Entry #17 Do You Know Who You Are?
SoulCravings, Erwin Mcmanus
There may be no greater proof of God than the power of community. There may be no greater gift than a place to belong. While it may seem that you're selling out to admit that you need people, the irony is that you'll never really know yourself until you're in a healthy community. We only truly come to know ourselves in the context of others. The more isolated and disconnected we are, the more shattered and distorted our self-identity.
When we live outside of healthy community, we not only lose others, but we lose ourselves. Sometimes the most irrational things we do are in response to our lack of identity or to our pursuit of a sense of identity. When we don't know who we are, when we have no clue as to who we were meant to become, we try to become something that we are not. Who we understand ourselves to be is dramatically affected for better or worse by those we hold closest to us. Sometimes that can even be someone we've never really even known.
Also, our ability to know ourselves is dramatically diminished when we do not know our God and Father. Ironically, even if you do not believe in God, your life may be more shaped by your lack of relationship to Him than any other relationship in your life. Of this I'm convinced.
1 comment:
Ok, so for a minute you place the proof of God in the hands of the presupposition of community. Yes it is true human beings as we know them now enjoy being in a communal setting (or so the western cultures tell us). Trying to place proof of God (or evidence of said God) in this idea leads it to break apart. Humans are only lost for an identity when alone, simply because the identity you refer to is one a society puts on him. Is it not greater for a person to know his true self, simply by exploring himself in the glory of which God made him? Isn’t it deluding, and for that matter diluting God, to say that a person can only be identified legitimately by those around him? Community is a great thing because we have evolved into it. But next time you mustn’t place such heavy things like proof of God in such fragile hands
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