Book notes: The Gift of Being Yourself: The Sacred Call to Self-Discovery

by David G. Benner and M. Basil Pennington

Being most deeply your unique self is something that God desires, because your true self is grounded in Christ.

an understanding of the interdependence of knowing self and God has held a lasting and respected place in Christian theology.

Christian spirituality involves a transformation of the self that occurs only when God and self are both deeply known. Both, therefore, have an important place in Christian spirituality. There is no deep knowing of God without a deep knowing of self, and no deep knowing of self without a deep knowing of God. John Calvin wrote, “Nearly the whole of sacred doctrine consists in these two parts: knowledge of God and of ourselves.”

This man was not short on knowledge about either himself or God. But none of it did him any good. None of it was worthy of being called transformational knowing.

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Self-knowledge that is pursued apart from knowing our identity in relationship to God easily leads to self-inflation. This is the puffed-up, grandiose self Paul warns about (1 Corinthians 8:1)—an arrogance to which we are vulnerable when knowledge is valued more than love. It can also lead to self-preoccupation.

transformational knowledge is always personal, never merely objective. It involves knowing of, not merely knowing about. And it is always relational. It grows out of a relationship to the object that is known—whether this is God or one’s self.

you may know that earth orbits around the sun or that Columbus arrived in the Americas in 1492 without direct personal experience of either, provided you are willing to accept the testimony of others. This is how it is with much of what we believe.

The interweaving of the deepening knowledge of self and God that we have seen in Peter’s experience illustrates the way genuine knowing of God and self occurs. Peter could not truly know Jesus apart from knowing himself in relation to Jesus. He did not know himself until Jesus showed him who he was. But in learning about himself, he also came to truly know Jesus.

Deep knowing of God and deep knowing of self always develop interactively. The result is the authentic transformation of the self that is at the core of Christian spirituality.

While many of us have followed Jesus for much longer than the three years we have tracked in Peter’s journey, too often we have not allowed the initial introduction to deepen into a deep, intimate knowing.

Too easily we have settled for knowing about God. Too easily our actual relationship with God is remarkably superficial.

Packer suggests that knowing becomes increasingly complex as we move from knowing objects to knowing people and from knowing people to knowing God. “The more complex the object, the more complex is the knowing of it.”

even “a little knowledge of God is worth more than a great deal of knowledge about Him.”

The Christian God is known only in devotion, not objective detachment.

What God longs for us to experience is intimate knowing that comes by means of an ongoing relationship.

The starting point for learning to simply spend time with God is learning to do this with Jesus. Spending time with Jesus allows us to ground our God-knowing in the concrete events of a concrete life. But how do we actually do this? We do it by means of Spirit-guided meditation on the Gospels.

The meditation I am recommending is not the same as Bible study. It is more an exercise of the imagination than of the intellect. It involves allowing the Spirit of God to help you imaginatively enter an event in the life of Christ as presented in the Gospels.

Another struggle for me was the feeling that meditation was a waste of time. I wanted to judge it by what I got out of it. When I did, it often seemed to be a dreadfully inefficient spiritual practice. But productivity and efficiency miss the point.

What God wants is simply our presence, even if it feels like a waste of potentially productive time. That is what friends do together—they waste time with each other.

Meditation ought to be a part of the prayer life of every Christian who seriously seeks to genuinely know God. The Gospels provide wonderfully rich opportunities to meet Jesus, once we learn how to use them in this manner.

A second extremely rich resource for spending time with God is the discernment of Divine Presence in daily experience.

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Changing life situations—some desirable and others definitely less so—provide important opportunities to better know both God and our self. Each gives us a chance to examine where God is in that experience and what gifts God is offering for our growth.

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Paul Stevens

“If God has come in the flesh, and if God keeps coming to us in our fleshly existence, then all of life is shot through with meaning.

Nothing wasted. Nothing lost. Nothing secular. Nothing absurd.... All are grist for the mill of a downto-earth spirituality.”

God who is Immanuel is equally in those moments we would never choose as in those we would always gladly choose.

“we cannot attain the presence of God. We’re already totally in the presence of God. What’s absent is awareness.”

This is the core of the spiritual journey—learning to discern the presence of God, to see what really is. But nothing is more dangerous than presuming that we already see when we do not.

There is no simple formula for deep knowing of God. Vicki—who in my imagination has been sitting beside me as I wrote this chapter—has learned to avoid anything or anyone that suggests otherwise. You should do the same.

Personhood is not an accomplishment; it is a gift.

our true self—the self we are becoming in God—is something we receive from God.

Any other identity is of our own making and is an illusion.

