WHAT WE SHALL BE: LESSONS FROM ST. JOHN (PART 3)
“See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is” (1 St. John 3:1-3).
The truest thing about us is, for now, the least obvious. This is the truth of Christian life grounded in Jesus Christ. But it is a truth that is easy to miss in the face of several tempting alternative stories. One such story is the modern obsession with finding “our true selves.” Much self-help literature has been written about helping people come to identify this mysterious interior quality that is said to dwell most deeply within us and is equal to who we really are beneath all the illusions piled on top of it. It is an intensely attractive offer. How often do we feel like we are misunderstood? How often are we hopeful that there is something pure and pristine beneath the surface of the complicated faces of shame and fear that are so naggingly present as life goes on.
Such knowledge of our “true selves” is also a claim to a power we don’t have to share with anyone. It is an anchor-point that gives us leverage against anyone’s superficial opinions or criticisms, against their advances, aggression, or abandonment. It is a place of retreat despite the fear of abandonment, or perhaps worse, of indifference. It is the place where we are led to be convinced that no matter what others think or do, we’re special, important, and invincible. Those who lay hands on what they think is the knowledge of their true selves gain a powerful persona to project against any who might endanger the life of the self. It is an attractive offer, but one that does not harmonize with what St. John teaches us about the nature of our truest self. For the Christian, such knowledge is not the prize of some well-conducted dive into our inner life. At best that may only get us closer, but perhaps while running the risk of mistaking some deep interior knowledge for the central truth that gives everything else meaning. Such journeys tend to be perilous to all but the most mature believers, those grounded substantially in the stabilizing truths of the faith.
Rather than this fraught internal gaze, St. John presents us with the knowledge of what we really are as being a gift bestowed by continual presence in the light of God, perfected only when Jesus Himself appears to lead each of us into what we are. For Christians, perfect self-knowledge is something into which we are led, not something into which we lead ourselves. If we stop to think about this fact in light of what St. John has said thus far, we will find relief in the truth that Jesus must be our guide. We’ve learned already that all of what we are becomes, in the end, part of the eternal world of light or part of the vanishing world of darkness.
That means that our ‘true self’ either partakes of the light that will transform all of us into light or of the darkness that will transform all of us into darkness. The light is too brilliant to view without the help of Jesus. The dark, on the other hand, is too horrific to imagine without the mercy of Jesus. In the end, light and life and darkness and death become perfectly what they are, and they take permanent root in all that partake in them.
Yet there is great hope for those in Christ, because that means the light has dawned in our souls that shall make us light and to share in the light and life of God forever. What remains then for us is to continue to abide in the light we have been given, because it will show us our true self, make us our true self, and secure our true self against all that may try to take it from us. It is the gift of God delivered by Jesus, and so cannot be taken. It can only be renounced. Remaining pure means then suffering long through the imitations of the world that offers to us an alluring substitute to this great gift. “Abide in me,” says Jesus to all who would be His disciples and friends. He wants us to make our home in Him so that He can then make His home in us. And in Him is the new Creation of the Father performed in the Spirit, it is the eternal world to which we are called through our Lord who is the doorway. It is the only access we have to find and know what we really are. And what we really are is this: beloved children adopted of God our loving Father. There is no greater gift possible, and all other truths about us must come to harmonize with this central fact. This is who we are, and if we abide in Him, the day will come when this is all we will be forever.
One day the truest thing about us will be the most obvious if we do not give up and await the appearing of our Lord who will show all things to be what they truly are and give them the fullness of their true selves forever.