When I was an angst-filled, dreamy adolescent, I decided that I was “searching for myself.” I had a “secret place,” a couple blocks from my house, where I would go to “dream.” It was just a concrete culvert under a bridge, but in my imagination, it was an idyllic creek where I could sit and think about life, love, and the future. I imagined myself as a butterfly in a cocoon. I looked forward to the time when I could fly free… and be “me,” whoever that was.
It’s a normal part of growing up… to look to the future and believe that someday you will be somebody….but you can’t be that person yet, because you’re too young, you have a curfew, you can’t drive, and the handsome prince hasn’t kissed you yet.
So, how do we “find ourselves”? How do we “become who we are meant to be”? They say that with age comes wisdom, that the school of hard knocks has profound lessons to teach us that we wouldn’t have learned otherwise. Some people even say that God brings us hardships to teach us lessons.
And there’s that story you’ve probably heard… about the butterfly that was helped out of his cocoon, and then couldn’t fly because he hadn’t strengthened his wings by struggling to leave the cocoon.
But I wonder….
...I really, really wonder.
What if, rather than needing to learn lessons so that we can become smarter, more confident, more loving, less afraid, etc., …what if all of those things were in us all along, and we just had to use them to find out we had them? What if all of those “lessons” weren’t really lessons, but actually barriers to finding our true selves?
In the movie Oz the Great and Powerful, a two-bit con artist “becomes” the Wizard of Oz. Like other Frank Baum classics, the story is about finding out who you really are. In fact, if Frank Baum were writing today, he probably would have written The Matrix! Instead of wandering through a poppy field on the way to the Emerald City, Dorothy would have taken the red pill.
But I digress….
In case you hadn’t put much thought into the Wizard of Oz, I’ll give you the run-down:
An already smart scarecrow is looking for a brain
An already loving Tin Man is looking for a heart
An already fierce lion is looking for courage
And a little girl who wanted to run away finds out that there’s no place like home if you truly believe there’s no place like home.
It’s a common theme in literature: A character believes a lie about himself until he is faced with a crisis or conflict. Then he finds out who he really is...that he’s stronger and smarter than he realizes, and more loving than he knew, or that he’s not such a failure after all; In fact, “It’s a Wonderful Life!”
Literature is, of course, a reflection of common human experience. I believe this particular theme in literature probably has a basis in real life… that we ARE who God created us to be, but we don’t realize it.
Sometimes I think we’re born with a veil over our eyes, and as we grow up, more layers of veils get tossed on top of us by people and circumstances, until before long, we have so many heavy veils, we need luggage to carry them around in!
Do you know how the Dalai Lama becomes the Dalai Lama? Well, he doesn’t jump through hoops in a competition with other bald men to prove he’s worthy. He was born the Dalai Lama. But he is educated about who he is from the time he’s a child. Wow, what if we were ALL educated about our true identity from the time we were children? How enlightened and wise we would be!
But instead, our little child hearts get broken and damaged, sometimes by people or events, and sometimes just by confusion from the father of lies…. You know, the one who told Adam and Eve that they could be more like God if they ate this fruit… when in fact, they were created in God’s image. They had already received his life-giving spirit, being the only creatures that He breathed life into. They’d been given dominion over the earth. They were way more powerful and important to God than Lucifer had ever been. They had a God-breathed identity… and a destiny.
But this fallen world, and the constant barrage of lies from the big liar… come in the form of “lessons.” What I’m getting at is that instead of learning lessons so we can “be better,”
perhaps we need to unlearn some lessons. Perhaps we need to throw away the “stinkin’ thinkin’” that’s in our head because of life’s lessons. Maybe life’s lessons resulted in a bunch of lies we believe about ourselves. (And maybe some of those lessons even came from other Christians).
When we throw in the lies often told to us about who God is (“You’d better behave or God’ll get ya!”), we’re in quite a pickle...Until we renew our minds. Until we “metanoize” (think again). ..Until we finally see the truth that sets us free…
that if we seek, we will find,
that God is light and there is no darkness in Him,
that who Jesus was is who God is, and what Jesus did is what God does,
that Jesus, being fully human, revealed who we were created to be
that we have the Father’s stamp of approval and badge of authority,
that we can say to a mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for us
that Jesus never said, “Go and do something less than what I did because you’re not good enough or strong enough or smart enough or holy enough.”
that we shouldn’t be afraid… but just believe.
Oh…. My…. God…!
As Jim Palmer writes in Notes From (over) The Edge, “Religion tends to imply that there is a process to undertake in order to attain God, life, love, peace, beauty, and goodness. But all that is required is to accept that you have them in every moment without condition. “Faith” is not mental assent to a proposition. “Faith” is to live as if something is true.”
So, what I’m wondering is… do I need to wait until after I work my way out of the cocoon before I can have faith that I am, indeed, a butterfly? Or do I need to have faith that I am a butterfly SO THAT I can work out my faith, even with fear and trembling?
Think about it.
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