Christians affirm a foundation of identity that is absolutely unique in the marketplace of spiritualities. Whether we realize it or not, our being is grounded in God’s love.

The inextinguishable love of God is the only hope for our fulfillment. Love is our identity and our calling, for we are children of Love.

our existence makes no sense apart from Divine love.

An identity grounded in God would mean that when we think of who we are, the first thing that would come to mind is our status as someone who is deeply loved by God.

What this tells me is that much more than I usually care to acknowledge, my identity is based on what I do, not who I am. Christ presents a particularly poignant contrast to this. His identity was defined by his relationship to his Father. This was who he was. His whole life flowed out from this.

“The works my Father has given me to carry out, these same works of mine testify that the Father has sent me” (John 5:36).

Coming to know and trust God’s love is a

lifelong process. Making this knowledge the foundation of our identity—or better, allowing our identity to be re-formed around this most basic fact of our existence—will also never happen instantly. Both lie at the core of the spiritual transformation that is the intended outcome of Christ-following.

Every time I dare to meet God in the vulnerability of my sin and shame, this knowing is strengthened. Every time I fall back into a self-improvement mode and try to bring God my best self, it is weakened. I only know Divine unconditional, radical and reckless love for me when I dare to approach God just as I am. The more I have the courage to meet God in this place of weakness, the more I will know myself to be truly and deeply loved by God. And the more deeply I know this love, the easier it will be to trust it as Christ did—preferring God’s will to my own.

Powerful conditioning in childhood encourages us to acknowledge only the most acceptable parts of our self. And parts of self that are not given a place at the family table become stronger, not weaker. Operating out of sight and beyond awareness, they have increasing influence on our behavior.

She told me of the courage she had developed as she learned to face the frightening parts of herself—her sexuality in particular. She also told me of the increased freedom to love others and genuinely be herself that had resulted. But what really captured my attention was her declaration that her work with an agnostic Jewish psychoanalyst had led her toward Christianity.

To truly know something about yourself, you must accept it. Even things about yourself that you most deeply want to change must first be accepted—even embraced. Self-transformation is always preceded by self-acceptance.

If God loves and accepts you as a sinner, how can you do less? You can never be other than who you are until you are willing to embrace the reality of who you are.

Only then can you truly become who you are most deeply called to be.

Jesus puts it this way: “If you’re content with simply being yourself, you will become more than yourself” (Luke 18:14 The Message). Before we can become our self we must accept our self, just as we are. Self-acceptance always precedes genuine self-surrender and self-transformation.

We search for a missing spiritual key, but we tend to look for it outside of ourselves where it seems easiest to search. But the key is inside, in the dark.

Ones need to be perfect and, discovering that neither they nor anything else in their world is perfect, are tempted by self-righteous anger. A good biblical example of this type is Paul.   Twos need to be loved and needed, and their competence in making this happen sets them up for pride. Martha is a good biblical example of a Two.

Fours need to be special and are tempted toward envy, escapist fantasy and a compromise of authenticity. Joseph, the Old Testament patriarch, illustrates this type.   Fives need knowledge, long for fulfillment, and are tempted by greed, stinginess and critical detachment. Thomas, the so-called doubting disciple, fits this pattern.   Sixes need security and are tempted by fear, self-doubt and cowardice. Timothy is a good example of a Six.   Sevens need to avoid pain and are tempted by gluttony and intemperance. Solomon is a biblical example of this type.

Nines need to maintain emotional peace and avoid initiative and are tempted by laziness, comfortable illusions and being overly accommodating. Jonah illustrates this type.

But although we all fit all nine types to some extent or another, “reasonably good fits” always mean that you have not yet been able to truly face the depths of your illusions and basic sin.

What changed when he met Christ on the Damascus Road was that

his prodigious talents and extraordinary level of passion were redirected away from the kingdom of self to the kingdom of God. In this redirection he found freedom from the tyranny of his private ambition. He found his true self.

What we get when we choose a way of being that is separate from God is the life of the false self. What Saul got when he chose his way over God’s way was a self whose significance depended on accomplishments of heroic proportions—the destruction of the church. What Stuart (whose story I told in chapter four) got was an illusory sense of specialness based on the gratifications of pornography.

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The false self is the tragic result of trying to steal something from God that we did not have to steal. Had we dared to trust God’s goodness, we would have discovered that everything we could

ever most deeply long for would be ours in God.

our false self is the self we develop in our own likeness. This is the person we would like to be—a person of our own creation, the person we would create if we were God. But such a person cannot exist, because he or she is an illusion.

