The search for self

I've been in a bit of a head-spin this weekend. My thoughts circling like fighting cats. I'm still not quite sure which tail to pull to unravel the mess. I'm not even sure I can adequately frame the issue.

It started with the section on Thomas Merton in Finding Sanctuary by Christoper Jamieson. He writes this:

The real task of being true to oneself is as slow and profound work; it is not a fixed way but involves search and change. And in the end being true to oneself can only be achieved by listening to God. Keeping busy is a way of avoiding being true to oneself. 'In order to become myself I must cease to be what I always thought I wanted to be.'"

The question which this raised in my head runs something like this: is the search for one's true self diametrically opposed to the concept of self-sacrifice and self-denial? Is it not self-indulgent to commit vast amounts of time to that search? In a sense this is purely an intellectual challenge. My instinct says otherwise. In giving my life wholeheartedly to God it seems fitting that I will be released to be all that God intended. God did not create me a certain way just so he could ask me to painfully become something else entirely. So maybe it is just the emphasis of the statement that I find hard to accept.

When I was at university I knew a guy who was very hot on self-sacrifice. He had given up a whole raft of things which he knew to be wrong, in order to be a better Christian. The thing was, he wasn't very happy. To an outsider it was pretty clear that he regretted the sacrifice. He'd placed a whole load of things on the altar, not because he wanted to, but because he thought he had to. As a consequence they weren't really dead, but they followed him around, snapping at his heels.

The Christians who I have most admired have always struck me as very humble, centred people. Their focus is on God. He is the core of iron that runs though their gentle lives. It's never really occurred to me to ask them about self-sacrifice and it is not something that they have talked about. Yet I bet if I did ask I would find that there had been sacrifice there. Silent, under the surface sacrifice; undertaken willingly, not regretted and not returned to.

I know it's jumping forward, but the picture I have in my mind comes from the two-sentence parable in Matthew 9: 44. "The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field." It brings me back to what I wrote a few days ago. Love does not spring from obedience, but rather the other way around. If there is no joy in the sacrifice, then maybe the real treasure is still to be found.