaiming, “‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near, repent, and believe in the good news’” (v. 15). We see this enacted over and over as his disciples are faced with the parts that sabotage themselves as God made them and the glorious, hidden parts that delight in his kingdom. The beautifully distinct parts that reveal life.

It's like three-year-old Howard knew the sermon his mom was about to preach. And thoroughly got the message. Or maybe he is a sermon to which Katie has been attuned. Howard. He wants to be Howard.

How many times do we repent for the parts of us that are not us? The parts that sabotage the holy. Trying to be what we think we are supposed to be. Striving for a version of a life that is suffocating the very distinctiveness of the vocations we are gifted? And isn’t this exactly what sin does? Trying to achieve blessing in ways that betray the holiness in which God made us? Denying, as Parker J. Palmer put it, “the life that wants to live in me”? Maybe Howard already knows how easy it is to betray ourselves, and God, by finding a “‘noble’ way to live a life that is not [our] own.” Before he can be an astronaut or a doctor or a mechanic or chef, he needs to work on developing Howard. And that will guide him.

I just finished up a manuscript for a more contemplative book tentatively titled Face to Face: Digging Out the Truth of Ourselves and One Another. I begin the short chapters with storied memory work. My first chapter is me looking in the mirror around 10 years old with my first bad haircut. I thought this must be what it’s like to be ugly. At the end of the book, I’m looking in the mirror again, as a 48-year-old, seeing the signs of aging. But also wondering what the 10-year-old me with the bad haircut would think if she saw my aging self. What would she think about my face changing? Would she see it how others do? Could she get to my naked face and tell me who I am now? And what do I know? Would she be proud of what is meaningful to me, about how I love others, how I testify to Christ, and how I am longing more and more to experience God in the present? Would she like my haircut by a real, swanky hairstylist who is also my daughter? 

If I could look in the mirror and see that little girl, how would I answer some of these questions? What would I tell her?

I think 10-year-old me would be a little surprised about the detour I took in becoming Aimee when I grew up. I’d give her advice about this. Something like what Howard said.