Because it is hollow at the core, the life of a false self is a life of excessive attachments. Seeking to avoid implosion and non-being, the false self grasps for anything that appears to have substance and then clings to these things with the tenacity of a drowning man clutching a life ring. One person might cling to his possessions, accomplishments or space. Another may cling to her dreams, memories or friendships. Any of these things can be either a blessing or a curse. They are a blessing when they are held in open hands of gratitude. They become a curse when they

are grasped in clenched fists of entitlement and viewed as “me” or “mine.” Saul

Ultimately, attachments are ways of coping with the feelings of vulnerability, shame and inadequacy that lie at the core of our false ways of being. Like Adam and Eve, our first response to our awareness of nakedness is to grab whatever is closest and quickly

cover our nakedness. We hide behind the fig leaves of our false self. This is the way we package our self to escape the painful awareness of our nakedness.

God wants us to be aware of our helplessness so we can know that we need Divine help. God’s deepest desire for us is to replace our fig leaves with garments of durability and beauty (Genesis 3:21). Yet we cling to our fig-leaf false self.

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As Basil Pennington observes, unhappiness is always a result of “not being able to do something I want to do, have something I want to have, or concern about what others will think of me.”6 This brings us back to the core of the false self—placing my value in what I have, what I can do and what others think of me.

The true self is the exact opposite of all that I have described as the false self. The true self is who, in reality, you are and who you are becoming.

It is not something you need to construct through a process of self-improvement or deconstruct by means of psychological analysis.

It is not an object to be grasped. Nor is it an archetype to be actualized.

It is not even some inner, hidden part of you. Rather, it is your total self as you were created by God and as you are being redeemed in Christ.

We do not find our true self by seeking it. Rather, we find it by seeking God.

The anthropological question (Who am I?) and the theological question (Who is God?) are fundamentally inseparable.1

It is by losing our self in God that we discover our true identity. There is no true life apart from relationship to God.

The foundation of our identity resides in our life-giving relationship with the Source of life. Any identity that exists apart from this relationship is an illusion.

Jesus is the True Self who shows us by his life how to find our self in relation to God.

The self we find hidden in Christ is our true self, because Christ is the source of our being and ground of our true identity (1 Corinthians 15:22).

Even Jesus had to find his way, his self. What do we know about how he did so?

Jesus had come to think about himself in relation not simply to earthly parents but to his heavenly Parent. And he was beginning to understand that this latter, most fundamental aspect of his identity was the soil out

of which his calling was to emerge. He was beginning to understand that his Father’s affairs were his affairs, his Father’s priorities his priorities.

The clarity of thought and action that would later characterize Jesus’ public ministry came from his years of preparation in solitude and anonymity. The core of that preparation was meeting God in the secret place of his inner self. It was through meeting God in places of solitude that Jesus discovered his identity and grew in intimacy with God.

Jesus gave glory to God by being himself—deeply, truly, consistently.

Sanctity is finding our hidden and true self in Christ and living out the life that flows from this self in surrender to the loving will and presence of our heavenly Father.

Note:This is the peace — the fulfillment — I have sought. No business plan, no earthly book, no amount of reading or writing would ever fill the hole within me. It is to operate as my authentic self in Christ and surrender to God’s will.

identity is not static.

It always gives direction

to how we live our life.

The discovery of our true self does not simply produce freedom. It also generates vocation.

Our vocation, like our self, can be understood only in relation to the One Who Calls.

By becoming fully human, Jesus leads us to the fulfillment of our humanity. By being fully God, he leads us to God.

Gordon Smith notes that—much bigger than a career, job or occupation—our unique calling will be based on our gifts and abilities, will grow out of our deepest desires, and will always involve some response to the needs of the world.

Our calling is therefore the way of being that is both best for us and best for the world.

“the place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”

Christian calling will always involve the care of God’s creation and people.

moving us from self-centered exploitation to self-sacrificing service and stewardship.

But the specific call that is rooted in your unique identity, gifts and personality will be found as you come to know both God and self in Christian community.

To live apart from a sense of calling by God is to live a life oriented simply to our own choices about who we want to be and what we want to do. Calling brings freedom and fulfillment because it orients us toward something bigger than self.

Resisting the temptations to a false self based on power, prestige or possessions, Jesus chose his true identity as the deeply loved Son of God.

His identity was not an issue.

This is why he was also not distracted

by the critics who tried to dismiss him as being merely Joseph’s son

Jesus said that he could do nothing whatsoever by himself because his aim was not to do his own will but the will of God

Nothing took primacy for Jesus over surrender to the loving will of the Father,

Our call, like Jesus’ call, is to live out our life in truth and in dependence on the loving will of the Father. As was the case for Jesus, the discernment of this call must always involve wrestling with God, our self and the devil in the solitude of our private wilderness.

“Let it be as you, not I, would have it” (Matthew 26:39). His unshakable trust was in God. Nothing, he knew, could be more important than doing God’s will. This was the reason he was on earth.

while doing will always be involved, vocation is much more than our occupation. It is the face of Christ we are called from eternity to show to the world.

Without deemphasizing the value of the Bible in knowing my calling, I have come to understand an even more basic place in which God’s will for me has been communicated. That is in the givens of my being. My temperament, my personality, my abilities, and my interests and passions all say something about who I was called to be, not simply who I am.

While the first revelation of our calling is in the givens of our being, it is important to note that God’s will for us does not always grow naturally out of our wishes. Jonah is a good example of someone whose calling was diametrically opposite to his superficial desires. Moses didn’t like public speaking, and Gideon didn’t feel courageous. Even Jesus didn’t look forward to being crucified! This is the discipline of doing what we don’t want to do but know we should. Doing so can also be transforming.

We are all called to live the truth of our uniqueness. Divine creativity has never involved a production assembly line. The results of God’s creative acts are never less than original and truly unique works of art. You and I are no exception.

God meets us in our uniqueness. Think, for example, of the quite different ways Jesus encounters people in the Gospels. Some are simply invited to follow him, some are engaged in Socratic dialogue, some are given provocative parables as answers to questions, some are healed, some are told… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.

God meets us in our individuality because God wants to fulfill that individuality. God wants us to follow and serve in and through that individuality. God doesn’t seek to annihilate our uniqueness as we follow Christ… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.

The spiritual life of one person should never be a carbon copy of that of another. Peter and John had quite different personalities and quite different… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.

God’s will for us is that we live out the harmonious expression of our gifts, temperament, passions and vocation… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.

Christ’s way to self-fulfillment is not like any way we could ever have imagined. His way involves losing our life so that we might… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.

Death always… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.

new… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.

Our happiness is important to God. But what he desires for us is infinitely more than the superficial feelings that come… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.

What he wants to give us is the deep joy that comes from finding our self in Christ—that is, being poor in spirit, mournful, meek, hungry for righteousness, merciful, pure in heart, a peacemaker,… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.

the self he wants to fulfill is not the self of our autonomous existence. Nor is it any of the false selves of our own creation.… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.

Happiness and fulfillment are blessings that come from surrender to the loving will of God. Both are… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.

Our self-in-Christ is a self that fits perfectly because it is completely us. It is a self that allows us to be free of all anxiety… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.

it allows us to be absolutely our self—unique not by virtue of our strivings for individuality but profoundly original simply… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.

God’s call to our fulfillment is therefore a call to take our place in his grand restoration agenda of making all things new in Christ. Our vocation is grounded in the self… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.

Our identity is not simply a possession. It… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.

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Paradoxically, our fulfillment lies in the death of our own… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.

if our identity is grounded in Truth, the self we find there will be, for each of us, the unique truth that is our vocation.

None of us ever finishes with this work,

Nor do we ever wait until this work is completed to figure out our vocation. The discernment of our vocation is an ongoing, lifelong process. It is learning to live the truth of our being, not simply fill certain roles or accomplish certain expectations.

Set aside some time to meditate on the Gospel account of Jesus’ trip to the temple at age twelve (Luke 2:41-50). Conduct an imaginary conversation with Jesus, asking him where he found his clear sense of his identity. Listen to him speak and watch him act. See what you can learn from his knowing of himself in relationship to God. Then pick up this conversation with Jesus as you meditate on his public declaration of his calling in the synagogue as recorded in Luke 4:16-22. Prayerfully write out a mission statement for your life. Think back over your life to this point, reviewing the givens of your being and seeking to discern calling within them. Add to this any direct leadings of God that you believe yourself to have received. Begin your written statement with the words “Called to ...” and allow it to reflect what you feel to be the reason you were created and the unique face of Christ you have been called to be. Discuss this with someone who knows you well

God’s intended home is our heart, and it is meeting God in our depths that transforms us from the inside out.

The mystery of the Christian gospel is that our deepest, truest self is not what we think of as our own self but “the self that is one with the Risen and Deathless Christ in whom all are fulfilled.”

In Christian spiritual transformation, the self that embarks on the journey is not the self that arrives. The self that begins the spiritual journey is the self of our own creation, the self we thought ourselves to be. This is the self that dies on the journey. The self that arrives is the self that was loved into existence by Divine Love.